Mono and Moonlight

by Daniel Koffler - Mar. 27, 2008Comments (8)

Last week Novell released version 1.9 of the Mono open source .NET framework as well as a new IDE called Monodevelop. The newest version of Mono now supports a number of the advanced features found in Microsoft’s .NET 3.0 framework.

While Mono and Novell, which sponsors the project, have been much maligned by various factions within the open source community, the overall impact Mono could have on Microsoft and the open source community could in fact be large.

The conspiracy theorists argue among other things that the Mono license may be a trick by Microsoft and Novell and that Mono may imperil GNU/Linux. These are all ivory tower arguments that don’t necessarily pass the smell test in the real world. What Mono is more likely to do is to provide a bridge for the legions of Microsoft developers to test the waters in the great big open source pool.

C# is a fantastic programming language for many different types of applications and the functionality Microsoft has been able to add regularly with updates to the framework make it one of the most exciting development environments in broad use at the moment. The latest version of Mono has added support for the open source version of Silverlight called Moonlight.

Silverlight is Microsoft’s latest RIA (Rich Internet Application) development platform meant to compete with Adobe’s Flash and Flex products. Silverlight and Moonlight allow developers to use .NET languages to author and control images, video, animation and vector graphics in a browser.

Microsoft trained programmers can now deploy a LAMM (Linux, Apache, MySQL and Mono) stack and use their current skills to create open source services and software. In addition, the use of Mono and Moonlight together give open source developers access to a cutting edge RIA platform that is free. Thanks to Microsoft and Novell.

While there are still legitimate questions surrounding patents and the use of Mono, an increasing number of Mono based open source software projects have been appearing. It will be interesting to see if there will a further shift in attitude at Microsoft towards the open source community as more and more C# and .NET developers start releasing code under the GPL.

Do you think a LAMM stack is a viable open source development platform?


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8 Comments
 

With a ton of new services being delivered on the web, it is going to be interesting to see how MS tries to weave their platform advantage here, especially given that they have been lagging in the space.


Most Win32 programmers have been so used to developing for one system, it is going to be interesting to see whether they are really interested in delivering open source tools for Linux.


0 Votes

MICROSOFT=

EMBRACE EXTEND EXTERMINATE


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Conspiracy theorists.


It is amusing you mention moonlight, considering it is the ultimate proof of Novell's plan to tax Linux.


The only legal way to use moonlight is to download it directly from Novell or pay for SLED (no, not even openSUSE) though they dare to call it open source and that's just the beginning. I won't even bother to place links about this since it has been known for quite some months already, Novell people and Miguel Icaza have stated this multiple times.


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Don't forget, Novell can change all the license terms on MONO whenever they want. So is MS able to stop their promise about the ECMA specs.


No windows .net user is going to use MONO because of the lack of a legal implementation of windows.forms (which is impossible since MS did not "open" it)


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Microsoft trained programmers can now deploy a LAMM (Linux, Apache, MySQL and Mono) stack and use their current skills to create open source services and software. In addition, the use of Mono and Moonlight together give open source developers access to a cutting edge RIA platform that is free. Thanks to Microsoft and Novell.


Yay, Opensource software depending on MS' technology! All thanks to Microsoft and Novell.


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Say what you want about Microsoft and Novell's ultimate intentions, but there does seem to be a genuine shift in attitude at Microsoft.


While it may not be as comprehensive or swift as open sourcers would like, it is happening in both subtle and not so subtle ways.


I point to Microsoft's release of the .NET 3.5 source code. Even if the source code is only available under a "read only" license, it's a fundamental shift in mentality.


As for the risks surrounding a change to Mono's license, they're mostly imaginary. As Stephen O'Grady points out here http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2008/03/16/open-source-licensing-obsolete-or-... once a license is granted, there's a certain amount of permanence involved.


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To the other posted that claimed that Moonlight will not be part of OpenSUSE, he is wrong.


Moonlight *will* be a standard component of OpenSUSE when it Moonlight ships.


I guess conspiracy theorists no longer bother to check their facts.


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Interesting, and I think Mono is good news, *but* ...


Monodevelop looks a little immature when compared to other IDEs. No debugging, for instance?


Re: Silverlight -- while the player component is still proprietary, Flash/Flex are open source ... and there's Java, which can do real 3D, which I think is increasingly interesting. (3D on Microsoft's platforms requires WPF.)


That said, I think competition is good. I'm just a little surprised there's so much hype around Mono and less attention to things like Java, which provide a broader platform and a community process for features, whereas the agenda for Mono remains in some sense set by Microsoft.


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