mono is def. cool tech, but if I programmed in it, I would shudder to think that microsoft might do something legally down the road, and then you'd be in trouble.
Ah well the interesting thing about MS new .NET venture is that I believe most of it is under ECMA or ISO, it's actually standarized, unlike previous MS endeavors or technologies. So project-mono ...
yeah, they give .NET away for free, understood, but only for Windows platforms. -You still need to buy Windows to use Microsoft .NET. They have not released Microsoft .NET runtime or developer tools for other operating systems. (which is where mono comes in)
<Analogy>This would be like Sun releasing Java, but only for Solaris (assuming they charge for Solaris, which I think is still true). Lets call this .JAVA Then, hey some guy comes along and makes something called Meningitis that will run .JAVA apps on Linux and windows. Now maybe Sun thinks that's cool, maybe it doesn't. All it cares about is selling Solaris. </Analogy>
And yeah, they made and sold NT4 OS for other CPUs, but that doesn't really have anything to do with this.
highly agree with that, MS wants to push CE and Win on every desktop possible, and that's highly understandable, they own the market then.
but there is no fued, or rivarly really so far. these guys even attend the same ECMA meetings (team mono and MS). Pushing .NET to another platform is both good and bad for MS. Pros are they can sell vis studio developer tools to linux developers, use services by MS (passport amongst other MS libraries that USE .NET), sell office products.
It's a huge MS method is to let people taste what they have and make every possible means to get them convert over. Thats what I mean about the NT ports, even the unix services package. It's a ploy to get developers over. Without developers and a great foundation of developer support you have no OS. *nix just happens to have many confused random developers with no primary direction. MS started out with a highly extensive developer foundation. I can see it the more I work with *nix systems. MS just 'seems' to always have the next best solid, extensive, working developer technology.
However, I sit on the line in MS vs UNIX debate. But it's just what I've seen and read working for both sides.
I hear you. you've probably got much better perspective on this than I do, being you've actually used .NET, and I assume at least looked into Mono.
haha that analogy was awesome