5 ms·
They now look like direct competitors to Microsoft - providing tools for iOS and Android devs and kind of distracting them from W Phone. Do they have the right
by alexro 15y ago
They now look like direct competitors to Microsoft - providing tools for iOS and Android devs and kind of distracting them from W Phone. Do they have the right kind of agreements to be sheltered from MS anger should it come?
- tspiteri 15y agoThat's one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is that they are allowing developers to develop for iOS and Android in C#, which may eventually have a good effect on the number of Windows Phone apps developed.
- AndrewDucker 15y agoYup, right now being able to move your iOS app easily to WinPhone would be in Microsoft's favour.
- rbanffy 15y agoOTOH, being able to easily move your WP7 app to Android or iOS is a disaster for MS. The only portability that interests Microsoft is one-way towards their platforms.
- AndrewDucker 15y agoWell, yes. Once WP7 has a larger market share than Android and iOS they'll want to plug that gap. That should happen about fifteen minutes after never.
- untog 15y agoYes, but MS are behind in the smartphone race and they know it. Right now they'll do anything they can to get more devs on their platform.
- andrewl-hn 15y agoAlso consider that most .NET developers who target Mono still use and pay for Microsoft Developer Tools. Mono has it's own IDE but it pales in comparrison and at the moment it's not a focus of Mono team.
- DiabloD3 15y agoMiguel de Icaza works for Microsoft, and Microsoft has extended Mono developers a patent license for all relevant C#/.NET patents,... Except, said patent grant does not extend to people who don't work for de Icaza, people who distribute Mono, or people who use Mono, or people who have compiled C# apps with Mono. Microsoft refuses to make Mono patent free, and anyone who distributes, uses, or distributes binaries compiled with Mono _can and will be sued_. Not only is de Icaza not a competitor to Microsoft, he is helping Microsoft attack Linux and the Free Software movement. Mono refuses to switch to a license, such as GPLv3, to protect users, distributors, and developers from the patents; not only do they refuse, they are getting rid of all GPLv2 code in favor of BSD code. Once Mono is BSDafied, Microsoft can import all code from Mono and close source it within the main C#/.Net implementation on Windows.
- teyc 15y agoYou are reading too much into events. MS likes Miguel because he brings some open source respectability to the NET platform. It is also a potential source of licensing revenue stream in the future. MS has no reason to want someone else's implementation of the CLR and VM.
- DiabloD3 15y agoMono's VM executes C# bytecode faster than Microsoft's, and Mono's C# compiler produces better bytecode than Microsoft's. So, yeah, Microsoft is very interested in trying to make their core product faster so they can catch up to other solutions such as native code (C/C++) or Java (C# is still typically much slower than Java). Oh, and Mono can also compile to AoT binaries, which do not require Mono/.Net installed on the target system, such as being able to target iOS under Apple's anti-VM policy. Microsoft is very interested in all of these.
- jahewson 15y agoComplete nonsense: - Microsoft's CLR is vastly more sophisticated than Mono, involving millions of man-hours work, unless you show me a benchmark I have absolutely no reason to believe it executes bytecode faster, especially given that Microsoft Research publish papers on fast JIT [1]. - Mono still doesn't have a stable generational GC [2], I hope you like memory leaks and long pauses. - .NET can compile AoT binaries, and does this for all built-in libraries using ngen [3] In conclusion: Microsoft have no interest in any of Mono's technologies. [1] http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/spur/ http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/spur/ [2] http://mono-project.com/Generational_GC http://mono-project.com/Generational_GC [3] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/6t9t5wcf(v=vs.71).aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/6t9t5wcf(v=vs.71).as...