Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Microsoft has donated the Mono Project, an open-source framework that brought its .NET platform to non-Windows systems, to the Wine community. WineHQ will be the steward of the Mono Project upstream code, while Microsoft will encourage Mono-based apps to migrate to its open source .NET framework.
[...] Mono began as a project of Miguel de Icaza, co-creator of the GNOME desktop. De Icaza led Ximian (originally Helix Code), aiming to bring Microsoft's then-new .NET platform to Unix-like platforms. Ximian was acquired by Novell in 2003.
Mono was key to de Icaza's efforts to get Microsoft's Silverlight, a browser plug-in for "interactive rich media applications" (i.e., a Flash competitor), onto Linux systems. Novell pushed Mono as a way to develop iOS apps with C# and other .NET languages. Microsoft applied its "Community Promise" to its .NET standards in 2009, confirming its willingness to let Mono flourish outside its specific control.
By 2011, however, Novell, on its way to being acquired into obsolescence, was not doing much with Mono, and de Icaza started Xamarin to push Mono for Android. Novell (through its SUSE subsidiary) and Xamarin reached an agreement in which Xamarin would take over the IP and customers, using Mono inside Novell/SUSE.
What does this mean for Mono and Wine? Not much at first. Wine, a compatibility layer for Windows apps on POSIX-compliant systems, has already made use of Mono code in fixes and has its own Mono engine. By donating Mono to Wine, Microsoft has, at a minimum, erased the last bit of concern anyone might have had about the company's control of the project. It's a very different, open-source-conversant Microsoft making this move, of course, but regardless, it's a good gesture.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 03, @01:07AM (5 children)
What is the official statement from the actual WINE project on this white elephant?
WINE was having a hard enough time keeping up as is was without this added burden. It seems that by not funding this "donation" that Microsoft is aiming to kill both Mono and WINE in one fell swoop.
Real news would have been that this "donation" is accompanied by heavy funding. Or, better yet, that Microsoft has started to fund WINE and is accompanying the donation with code for Mono.
The Mono code is only a half-assed implementation of the ill-defined .NET anyway. The ill-defined .NET fiascco is "open core" and the important parts will never see the light of day. Thus, in addition to being a white elephant, it is a trap. If projects start to use Mono, they'll be pressured for full .NET support at some point and at the point they decide for that, they'll have no choice but to drop support for serious operating systems and go 100% Windows.
Or another way to look at this would be as a hostile take over. If the Mono people accompany the Mono code and are absorbed into the WINE project, suddenly microsofters out number real developers and can better throw sand in the gears during any general voting or future decision making.
Nah. This is just Ars showing its true (Microsoft) colors once again by praising this heinous attack against a very important interoperability project.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday September 03, @02:38AM
Yeah: so far everything MS has touched has turned to shit, whether it be 'helping linux' or just their own software and operating systems.
Just give MONO back and say "Spank you but no" or MS open up the source code or give funding and walk away.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 5, Insightful) by owl on Tuesday September 03, @02:43AM (2 children)
Just because Microsoft hands you a turd, does not mean you must begin polishing it.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 03, @02:45AM (1 child)
Unless, of course, you happen to be a compulsive turd polisher.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Gaaark on Tuesday September 03, @11:15AM
You mean someone who works for Microsoft or uses Microsoft products, right?
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by r_a_trip on Tuesday September 03, @08:12AM
Well, the Wine project has been around the block. I assume they can set the scope of what they are willing to support. Even if that is no additional support at all. When people start whining that that is not what they want... It is FOSS. Fork and develop. Mono is legacy .NET. The real deal is firmly in MS's hands. For that, Wine can just say, "Get your fix in Redmond."
(Score: 2, Interesting) by shrewdsheep on Tuesday September 03, @03:41PM (4 children)
Slightly off-topic, but who uses Wine here? I had tried some software: mainly SPSS and Ofice to little success. In the end I gave up completely on Wine. Is there any serious software that Soylentils use Wine for?
(Score: 3, Informative) by chucky on Tuesday September 03, @07:16PM
My kids got to do a homework in their computer class, some kind of crap which would normally only run on Windows. They were able to run it. So yes, very serious.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 04, @03:39AM
I've used Wine a few times, and I use it quite a bit if you count Proton - Valve's fork for steam. It works pretty well for most things, but I never expect it to work for anything that deals with hardware or is actual MS software.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Unixnut on Wednesday September 04, @12:03PM
I've used it time to time, mostly for older games (e.g. 1990s era like SimIsle/SimCity2000/SimTower), although even then I've had more success running them on dosbox (back in the day you usually would get both the DOS and Windows versions on the same CD).
I just set up Wine for the first time in years a week ago, to see if I can make use of LTSpice [analog.com] on Linux (its Windows only), as the free circuit simulators I've found either don't seem to be complete or have not been updated in a while.
It took some hassle but I got LTSpice installed. It starts up but I've not yet used it in anger, will have to see how it performs.
In many ways it is a good thing that Wine does not get pulled into use often nowadays. It means there is a lot of Linux/BSD native stuff out there already so we don't have to kludge together an abstraction layer to allow Windows software to run on our machines.
Just like nobody really misses the years when we had to use NDISwrapper [wikipedia.org] to load windows wireless drivers into Linux just to make use of wifi.
(Score: 3, Informative) by gawdonblue on Wednesday September 04, @08:46PM
Only once about 20 years ago to run World of Warcraft. It ran better under Wine on Linux than on Windows on the same hardware*.
* Possibly not true these days as Linux degrades as certain people/person copy the bad features of Windows architecture onto Linux, and Microsoft copy the good stuff from Linux.