More valid concerns about Mono
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| caitlyn Jun 14, 2009 11:55 AM EDT |
Béranger makes some very valid points and has some very valid concerns. I've expressed my own concerns about the unclear nature of the legalese and licensing, I'm not at all convinced Mono is Free and I find it hard to trust anything from Microsoft, even something indirectly tied to Redmond. I also am not convinced that Novell considers itself a Linux company or an FOSS company just yet. Canonical has also kept some of its own code proprietary despit promises to make it open. I also feel the way Mono is being pushed does make it feel like it is being shoved down our collective throats. Fedora has decided that tomboy will be replaced by gnote. Vector Linux, a personal favorite of mine, uses gphoto2 rather than fspot. Are tomboy and fspot really best of breed applications? I don't know. I do know that I prefer not to have Mono as part of a default install. Having it and apps that depend on it in the repository is fine. Let them go in the non-free section where they probably belong. Users who want Mono will have it easily available. Just don't force it on users or make it a default. |
| jdixon Jun 14, 2009 12:31 PM EDT |
> Users who want Mono will have it easily available. Just don't force it on users or make it a default. I agree completely. |
| azerthoth Jun 14, 2009 2:02 PM EDT |
With that logic, Samba shouldnt be included by default in distro's either, nor the Linux kernel itself. Its an open standard folks, what more do you need? On another note, if you dont want mono on your system use a distro that you can tailor to fit, instead of taking someone elses idea of tailored to fit. Silliness. |
| herzeleid Jun 14, 2009 2:22 PM EDT |
Quoting:With that logic, Samba shouldnt be included by default in distro's either, nor the Linux kernel itself.Not at all - samba is not a microsoft product, nor a clone of a microsoft product. On the contrary, it was developed by empirical observation of the packets on the wire, for the most part independently of ms, for the purpose of facilitating pc-to-unix connectivity. And the legality has been tested in the EU, where ms was in fact compelled to provide better documentation for those wanting to maintain and further develop samba. Mono, on the other hand, is a futile attempt to play catch-up to microsoft dot net, while doing two icky things: adding legitimacy to the idea of microsoft as the standard setter, and ensuring that linux is always lagging behind, trying to catch up. Not to mention the opportunity it provides redmond to rattle the patent fud sword, should mono become too popular. Quoting:its an open standard folks, what more do you need?Is it? that seems to be a grey area. In any event, saying that "by that logic, samba should not be included" totally misses the point. samba is a protocol for interoperability with windoze. You can't use nfs, sshfs or other technologies, because you need to implement the smb protocol. full stop. OTOH, default apps are a completely different matter. You can most certainly use rythmbox instead of banshee, gnote instead of tomboy, etc. There is no need for mono, hence it should not be forced on users. Before you complain about your rights being trampled, keep in mind that nobody is trying to deny you the option of running mono-based apps. Let those who want to use them do so, but don't make mono-dependent programs to be the default, preferred apps. mono should not be forced on users by default. |
| setec_astronomy Jun 14, 2009 2:46 PM EDT |
@azerthoth With all due respect, but as far as I know, the situation wrt samba is a little bit different: The samba folks went out of their way to clear the legal situation wrt smb/cifs as far as possible when they negoiated the PFIF / WSPP agreement between Microsoft. If I interpret the results of this agreements correctly (cf. for example http://samba.org/samba/PFIF/PFIF_agreement.html http://protocolfreedom.org/ or http://www.piana.eu/?q=en/samba_pfif ) they received a list of patents that they would have to work around in order to avoid patent problems in the future because of claims by Microsoft. This is besides the fact that SMB/CIFS is not Microsofts sole creation (with IBM's contributions to CIFS predating MS efforts to extend/obfuscuate the standard later on quite a bit) and I would not rule out that the EU comission would raise more than a brow if Ms would start suing somebody it formed an agreement with after MS was slapped rather heavily on the fingers. I would be very grateful if you or somebody else could point me towards resources that clear the legal situation around Mono at least as much as the PFIF agreement does for Samba. All it would need to cast away most of my doubts abouts Mono's legal status is essentially: - Either a legally binding, written RAND-Z patent license from MS (and HP, since they made a similar promise to ECMA when .Net was standardised) which clearly states the terms and bounds of the license agreement so that for example parties like the SFLC can analyse the license in the light of its GPL conformance (Not every RAND-Z license is automatically GPL compatible) OR