On Thu, 2003-07-17 at 23:23, Jeff Waugh wrote: > Only if people use/rewrite non-ECMA bits, which may be encumbered. .NET is > actually a really kickarse devel platform, and the MS guys have been very > helpful with alternative implementations of it. Even if you dodge all of the > MS-only, non-standardised stuff, it is still a great platform (as shown by > the speed of the Mono project and unencumbered software based on it).
It will be interesting to see if this continues. Andrew Tridgell remarked to me a few months back that it used to be that the Samba team could get answers from Microsoft Engineering - in fact, the two groups had a decent relationship and the Microsoft techies appreciated that the Samba group were finding bugs in SMB implementations under Windows. Apparently, in the last 18 months, this activity has cooled off dramatically - as Microsoft has come to realize that Samba is a key component enabling heterogeneous networks - and therefore a "direct" threat to them, the word has gone out inside Microsoft that supporting Samba is not cool. It will be a shame when Microsoft corporate comes to realize that Mono et al are a direct threat as well; I can't imagine them acting any differently in that situation. Oh well. It'll be fun while it lasts ;) AfC -- Andrew Frederick Cowie Operational Dynamics Consulting Pty Ltd Australia +61 2 9977 6866 North America +1 646 270 5376 http://www.operationaldynamics.com/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
