[www-vrml] Fw: [Mono-list] Is Mono ready to compete with MS .NET in realbusiness?

["George Birbilis" <birbilis@kagi.com>]

since there was recently a concern phrased on the list from Clayton that
mono (.NET port to Linux/Unix/MacOS-X etc.) has ceased development, read-on
below:

From: "Miguel de Icaza" <miguel -at- ximian.com>
Sent: Sunday, October 03, 2004 7:44 AM
Subject: Re: [Mono-list] Is Mono ready to compete with MS .NET in
realbusiness?


> Hello,
>
> > Mono 1.0 was shipped awhile ago, and I'm really excited
> > about that... but now the natural question is:
> >
> >   "Is Mono ready to compete with MS .NET in real business?"
>
> Like others have said as follow up replies to your post, it depends on
> your needs and your comfort level.  At this point Mono is a subset of
> the .NET Framework 1.1 (see the release notes for the details on what is
> and is not supported).
>
> To some people what we have today is enough to start building
> application, to some to start prototyping and to some to build
> proof-of-concept applications.
>
> Some areas of Mono are more evolved than others: those that have
> received the most use are likely going to as good (and in some cases
> better) than the equivalent in .NET.  Those areas that have received
> little attention or are seldom used might still have bugs.
>
> Think of Mono 1.0 as Linux 1.0: it is the first release that we felt
> that we could support and that we could guarantee backwards API
> compatibility and we would support in an ongoing basis while we moved
> our development on the new components of Mono.
>
> >   "Will Novell provide support, documentation, etc.?"
> >   "If yes, by when?"
>
> Novell does offer commercial support for Mono users, you can contact
> Erik Dasque (edasque@ximian.com) or your favorite Novell channel to ask
> for the pricing of technical support or services around Mono.
>
> In the past users of Mono that needed features not implemented in Mono
> have funded the efforts to get these things in the runtime (the MacOS
> port, web services, the http stack and more were funded by support
> contracts).
>
> Of course, you do not have to pay Novell to get support, Mono has today
> a quite vibrant community and third party consultants that have offered
> their help and services in the past to individuals that need help.
> Other folks have provided some anecdotal evidence about this in the
> follow up thread.
>
> > Behind MS .NET there is a huge development team,
> > support, documentation, and continuity... and I
> > think Novell should offer the same, but till now
> > I don't see anything in that way.
>
> We certainly do not have a `huge' development team inside Novell.
> Although Novell is steering the direction of the project and funding
> most of the work, Mono is very much a full open source project with
> multiple individuals and companies contributing.
>
> >From the Novell side there are more than 20 developers working full time
> on Mono and many more internal Novell users for it.  Today we have more
> than 300 open CVS accounts for external contributors.
>
> > You guys at Novell, could you tell us something more
> > about your plans to push Mono into the market as an
> > effective MS .NET alternative?
>
> What kind of information are you looking for?
>
> Miguel
> _______________________________________________
> Mono-list maillist  -  Mono-list@lists.ximian.com
> http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/mono-list
>

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