an exhaustive list of patents that any GPL conforming implementation would have to work around in order to implement .Net according to ECMA specs (I was a little bit out of the loop the last weeks, but as far as I can tell, there is still no update with respect to the efforts described here http://www.itwire.com/content/view/25215/1090/ to get a conforming license from either ECMA or Microsoft). If I were a cruel person, I would demand a copy of these information from every person that has assured me over the years that the patent situation of the ECMA parts is totally clear and peachy, but one copy will suffice, thanks in advance. - A clarification of the language of the Silverlight/Moonlight patent grant would be nice, because - but that is probably just because I'm too dumb - I don't understand the language of it. Perhaps I'm not the only one who is dumb, because Novell usually explains the scope of this downstream license differently than Microsoft does - Furthermore, it would be nice to get at least a list of patents that would be necessary to implement the stuff covered by Mono that is not covered by ECMA specification (I'm sure I don't have to enumerate the various technologies here) While we are at it (this has nothing to do with Mono, but still): If somebody happens to talk to a patent attorny from Microsoft, perhaps during the time it takes to get this information, it would be nice to know what exactly was different in TomTom's vfat implementation. All sarcasm and cynism aside, I would be *really* interested in any information wrt the points I tried to address in my post. EDIT: herzeleid beat me to it |
| jdixon Jun 14, 2009 3:10 PM EDT |
> Its an open standard folks, what more do you need? An open standard which is free of patents. > ...if you dont want mono on your system use a distro that you can tailor to fit... I do. :) |
| Bob_Robertson Jun 14, 2009 3:18 PM EDT |
I must agree, "mono" was easily unselected. I had installed it because NetFlix' on-demand playing, and I figured I'd give it a shot installing. But no, it seems they verify OS on several levels, and it would not install. Right there with the idea that "default" aught to be the least possible software. One reason I like Debian is dependency resolution. If I _ask_ for something, and it comes with baggage, so be it. That's why I bought a big disk. |
| tuxchick Jun 14, 2009 3:25 PM EDT |
Aaargh, Mono again. After reading everything I can find and talking to developers, it seems to boil down to two things: -Some developers simply like using the Mono platform, and are not good at articulating why they prefer it to comparable development platforms. Hence the continual confusion as to its merits. -The patent cloud is vague and ambiguous, though we're all familiar with merit not being an important factor in launching patent litigation. I had a short conversation with a patent attorney, who was typically vague and ambiguous, but he did say that if Bilski is upheld by the Supreme Court that will defang a whole lot of software patents and send all kinds of patent lawyers crying themselves to sleep every night, though he couldn't say how that might affect Mono/.Net stuff because he was not familiar with it. If MS does launch a Mono patent war, I imagine they'll go after commercial entities, which right now is only Canonical. Novell/SUSE have their special patent covenant with Microsoft, Red Hat has never distributed Mono, and Fedora has removed it from their default install images, making it a user-configured option instead. There is no way to attack end users, so anyone using Mono apps should be safe. I'm not sure what would be gained by launching a patent attack on Mono, since the result would likely be removing it or re-doing the offending bits. I think it is a long shot that Canonical would enter into a patent licensing agreement with MS, though I wouldn't be all that surprised if they did. Miguel de Icaza has said that if it a patent attack is launched that the Mono folks will vigorously defend it along with the Open Invention Network, and try to invalidate the relevant patents. Which nobody will even know what they are until a lawsuit is initiated. The whole patent thing seems silly anyway, since the easy dodge is for users to go fetch and install it themselves. My head hurts. |
| setec_astronomy Jun 14, 2009 4:00 PM EDT |
@tuxchick Sorry for contributing to your headache! Quoting: had a short conversation with a patent attorney, who was typically vague and ambiguous, but he did say that if Bilski is upheld by the Supreme Court that will defang a whole lot of software patents and send all kinds of patent lawyers crying themselves to sleep every night, though he couldn't say how that might affect Mono/.Net stuff because he was not familiar with it. I'm a pessimist beacause I like to be right, but even if Bilski turns out favourably for F/OSS, I expect that the industry assocaited with the idea of monetising IP will increase its efforts to create patent regimes where software patents work somewhere else. This is, after all, an industry which enjoyed quite a gold rush in the last years and which has - especially in economically troubling times - quite