I wonder if this is a tangent from the core discussion but from my time as a .Net developer it seemed to me that .Net was quite coupled to Win32. Many of the APIs and concepts seemed to mirror those of Win32. In the case of Mono (without knowing the details) I would guess that Mono either has to bend Linux into adapting to a Win32 way of doing things or have a different set of API's for Mono for certain parts of the platform. The Windows.Forms library is a good example. It is really just a wrapper around the native stuff. I suppose AWT is too but Windows.Forms leaks the underlying implementation through. For example, there is a method or property to get the Win32 window handle pointer. There are a number of classes that implement a IWin32 interface (possibly where this kind of digging down to native Win32 can be done). Granted this is just one library from .Net but it demonstrates that it is really practically impossible to port the entire .Net framework in its present form to Linux or other similar O/ S platforms. This may however not be an issue for those which don't need the bits which cannot be ported.
I believe that Mono only exists by special permission from Microsoft and so I don't think just anyone can port .Net. The shame is I used to believe Java was open or at least a good deal more open than it is proving to be. It is a shame too that Java is being put to shame by the kind of innovation going on in the .Net world. I think the ethos is a bit different with .Net. There isn't so much genuine care about being cross platform but rather just to make developer's lives easier. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
