[Sussex] RE: The 'D' programming language

[Geoff Teale]

MArk.

I didn't mean to suggest otherwise, you have never said anything
incorrect about Microsoft or .NET, I simply have a larger cynical streak
in me!  I just wanted to warn people against jumping onto Mono - it may
not be around too long.  

The thing about patents is what you do with them.  Sun, IBM and MIT all
have commitments to Open Source (You might question it of MIT, but they
do - their Technology Review magazine (a very good read if you can find
it!) features a statement of policy _and_ recently an editorial piece
suggesting that western organisation have a moral obligation to adopt
Free Software.

Microsoft on the other hand is openly and obviously anti opens ource.
Now I know the only reason Sun and IBM are pro-linux is because they are
anti Microsoft, but Sun (for example) are actively working to make Java
_truely_ open source - Microsoft may feel that LINUX is important to
them - that's a fact of reality - but they will certainly do anything
they can to make it _less_ important to them.

As has been said before  - the whole point of the web-services model is
that it doesn't matter whose technology or platform you are using - SOAP
(and other technologies of that ilk) extract away all of that through
open standards.  If you're developing you services on the LINUX platform
why would you choose to risk everything on a Microsoft standard that
could be pulled off the platform at any moment ?  Equally if you're
developing on Windows you would probably argue that the Visual Studio
IDE is a _major_ factor in favour of using .NET (it really is very good
indeed!).

-- 
Geoff Teale <tealeg at member.fsf.org>
Free Software Foundation