some influence on politics. Although we (as in F/OSS and anti-software patent community) succeeded in preventing a common patent directive for software and buisness method patents on an European level, there are constant attempts to sneak something compareably in via the backdoor. We may not be able to fend of all attempts, and member countries of the EU are still free to implement for example software patents on a national scale. And there is still Japan, Korea, India, etc. . So even if it would be a great improvement of our situation if the US supreme court would uphold Bilski, I don't think that this necessarily would end the threat of software and buisness method patents worldwide, at least not in the short run. Quoting:f MS does launch a Mono patent war, I imagine they'll go after commercial entities, which right now is only Canonical. Agreed: Patent war is risky for MS too, so I don't expect them to attack somebody openly. But as long as we don't know the exact terms of the patent license (and since afaik ECMA only requires RAND), all a (for the sake of the discussion: hypothetically predatory) MS would have to do is demand license fees under NDA from small(er) shops using Mono (it seems to pick up some steam in the gaming industry and as a bridge to Mac OSX) or to offer a seperate peace via their strategic partnership with Novell. Remember: We don't know how many backroom deals wrt for example the vfat patents MS was able to negoiate prior to TomTom earlier this year. |
| softwarejanitor Jun 14, 2009 5:12 PM EDT |
I think that Linux users should shun Mono as far as possible. There is no reason why anyone should consider it if they aren't coming from the MS world. The only reason to consider embracing an MS developed technology is to try to wean MS users away, and once that is accomplished the goal should be to fully rid them of MS dependencies as soon as possible. |
| softwarejanitor Jun 14, 2009 5:15 PM EDT |
I also agree with jdixon. If MS wants to REALLY make .NET open, they need to release it under a truly free license including granting a truly free license to all relevant patents at very minimum to free software. Anything short of that, especially the current situation where they keep rattling their patent lawsuit sabers to promote fear, uncertainty and doubt on free software is unacceptable. |
| krisum Jun 14, 2009 6:12 PM EDT |
Quoting: -Some developers simply like using the Mono platform, and are not good at articulating why they prefer it to comparable development platforms. Hence the continual confusion as to its merits.The merits have been articulated in a fairly detailed manner multiple times on these forums (e.g. there is no other platform that allows creating a library in one language and use it seamlessly in another). If really interested I can summarize those, or dig up those threads. However, as has been noted in those threads this is mostly besides the point. As has been mentioned by number6x in the other thread, the real reason why people are attacking mono is because of Novell-MS deal and because of the involvement of MS. It would make sense for people to just get straight to that point instead of making up things along. Just to refresh everyone's memory (or for those who are unaware of it), this is the FSF's original position on the matter: http://www.gnu.org/press/2001-07-09-DotGNU-Mono.html Notice the stark resemblance of the stance with that on java whose main implementations were non-free at the time. If only others could be consistent in their approach ... |
| krisum Jun 14, 2009 6:29 PM EDT |
Btw, the article and author's responses to comments are a perfect example of what free software proponents (on any side of a debate) do not need -- full of expletives, abuses and personal attacks.
@caitlyn
Quoting: Let them go in the non-free section where they probably belong.It makes no sense to put it in non-free section (see debian's policy). If it is determined to infringe on some patents, then it will need to be completely removed (like LAME etc. which are not in debian/ubuntu). Quoting: Just don't force it on users or make it a default.I could say the same for umpteen software including evolution, transmission, openoffice.org etc. and claim that these are being forced just because of my ideas of acceptability. That's not the way it has ever worked. As azerthoth has mentioned, choose a distro that fits your ideas of acceptability (or create a new one) if replacing later with your preferred apps is not acceptable. |
| tuxchick Jun 14, 2009 7:07 PM EDT |
Quoting: I could say the same for umpteen software including evolution, transmission, openoffice.org etc. and claim that these are being forced just because of my ideas of acceptability. That's not the way it has ever worked. As azerthoth has mentioned, choose a distro that fits your ideas of acceptability (or create a new one) if replacing later with your preferred apps is not acceptable. Actually the way it works is users do have a say in how distros are packaged; 'take it or leave it' is not how it's done, or how it has ever been done. That's just code for "shush and quit complaining." There are no other packages that are as controversial as Mono except closed, proprietary binary packages, and there has been plenty of debate and negotiation over how to handle those. There are reasons for objecting to Mono-by-default, whether anyone agrees with them or not, that do not exist for other FOSS packages. (For example, KDE does not include Firefox by default; you'd think if people just wanted to complain because their favorite app was missing and they were forced to click a button to get it, that in particular would generate plenty of gripes. But it doesn't.) And yes, less anger and cussing would be good. |
