Why did Microsoft limited itself to Windows?

[Guest]

..net is a lot more then forms support. Even the TreeView control, for
example, can be hosted in a console app if you just want to use the
tree/nodes and not GUI. All the asp stuff can be hosted in http.dll like in
xp sp2 and 2003 I think. Remoting can be done, all the web services stuff
can be hosted separately from IIS as can WSE tcp and http support using
http.dll. So I think they just need to strip any specific Forms stuff and
could still provide a heck of a platform on *nix/ os390 / etc. It would be
cool if they could partition the std build so the UI stuff is all in
separate namespace that could be easily removed from a platform neutral
build and the rest of the namespaces would work without mods (i.e. no refs
to Forms stuff.) That may be there already - not sure. I saw a video on a
tool they use to build embedded windows on different devices that lets you
pick what should be included. I would think a similar tool for the
framework could be done ~easily that targets different CLR targets (i.e. Sun
framework 1.1, IBM framework v2.x, etc.)

Thinking about this and considering Avalon. Maybe any/all UI stuff should
be just included in the OS and versioned with the OS. And the balance of
the framework (i.e. all non-UI stuff) would just be versioned on its own.
Not sure, what do you think?

All they or a vendor need to do is drop in a namespace. Look at how
"ADO.Net" works.. it's just a bunch of classes in the System.Data namespace.
There's a few core interfaces that the author of a Provider would be advised
implementing.. those interfaces are ADO.Net (nothing more than a marketing
term if you will). Nothing stops a publisher from not implementing those
interfaces.

And there's a reason the GUI namespace is called System.Windows.Forms..
Because it's for Windows.

I dont pretend to know what MS "really" thinks but their public positions
are this:

1) You have a vast and powerful machine on your desk
2) You have a rich OS (Windows) running it
3) To not take advantage of both is stupid

And I agree, and I'm glad they didn't try to abstract Windows away.

MS tried to abstract Data access in old ADO and it didn't work. Things are
different because they are different. And they abandoned that approach.

Active Directory is not SQL Server is not Exchange is not a CSV File is not
Oracle

Neither is Windows GUI, Mac GUI, Li/Unix whatever they use.

 

[Guest]

I think its just a matter of time before .Net moves to Linux. Currently Linux
as a OS is still not mature platform yet. A lot of software is still being
written for it. Once it matures, Microsoft will be there to capitalise it.
Project such as Mono only help to promote the framework further, setting the
ground for Microsoft.

Also, I dont think .Net framework and development tools are ready for an
environment where it can be reverse engineered easily. If I spend my money on
an environment, I would want my investment protected. Perhaps we would see
..Net in more 'protected' environments such as Sun, Mac OS etc.

Cheers.
Azizi Khan
CEO,
Anaxiz International Group Pty. Ltd. ( Microsoft Partner )
Sydney, Australia.

 

[Jon Skeet [C# MVP]]

<"=?Utf-8?B?QXppemkgS2hhbg==?=" <Azizi

I think its just a matter of time before .Net moves to Linux.
Currently Linux as a OS is still not mature platform yet. A lot of
software is still being written for it. Once it matures, Microsoft
will be there to capitalise it. Project such as Mono only help to
promote the framework further, setting the ground for Microsoft.

I don't see how "a lot of software still being written for it" means
that Linux isn't mature, myself. Microsoft is writing software for the
next version of Windows - does that mean Windows isn't mature either?

Also, I dont think .Net framework and development tools are ready for
an environment where it can be reverse engineered easily. If I spend
my money on an environment, I would want my investment protected.
Perhaps we would see .Net in more 'protected' environments such as
Sun, Mac OS etc.

Why do you think .NET would be more easily reverse engineered on Linux
than on Windows, Solaris or Mac OS?

 

[Guest]

Well, you are only considering simple Windows users and not Servers, like IBM
Servers (with OS's like AIX), or HP Server's.... SUN Servers too. If you
wanna deploy a web app inside other kind of server's (for escalability, java
is good for some projects because can run over the most powerfull hardware in
the market). In a software world the kind of hardware used can make a great
diference.


If you are considerig windows user interface, Java can make it too (now they
have lot of IDE for design really good user interface for windows
environment). And now the project JOGL for games. Thats a limitation for .net

Exists a project called Mono, sponsored by Novel (directed by Miguel de
Icaza), they are porting .net to other platforms based in EMAC Spec's. In a
time, may be a really great alternative considering the power of .net
technologies.

sorry for my english...

greetings from Peru.

 

[Nick Malik]

You are correct about the market penetration of Apache servers on the
Internet:
http://www.securityspace.com/s_survey/data/200407/index.html

However, Microsoft doesn't make money when people use their free internet
server. They make money when people purchase licenses to the OS. In the
Intranet space (within the corporate firewall), (although numbers are hard
to prove), I believe that Microsoft reigns king. Especially with the advent
of Windows Sharepoint Services, which is starting on an astronomical growth
path that I haven't seen since VB3.

