Reitter: Answering the question: "How do I develop an app for GNOME?"

Posted Feb 8, 2013 5:52 UTC (Fri) by dashesy (guest, #74652)
In reply to: Reitter: Answering the question: "How do I develop an app for GNOME?" by marduk
Parent article: Reitter: Answering the question: "How do I develop an app for GNOME?"

It makes sense to use high level languages when defining the behaviors of components, and it has precedence too; in Unity3d one can choose between JS and C#/Mono, and thinking about it application development and game development have a lot in common (more recently because of the 3d compositing desktop). Can you point out to the flame war related to C#/Mono? It is a very nice *real* language as opposed to JS, so there should be some specific reason for selecting JS.

Reitter: Answering the question: "How do I develop an app for GNOME?"

Posted Feb 8, 2013 9:00 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (6 responses)

Can you point out to the flame war related to C#/Mono?

C# is nice language but it's dead-end because it's developed by Microsoft. It's not that Microsoft can only ever develop bad things, far from it, but the fact that Microsoft is all-too-ready to sue everyone over it's creations (see FAT patents) means that they must be avoided as much as possible. Which is sad (C# is a better language then JavaScript), but that's the world we live in.

Reitter: Answering the question: "How do I develop an app for GNOME?"

Posted Feb 8, 2013 15:20 UTC (Fri) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link] (5 responses)

One should point out that there are explicit patent grants related to C# so that it's probably less likely for Mono or its users to be sued than for them to get a wild hair about suing Oracle over Java or someone else. And that's pretty unlikely given that they suport other open source projects, like IronPython and ActiveState Perl

Reitter: Answering the question: "How do I develop an app for GNOME?"

Posted Feb 8, 2013 15:48 UTC (Fri) by marduk (subscriber, #3831) [Link]

> One should point out that there are explicit patent grants related to C# so that it's probably less likely for Mono or its users to be sued than for them to get a wild hair about suing Oracle over Java or someone else. And that's pretty unlikely given that they suport other open source projects, like IronPython and ActiveState Perl.

Oh, you mean like how Oracle supports projects like Linux, BTRFS, Java, MySQL et al. (see Oracle v. Google)?

Mono is a nich market. I have few doubts that if Mono ever got too big (à la Android) then Microsoft would arm their torpedos.

All kidding aside, one of the points of my original comment was to inform that their was already an outcry about C#/Mono (and Java as well now that we mention it), so C# was perhaps in some minds passed over as "been there. done that."

So while JS was certainly going to start a forest fire (as any language would to some degree), C# (and Java) would have as well, as well as flames of a different forest.

Reitter: Answering the question: "How do I develop an app for GNOME?"

Posted Feb 8, 2013 16:07 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (3 responses)

Explicit patent grants only cover small piece of C# (basically only the part which were proposed to become an ISO standard). Large parts of contemporary C# are not covered by these grants. This means that either you'll be forced to use obsolete version of C# (which will irritate many users) or you'll need to try to sidestep patents and implement the functionality in non-infringing way (as was done with FAT). Add the fact that this stuff is produced by a company with known history of such bait-and-switch tactic (FAT patents, again) and the only conclusion is: never.

As I've said: C# is nicer language then many other contenders but for legal reason it's non-starter.

Reitter: Answering the question: "How do I develop an app for GNOME?"

Posted Feb 8, 2013 17:26 UTC (Fri) by dashesy (guest, #74652) [Link] (2 responses)

All I can say is that is a shame, such a nice language is inflicted with software patent warts, that goes for "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". We are lucky then that Shakespeare's work is not patented, if only some lawyers knew how much money they could make to let people speak.

Reitter: Answering the question: "How do I develop an app for GNOME?"

Posted Feb 8, 2013 18:12 UTC (Fri) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link] (1 responses)

I'm not sure it's more or less patented than any other language, common techniques for language, compiler, JIT, VM and interpreter design are likely to be patented by someone such as MS regardless of which language you are actually using.

I think underlying most of the anti-C# sentiment is a an anti-MS sentiment and is more political than technical or legal. It doesn't matter if code is open sourced or if there are patent grants or whatever, if it has been touched by MS it has software cooties. 8-)

Reitter: Answering the question: "How do I develop an app for GNOME?"

Posted Feb 8, 2013 21:56 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

I'm not sure it's more or less patented than any other language, common techniques for language, compiler, JIT, VM and interpreter design are likely to be patented by someone such as MS regardless of which language you are actually using.

Anything and everything is covered by patents novadays, but this is somewhat different case.

I think underlying most of the anti-C# sentiment is a an anti-MS sentiment and is more political than technical or legal. It doesn't matter if code is open sourced or if there are patent grants or whatever, if it has been touched by MS it has software cooties. 8-)

Not "cooties". Legal threats. You need huge amount of money and effort to protect themselves from someone who wants to sue you (see Google's Android and Oracle - and Java was covered by a lot of "promises", too) and Microsoft is a company with a known track record of pushing something as a "standard" then suing people over said "standard" later.

P.S. People often use "it's just a business, nothing personal" justification, and this is good justification. Good enough to avoid such "business" as much a possible, that is. Because this means that you can not ever accept anything from such a "business" without lawyers help - and this help is expensive.

Reitter: Answering the question: "How do I develop an app for GNOME?"

Posted Feb 9, 2013 2:49 UTC (Sat) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

I can start a new one - Mono's garbage collector is shitty and JIT compiler is not that great either.