| bigg Jun 14, 2009 7:17 PM EDT |
> there is no other platform that allows creating a library in one language and use it seamlessly in another I would be interested in hearing you expand on this. Writing a library in one language and running it from another has been common practice for many years, at least since John Ousterhout started promoting Tcl and scripting languages. The purpose of scripting languages was originally to act as "glue" between functions written in low-level languages. Thus, I'm not following what you're saying. |
| Libervis Jun 14, 2009 10:28 PM EDT |
This seems to nail it for me: http://www2.apebox.org/wordpress/rants/124/ I used to be "anti-mono", then became just vary of it, but right now I just don't see a good reason to be against it and in fact deem it silly of people to ask a project which they haven't developed to act as they please, which is exactly what anti-mono people are doing. A project including mono by default is simply in no way equivalent to "forcing mono down your throat". I can't begin to express just how utterly ridiculous such a belief is. First of all it is YOUR choice to use Ubuntu (or any distro which includes mono) which by itself precludes all chance of anything being FORCED down your throat. Second of all, you are actually offered the ability to remove it and go on your marry way, which is exactly the opposite of being forced. It's choice. As for the purported "patent clouds" after all these YEARS of screaming about mono I think it is the FOSS crowd which takes the prize of trumpeting the *anti-Linux FUD* more than anybody else. They've pretty much took the few blurts by few MS execs or employees and made ALL of the publicity and fear mongering for them. Which can only have an exactly the opposite result of what their goal is (people switching to a Free OS). In truth, as TC points out, end users are unlikely to be affected (which is probably 90% of all desktop Linux users) and if the worst case scenario that anti-mono people so love to talk about, there are multiple levels of defense plus an option of working around it which is unique to FOSS. I mean, even if anti-mono crowd is right about everything as far as the threat goes it's not anywhere near as dangerous as they want to portray it. So in fact, they're their worst enemy, not Microsoft, by far. |
| krisum Jun 15, 2009 4:49 AM EDT |
Quoting: I would be interested in hearing you expand on this. Writing a library in one language and running it from another has been common practice for many years, at least since John Ousterhout started promoting Tcl and scripting languages. The purpose of scripting languages was originally to act as "glue" between functions written in low-level languages. Thus, I'm not following what you're saying.So you are saying that I can invoke a python class, for example, from a C++ program? Sure one can embed a python interpreter and marshal data across, but that is way different from being able to invoke an API i.e. being able to access class and other structures seamlessly. Since .NET produces a fairly powerful IL, it allows different languages to be used to do the same and exchange class/structures/generics etc. For example, one developer can write a class in python on .NET (using IronPython) making use of all .NET libraries, another can make use of that class from C# just like any other native C# class, and a third can make use of java on .NET (J# or ikvm), and someone else can use C++/CLI to do the same. Thus, in theory, a project can have developers comfortable in different languages using their language of choice with the .NET framework working on their modules, while other developers can make use of those modules (without any data copying or anything else of the sort) just like native .NET libraries (a misleading term but hopefully gets the point across). As an example, the following in C#: public class Foo { public int m; public void doMe() { ... } } can be compiled into a .NET dll and then made use from C++/CLI as below: ref class Bar { private: Foo^ m_foo; public: void doMe() { Console::WriteLine("Foo member is: " + m_foo->m); m_foo->doMe(); } ... }; Same for any other languages that can work on top of .NET like java, python etc. See this http://www.mono-project.com/Languages for languages supported by mono. edit: Probably a better example would be as below. C++/CLI: public interface class ITest { public: void doMe(); }; C#: class Test : ITest { void doMe() { ... } } |
| krisum Jun 15, 2009 5:03 AM EDT |
