3 ms·

Yet they fund Mono and distribute Silverlight for OSX...

by mrkurt 16y ago

moron4hire 16y ago
Which is a strategic move to A) get people to view MS as friendly to open source, and B) get people yearning for Visual Studio. Without Visual Studio, .NET is kind of a pain in the ass to develop. Not as bad as Java without Eclipse, but not anywhere near simple enough to be productive with substandard editors. Visual Studio makes .NET. Mono is intended to introduce people to the features that .NET provides and entice them into trying it where it shines, in Visual Studio, which runs around $500 a copy, which only runs on Windows.
- mrkurt 16y ago
  I think you have it backwards. MS courts developers to make Windows seem like a desirable platform. Courting developers includes building wickedly good developer tools, but they tend to give them away. The Express editions are free, they give out full Pro versions at most events, etc. The point, though, is that you said "MS is not interested in opening .NET to other platforms" when they demonstrably are. That doesn't mean they're angelic do gooders, or that they don't want to make money, or anything else. It simply means that they are interested in having .NET on other platforms because it somehow suits their purposes.
crimsoncoder 16y ago
Although it is great that they are funding Mono and distributing silverlight on other platforms, I hardly think this is for altruistic purposes. They have a history of strongly pushing people towards their OS and platform and then ending support for third party tools (e.g. IE on Mac). I think moving towards something utilizing the power of HTML 5 and Javascript is the way to go long term.
StrawberryFrog 16y ago
The strategy with Silverlight is to concede that the client tier is multi-platform, and try to sell back end servers and developer licences instead. This doesn't completely fit MS's other initiatives, but one of the benefits of being that big is that MS can try lots of things at once - to bet on every horse in the race, so to speak.

Yet they fund Mono and distribute Silverlight for OSX...

by mrkurt 16y ago

Yet they fund Mono and distribute Silverlight for OSX...

Which is a strategic move to A) get people to view MS as friendly to open source, and B) get people yearning for Visual Studio. Without Visual Studio, .NET is kind of a pain in the ass to develop. Not as bad as Java without Eclipse, but not anywhere near simple enough to be productive with substandard editors. Visual Studio makes .NET. Mono is intended to introduce people to the features that .NET provides and entice them into trying it where it shines, in Visual Studio, which runs around $500 a copy, which only runs on Windows.

mrkurt 16y ago
I think you have it backwards. MS courts developers to make Windows seem like a desirable platform. Courting developers includes building wickedly good developer tools, but they tend to give them away. The Express editions are free, they give out full Pro versions at most events, etc. The point, though, is that you said "MS is not interested in opening .NET to other platforms" when they demonstrably are. That doesn't mean they're angelic do gooders, or that they don't want to make money, or anything else. It simply means that they are interested in having .NET on other platforms because it somehow suits their purposes.

crimsoncoder 16y ago

Although it is great that they are funding Mono and distributing silverlight on other platforms, I hardly think this is for altruistic purposes. They have a history of strongly pushing people towards their OS and platform and then ending support for third party tools (e.g. IE on Mac). I think moving towards something utilizing the power of HTML 5 and Javascript is the way to go long term.

StrawberryFrog 16y ago

The strategy with Silverlight is to concede that the client tier is multi-platform, and try to sell back end servers and developer licences instead. This doesn't completely fit MS's other initiatives, but one of the benefits of being that big is that MS can try lots of things at once - to bet on every horse in the race, so to speak.