Microsoft and Linux, an unlikely pairing

Minneapolis Tribune ^ | 23 September 2002 | John Biggs

[ShadowAce]

The unthinkable has happened: an informal partnership between a Microsoft project called .Net and an ordinarily Microsoft-bashing camp of programmers who have set out to produce a free twin of the .Net framework, a set of programming tools.

The effort, called Mono, is a rare bridging of the chasm between the commercial world and free software -- more commonly referred to as open-source software -- a movement in which the Linux operating system is at the forefront.

[ShadowAce]

Ping

[rdb3]

The Penguin Ping.

Wanna be Penguified? Just holla!

Got root?

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Yeah, Microsoft is going to "help" Open Source programmers just the way they "helped" IBM with OS/2.

[ShadowAce]

Exactly. This is something to watch out for--not neccesarily embrace unconditionally.

[js1138]

You admit you didn't see this one coming. Microsoft will do whatever the market wants. If the marketplace wants Linux, there will be a Microsoft Linux.

[RayChuang88]

There's a good reason why Microsoft will help Ximian's Mono project: by ensuring that the Open Source crowd uses the same standard for web services that Microsoft will use, it will unintentionally put the Sun-sponsored Liberty Alliance out of business before Sun knew what hit them.

[toupsie]

If Microsoft is trying to get the open source community jazzed about ".Net", it must be the sales and marketing bomb everyone has been reporting.

[balrog666]

A much better Microsoft/Linux release:

Microsoft Linux to Ship Nov 2002

[AdA$tra]

That's a hoot.

[RISU]

Anything mS dos must be looked upon through a prism of money for MS.

The philosophy tyhere is "embrace and extend", meaning take it, makie it your own, then sell it.

If I see they touch anything, I then assume it will become a gatekeeping function and proprietary property under MS "leadership".

[AdA$tra]

I predict that dot net will go the way of Internet "channels" at Microsoft.

[ShadowAce]

yeah--I've been expecting to disappear for a while now, but it keeps on keeping on...

we'll see, but I'm not holding my breath

[Illbay]

Funny. MS used to own a product called Xenix. They couldn't figure out what to do with it, so they sold it. IIRC, it became SCO Unix.

[Illbay]

That's great! It had me suckered for a second, till I saw "MS invades Cuba."

[js1138]

Aren't they doing Caldera now?

[pyx]

Interesting. As I recall, only two months or so ago, Microsoft was openly admitting in Infoworld (no, I don't save URL's for articles I read about two months ago.) that the entire .NET project was UNDEFINED as far as what it was and what it was supposed to do.

[discostu]

Now that English is a more used laguage than French should we stop using "lingua franca"?

[discostu]

Unintentionally by who? Believe me MS intends it. Maybe Ximian doesn't, but that just proves why nice people shouldn't get in business deals with big dogs like MS, they're out of their league.

[TheEngineer]

Good Post, ShadowAce.

Although there seems to be some OSS community opposition to what De Icaza has set out to do, I think he is right on target with this project. I see his effort as having a lot of "defensive" value. If Linux is to succeed, it must innovate both offensively and defensively.

MS is going to implement dot-net, regardless of what goes on in the OSS community. If there are an abundance of dot-net apps which do not run on Linux, that is bad for Linux; and if all of the dot-net apps run on Linux, that is a great thing for Linux.

MS has pushed dot-net and C# as "standards". Fine. De Icaza has called their bluff by implementing it on Linux. I don't see how MS can try to shut down the Mono Project now. It would be the kiss-of-death for dot-net and C#.