Quoting: Actually the way it works is users do have a say in how distros are packaged; 'take it or leave it' is not how it's done, or how it has ever been done. That's just code for "shush and quit complaining." There are no other packages that are as controversial as Mono except closed, proprietary binary packages, and there has been plenty of debate and negotiation over how to handle those.Is your point about acceptability of mono in general, or about default apps? I think you are mixing the two issues. As for my point there is no "take it or leave it" since apps can always be replaced after default installation. The point being that all the talk about apps selected in default installation as equivalent to being forced down someone's throat is a red herring (illustrated by your own example of KDE too). Quoting: There are reasons for objecting to Mono-by-default, whether anyone agrees with them or not, that do not exist for other FOSS packages.Of course, that is what is being discussed. If more and more people start objecting, then its likely the distros will get rid of it in default installation. |
| r_a_trip Jun 15, 2009 5:43 AM EDT |
I've been on the fence with Mono since it's inception. What troubles me is the continuous handwaving about the favorable RAND licensing that is supposedly in place. What conditions does MS attach to the ECMA specifications? If these licensing stipulations exist, why doesn't the Mono team put them on the Mono website? It would clarify the issue and no one would be uncertain what to do about Mono. On the other hand, does it really matter? Samba exists, Wine exists, ReactOS exists. Even vfat still exists. MS has tried a lot to get at FOSS. The SCO saga, the FUD campaigns, they even dropped a little patent bomb. So far they didn't get anywhere. SCO made Linux stronger and put it on the map. MS' FUD only angered a lot of people and the Halloween documents really hurt their reputation. The little patent bomb so far was a disaster to MS. The OIN immediately went to DEFCON 1, the minute TomTom joined them. MS hastily withdrew their case under settlement. TomTom will remove vfat support, which IMO is a win, but OIN is still looking into the validity of the MS FAT patents. Vfat maybe freed afterall. So what can MS realistically do, except rattle the patent sabre? It won't dare attack the big guns outright and the smaller outfits might sign murky "we-won't-sue-your-customers" agreements, not worth the paper they are printed on, but MS won't risk a full head on attack. They are too late, FOSS now has an arsenal of patents of it's own and will use it to bring MAD. I think Mono isn't more dangerous than other projects that skirt the patent boundaries. The problem with Mono is the politics around it. The way the talking Mono heads handle the concerns of the community leave a bad taste in our mouths. The big question here, is shunning Mono because the politics stink, an effective way to handle it? Technologically, it's just another rapid development VM framework. We could just use it to our benefit. If MS loses it and pushes the red button in the future, we could always port the Mono apps (if they're worth it) to other languages. That this is possible was demonstrated with Gnote. Meanwhile, if we accept the uncertainties around Mono, we could use Mono to draw some developers from the MS camp. We all know GNU/Linux needs that exposure and MS fears this the most, because they run the risk of losing their "Developers, developers, developers, developers!" Not including it by default won't help deflect trouble, if trouble will ever materialize. Hosting it in your repo's already makes you liable for patent infringement. |
| Libervis Jun 15, 2009 6:29 AM EDT |
Well said r_a_trip. |
| hkwint Jun 15, 2009 12:52 PM EDT |
First of all, I don't code, so I don't have much rights to complain or give my opinion I guess. Anyway, apart from the patent debate; there's an other consideration:Quoting:We all know GNU/Linux needs that exposure and MS fears this the most, because they run the risk of losing their "Developers, developers, developers, developers!" They won't loose many developers as Windows will always have the best .NET support as first OS - so therefore developers who are locked-in to .NET help the Windows lock-in. That's Microsofts intention, and its view on the matter. That's also the reason they're want to bring Silverlight to the iPhone and Android: It will help the Windows-lockin. I don't know if they're right, but it sounds considered. If there's no good alternative to .NET - as krisum pointed out (dotGNU not ready I guess?) - then there's not much choice except for adding to the stronghold of the Windows platform. The same goes for Silverlight, apart from Flash there's not much of an alternative. TracyAnne already pointed out why developers would want to use SilverLight and that there's no good alternative except from Flash; which isn't much of an alternative at all. My fear is this: If the whole internet uses the newest version of Silverlight (the one Moonlight doesn't support yet) and all kinds of apps are made in the newest version of .NET (the one Mono doesn't support yet), where does this leave alternatives to Windows such as Linux and BSD? Those are not a viable alternative if they don't run Silverlight-websites and don't run .NET apps. Last week I already saw some MS-fanboys (I give them the benefit of the doubt) claiming Linux isn't an alternative to Windows because it doesn't run .NET software - in which companies 'invested billions'. So, both Silverlight and .NET are efforts to coerce* people to use Windows. Maybe failed attempts, but attempts anyway. Now I don't have problems with coercion by default, but I do have problems with the internet and applications coercing me to use Windows. * Sorry to bring up that word; however regular readers will know why I did |