If you follow the money, Microsoft makes money from .NET by promoting the
use of .NET to solve corporate problems... not to sell books on the
Internet.

It doesn't make sense for MS to invest tons of money to debug .NET on Linux
at this time... Mind you, I wouldn't mind it if they did... it would be
cool, but not in their best interest.

--- Nick

 

[Erik Funkenbusch]

You are correct about the market penetration of Apache servers on the
Internet:
http://www.securityspace.com/s_survey/data/200407/index.html

Actually, these numbers look very close to the netcraft numbers, which lead
me to believe that they aren't actually counting servers, but rather
hostnames (as Netcraft does).

The problem with this kind of survey is that it doesn't count actual market
share of installed servers, it only counts how many host names are running
on those servers. Most ISP's have traditionally run Unix, and the vast
majority of sites are hosted by ISP's running multiple (usually thousands)
of sites on a single server, though most of these sites are not very high
volume or very complex (and not usually running any kind of dynamic
content)

When Netcraft decided to count physical servers on the internet, something
interesting showed up. Roughly 50% of the physical servers ran Windows.
This is because corporate sites tended to host only a few sites specific to
their corporations, and the vast majority of corporations ran Windows
servers. Thus, even though fewer hostnames ran on Windows, more actual
servers did.

 

[Elp]

Why did you set your clock 1 month in the future?

Oups, sorry, i was playing with the Windows calendar to plan my hollidays in
september i guess i mistakenly clicked on the Apply button instead if
the Cancel one. Fixed now.

Anyway, thanks to all for your answers. I still find it a bit weird that
Microsoft did so much effort to standardize C# and make .NET portable while
letting to other the job to actually develop a cross platform .NET. I
remember that at the begining of all this .NET stuff, a lot of people talked
about this so-called cross platform ability of .NET. And then all that
suddently vanished... to reappear a bit later when mono and dotnet gnu were
advanced enough to make it reality.

 

[Guest]

It is very interesting, when people put servers that host their domains (and
so host their corporate presence and image) on the Internet, they put
Unix/Linux servers. This is a ever increasing tendency to date, we must face
the thruth: supporting secure and stable sites running on Windows is a time
consuming task. Unix is better ainmed to these tasks.

 

[Nick Malik]

Your statement appears to fly in the face of Eric's statement. You are
stating that it is common for corporations to host on Unix. Eric is stating
that is it more typical for large corporations to host one or two sites, all
on Microsoft, but that really small companies, with no resources, pay for
ISPs to host their sites on Unix.

I do not believe that it is an +increasing+ tendency to use Unix. Apache is
well entrenched among ISPs, no doubt. However, the most recent version of
IIS is much more managable, and there are more ISPs now using MS Windows
than ever before (according to Boardwatch).

There is strong demand for MS Windows-based ISP hosting, and I expect the
trend to move the other way, as Microsoft addresses the managability issues
surrounding IIS.

The weight of .NET is pushing this demand. If we can all write ASP.NET
apps, and we want to host a few on the open internet, we are going to need
more and more Microsoft-based ISPs to host them on. The fact that Unix
based hosting is now a commodity business, with nearly no margin, means
that smaller ISPs hosting only in Unix will be disappearing as the ISP
players merge and acquire eachother (a normal part of the new-technology
adoption cycle).
Windows is a time consuming task. Unix is better ainmed to these tasks.<<

I guess it's what you are used to... I've built and delivered over 30
public web sites to large corporations, government agencies, and small
businesses. Dozens more in the intranet space. Exactly one ran on Unix.
Why only one? Because I found Unix to be much harder to work with than IIS.
I switched years ago. None of the sites I created has ever been hacked.
While one of them was too popular for it's own good for a while (easily
fixed with a network load balancer), none have crashed because of poor
stability.

Based on my experience, I do not agree with your assertion. I find IIS to
be much more powerful than Apache, while being simple to manage, and getting
simpler with ever release.

--- Nick

 

[Etienne Boucher]

Read Jon Skeet's very good threading primer. (And bookmark it)

http://www.yoda.arachsys.com/csharp/threads/

Etienne Boucher

 

[Elp]

Hi,

Since i'm developing for the .NET platform, i keep asking myself a question
for which i've not been able to find any good answer so far.

Microsoft had with .NET the potential of having a good competitor and
alternative to Java. I'm aware of the various open source projects aimed at
porting .NET under alternative OS. Butg given its virtually unlimited
ressources (at least in terms of money), why didn't Microsoft developed
versions of the .NET Framework runtime for Linus, Mac OS, Unix and other OS?
This would have turned a good thing into an incredible f**** great stuff...

 

[Jon Skeet [C# MVP]]

How did you get this topic posted on the
12th of september (still back in august?)

By setting the clock on his system. For instance, this post will
probably say it was posted on Christmas Day.