Nov
11
2006
After mono session I have been interviewed in French by Patrice from Wygwam. You might find the interview on the following page. And all the video they have recorded al Wygwam TV.
During the session mono 1.2 has been announced as rtm.
It was the first time that I attend a mono presentation and I was really disappointed, even if the slides this time were able to be shown (;) Rédo). Basically I hate when someone talk about the competitor products with bad words, just to give his product a "good" feeling. And even worth when someone in the assistance is there just to give a push to the ambiance, you really think that we are that naive, or ?
Mono technically is a great thing, but it was not presented on this level. I mean having the possibility to build an application on Windows/Linux and run it on Linux/Windows/... is cool. As Miguel said his goal is to bring more developers to Linux platform, why not, but then make real application demonstration like web applications using asp.net, ado.net, apache and mysql. The demo of the game application was ok, but doesn't bring something in such a presentation.
The second part about the application to migrate .NET application to Java, was useless, after discussing with others attendees we are not really sure of the link with mono except that the company behind it has developers working for the mono project. And when you have a product that you are selling, and someone in the assistance ask you three times for a price you must give numbers not hide behind the fact that you are a technical person and not marking one.
I personally prefer the approach of the IKVM, a Java bytecode to .NET IL translator. I have for example used it to have access to FOP on .NET, before using NFop.
The discussion brought by someone on the assistance about the real goal of mono was a very good question, but the answer went in a direction of saving cost against Windows licenses, and this is just not true. You save cost on hardware when you go for example from an HP-UX to Linux, because then you will have the choice of the hardware. But from Windows to Linux...
Open source is a development model not a business model. And even if you want to use open source in your business you need to pay, something called support. The only way to save on the license/support using open source software is to have gurus internally that are working on open source projects, and for example install something like debian distribution. Because then you wont need external support.
Do you really thing that companies like novell/suse/red hat are philanthropic? For sure not they need also to make money for living.