| tracyanne Jun 15, 2009 5:32 PM EDT |
Quoting:They won't loose many developers as Windows will always have the best .NET support as first OS - so therefore developers who are locked-in to .NET help the Windows lock-in Obviously you aren't a programmer, and you are still thinking of Mono as a copy or clone of Microsoft's .NET, as was pointed out, it's not. It's not so much that Windows will have the best .NET support, the fact is Windows will be the only OS to support .NET, whereas Mono is cross platform. Quoting:So, both Silverlight and .NET are efforts to coerce* people to use Windows. Maybe failed attempts, but attempts anyway They are. But I suspect too little too late. There are already problems for companies that have implemented Silverlight, in that no sooner have they got something working something changes. users are having trouble keeping up, and that's on Windows (I'm hearing complaints that this or that group of users can't view the media properly), and I suspect it will bite the company I work for. On the other hand it really does look good, and it is trivially easy to implement if you already have Visual Studio and a bunch of VB.NET or C# programmers on hand. The solution isn't Flash, at least not in the Adobe proprietary sense. If Flash was Free, there'd be no problem. So either somehow Flash get's Freed, or FOSS develops something that is, and gets it out there. by making tools available that make it trivially easy to implement.. |
| softwarejanitor Jun 15, 2009 5:36 PM EDT |
@tracyanne Adobe needs to learn from Sun's experience and free Flash sooner rather than later. Adobe still has loads of room to make $$$ on Flash by selling their content development tools even if they were to open up the Flash spec and free the source for the flash plugins. |
| hkwint Jun 15, 2009 6:05 PM EDT |
OK, thanks TA and krisum for dealing with my ignorance. ED: It's sad the article to which the story links seems to give errors from time to time. Anyone else having that issue? |
| caitlyn Jun 15, 2009 6:27 PM EDT |
Hans: No, R-C's blog has worked fine for me everytime I check it. My only complaint with R-C is some of his politics, his generally negative attitude to most everything, and yes, the absolutely unnecessary cursing in his blog. Those are the reasons I rarely post his stuff. I've corresponded with him after a misunderstanding (I thought he was Daniel Béranger) and subsequently. He's a bright guy with a good head on his shoulders but some very strange ideas (from my personal perspective) and a style that is guaranteed to rub people the wrong way.. |
| caitlyn Jun 15, 2009 6:52 PM EDT |
Hans: I did get a 403 error now trying to access Beranger.org. I got a similar error trying to reach olehgirl.com, an Israeli blog site. I'm getting all kinds of weird errors today. It may be something more than the particular website. |
| hkwint Jun 15, 2009 7:33 PM EDT |
Google cache did the job; thanks anyway. |
| Sander_Marechal Jun 17, 2009 5:12 AM EDT |
Quoting:The solution isn't Flash, at least not in the Adobe proprietary sense. If Flash was Free, there'd be no problem. Pretty soon Flash won't be a big issue anyway. HTML5 with audio and video support will render a large part of Flash obsolete. HTML5/XHTML2 with CSS3 and Javascript will make another large part obsolete (most vector image animations). And you can bet this will be picked up en masse. It's great for developers to be able to use audio and video without requiring any plugin at all. The same goes for vector image animations. There are many, many more developers who are familliar with HTML/CSS/Javascript than there are Flash/ActionScript or Silverlight developers. Not to mention that ActionScript and Silverlight costs money (for expensive SDKs and IDEs) to develop. |
| tracyanne Jun 17, 2009 5:23 AM EDT |
Microsoft will be slow to adopt HTML5 on IE, I can see them dragged along kicking and screaming, they will be trying to push Silverlight with IE, they have a lot invested in this as their rich media application. |
| Sander_Marechal Jun 17, 2009 6:00 AM EDT |
They will have to Tracyanne, or be left in the dust. The (X)HTML DOM and Javascript revolutionized how developers can build web applications. HTML5/CSS3 will do the same. Microsoft needs developers and it knows this very well. Hence their current strategy of making all FOSS run on Windows instead of trying to kill FOSS (they now only wish to kill Linux it seems). HTML developers outnumber Silverlight developers at least a thousand to one. Microsoft cannot afford to let that market go away. By the way, even if MS decides not to support this, then outside developers can still do it. I read a nice blog post about Ogg Theora v.s. Flash video. The author indicated that it would not be hard to create an ActiveX plugin for IE so that even old IE versions like IE6 support HTML5 tags for audio and video. |
