[OT] partialy I was wondering what suggestions for programing

[Leo J Mauler]

On Tue, 17 Feb 2004 12:16:30 -0500 Bryan Richard <bryan at booknerd.net>
writes:
> I've received a bit of flak from people like Sterling
> Hughes b/c I don't really think that Mono is going
> to go anywhere. It's an interesting project and it's
> certainly quite a bit larger in scope and team than
> it was at this time last year but I honestly believe
> that MS could/can crush/outpace it.

While this was kinda covered at the meeting last night, I'd just like to
go along with the guy at the meeting who pointed out that Mono helps M$
more than it hurts M$, if only because its some outside company saying
"hey M$!  We're going to help M$ keep people interested in .NET, and it
won't cost you a cent to go along with us!"

M$ has more to gain from *not suing* than from suing Mono.

> Now that Novell seems to be involved
> (http://www.go-mono.com/faq.html#novell)
> MS might be more inclined to treat it as a
> hostile project.

M$ views closed-source competition as flies on flypaper.  Mono, as not
really being competition to .NET ("we'll expand M$'s markets for free!")
is something Novell can get involved in without M$ being too worried
about it.  Heck, M$'s board of directors is probably sitting around
laughing about Novell getting involved in what is essentially a
grass-roots effort, from the Linux community...to support M$
technologies.

Mono is only worth crushing if it branches off from emulating (not the
right word but I can't think of the right word right now) .NET.  For as
long as it extends .NET's available marketshare, all it does is expand
M$'s markets for M$ without using any of M$'s money, and M$ might scratch
its collective head in puzzlement, but it certainly won't crush Mono.

Now, I'm fully behind projects like WineX, which is getting people to run
their M$ games on Linux machines.  Yes it expands M$ marketshare in
gaming, at the cost of getting more people to migrate completely to Linux
and thus into alternatives to M$'s other applications, such as OpenOffice
and Mozilla.  And when a lot of people are playing Warcraft III in WineX
and Linux, they might be more inclined to purchase a *native Linux*
Warcraft IV.  Wine and Crossover Office might not be as great an idea
(allowing users to skip right over OpenOffice and use M$ Office instead),
but WineX certainly helps bridge the gaming gap between Windows and
Linux.