| TxtEdMacs Jun 17, 2009 7:25 AM EDT |
Sander, [mostly serious*] I would like to accept your logic, however, past behaviour indicates MS will resist, because it is in their interest to take that as their first option. They still own the major share of browser users by default. As they did with Javascript, they just did not follow the standards and their browsers seemed to always work differently. By habit alone MS will resist, by lax (or purposely wrong) implementation of standards or by creating Standards as they see them c.f. their recent adoption of the ODF file format in their Office Suite. Eventually, maybe MS will align its products with the new standards when they see they have no other option. However, when Google seems to be taking a divergent path, why would MS resist its inner most desires? YBT * I hates it! |
| Sander_Marechal Jun 17, 2009 7:58 AM EDT |
Quoting:As they did with Javascript, they just did not follow the standards and their browsers seemed to always work differently. Then the community will solve this. jQuery offers complete, cross platform Javascript to everyone, including buggy old IE6. It also includes full CSS3 selector support. I am pretty sure that if MS does not offer HTML5/CSS3 then someone else will make a plugin to compensate. Quoting:c.f. their recent adoption of the ODF file format in their Office Suite. I spent the last two days at the ODF Plugfest in The Hague in the Netherlands. Microsoft was there, as well as Oracle, IBM, KOffice, AbiWord and a multitude of other vendors (http://plugtest.opendocsociety.org/doku.php). ODF 1.1 support in MS-Office 2007 isn't quite as buggy as is made out to be. For example, we across an interesting issue where it turned out that MS was right and every other vendor was wrong[*]. Reality can be stranger than fiction :-) Not saying that MSO2007 has such great ODF support though. There are plenty of other issues left. Rob Weir pointer out some other issues that are valid (like cell references) in his blog articles and the non-support of formulas is a bit of a cop-out IMHO. We'll see what further interop testing will bring. Microsoft committed to fixing the bugs that were found, so that's a good start. [*] For the technically inclined, the issue was with certain references to charts. The ODF spec says they need to end in a trailing slash. MSO writes these documents with the trailing slash but none of the vendors could handle that. They all expected the reference without the trailing slash because that's how OOo does it (and it's wrong). MSO does load the document correctly if it is missing the trailing slash. "Be liberal in what you accept and strict in what you write". The other vendors are fixing this issue so it should go away. |
| jezuch Jun 17, 2009 3:14 PM EDT |
(slightly OT, but fun) http://madduck.net/blog/2009.06.17:multiple-choice/ |
| hkwint Jun 17, 2009 3:51 PM EDT |
Quoting:past behaviour indicates MS will resist, When it comes to MS not providing theora support, how about this: -Windows supports ActiveX -Most IE installations also have the Flash plugin nowadays, at least for Youtube that's necessary -Lots of IE installations have a Java plugin. Those three proprietary platforms could be used to support theora. -Someone could make an ActiveX applet with DirectShow filter to support theora, as Silvia Pfeiffer pointed out. Money is the problem here. -Someone could make a low level Flash app supporting streaming theora, as already pointed out on whatwg mailing-list. -Cortado exists already, and is a Java applet to play streaming theora. It works in the Java plugin in IE, and Wikimedia uses it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortado_(software) Right now, it's in Google's hands probably. If Youtube would go with theora and Google would make such a low level Flash-applet which handles streaming theora, all current Youtube-users could watch theora. Google is reluctant however, showing they're not fully behind open standards as of yet. Part of this is probably because their lawyers have to work out if theora is not infringing on enforceable patents. Also, Google is not really fast. It takes a while to convert all those petabytes Youtube-vids of course. They're also afraid not everyone would be able to watch theora, given some people need lots of time to update their browser. |
| Sander_Marechal Jun 17, 2009 6:44 PM EDT |
Quoting:They're also afraid not everyone would be able to watch theora, given some people need lots of time to update their browser. That's a non-issue. As a single website it's very easy to detect HTML5/Ogg support and simply replace it with the current Flash/H.263 player if it is not supported. The thing is that you don't want every webdeveloper in the world having to do this. And that's why an ActiveX plugin could come in handy. Web developers wouldn't even need to do this. But Google/Youtube could (and IMHO should). |
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