Why Microsoft Will Never Make .NET Truly Portable

Michelle Meyers writes "Just days before Microsoft claimed to be making parts of the .NET CLR "available" to other platforms, NeoSmart Technologies had published an article bemoaning and blasting Microsoft's abuse of it's developers by pretending .NET was a true cross-platform framework when they're doing everything in their power to stop it from being just that. Of interest is NeoSmart's analysis of how Microsoft has no problem making certain portions of .NET available to Mac users — just so long as its distributed under an "open source" license that forbids any and all use of the code except for educational purposes — yet are terrified of the very thought of .NET being available to *nix users, even if that's to the benefit of .NET developers everywhere. Even more interesting is one of the comments on that article linking to legal documents in which Microsoft employees discuss the (im)possibility of creating a cross-platform code and UI framework, years before the .NET project even started!"

Why Microsoft Will Never Make .NET Truly Portable

[boisepunk]

MONEY!!!

Does it matter?

[brennanw]

There's no point in making a marketing sleight of hand portable to other platforms, is there?

Maybe it's changed in the last few years, but when Microsoft first started talking about "dot net" the only thing I could figure was that they didn't really know what it was going to do [ubersoft.net] -- and four years after it had been announced it didn't really seem as if that had changed [ubersoft.net].

Maybe it's changed since then... it's been three years since the last time I paid any attention to it...

Terrified, they aint.

[LibertineR]

Come on.

Why is Microsoft the only company constantly expected to make decisions anti to their business model? Where is the clamor for Apple to adopt VB for the sake of 'developers'? Ok, bad example.

But seriously; with 50Billion in the bank, I think throwing around words like 'terrified' serve no purpose but to feed the rabid-anti-Microsoft crowds.

Hard to have a serious discussion, when the article is premised on hype and flaming rhetoric to start with.

Re:Non Free is Predictable.

[Dionysus]

A software product/framework can be portable, cross platform without being Free. I don't know if Microsoft has ever claimed that .NET would be Free.

Re:Terrified, they aint.

[LibertineR]

Just to follow up, how stupid is it for the same folks yelling "Microsoft sucks!" on a daily basis, to turn around and ask for access to some of that suckage for themselves?

Do they suck or not, people? If so, why ask for their shit?

Portability

[Egonis]

It's pretty sad.

On the other hand, there is always the Mono Project (www.mono-project.org)
It even has a Visual Basic Compiler.

Yes, it's not ready for primetime yet (imo), but it looks very promising.

Microsoft's actions will just result in more 3rd party and OSS development.

Mono Anyone?

[N8F8]

Stop griping and expend your efforts bringing Mono [mono-project.com] up to .Net 2.0 compatability.

Java

[mwvdlee]

.NET is basically Java without the portability.
So why bother with .NET?

Re:Does it matter?

[eln]

I always figured the whole "cross-platform" marketspeak was just a ploy to take some of the wind out of Java's sails. MS wanted people to stop jumping on the Java bandwagon and start jumping on the .NET bandwagon, so they made it sound like .NET was (or would be in the future) more widely usable than it is.

.NET Is Only Really Useful on Windows Anyway

[repruhsent]

Other implementations of .NET are kind of stupid anyway, and, like it or not, Mono really isn't very useful. Anyone who does development on Linux/Mac/anything that isn't Windows will just use native code, or Java - probably because writing a native app isn't nearly as difficult on other platforms, and Java actually is write once, run anywhere (well, closer than .NET, anyway).

The only platform that benefits from .NET is Windows; have any of you written a native code Windows app (I'm sure many of you have)? The code is a nightmare and makes my eyes scream. With Windows, you really, truly need a system like .NET to make developing any non-trivial app even remotely possible, unless you want to spend 1,000 hours writing fucking COM shit (which I sure as fuck don't).

Re:Non Free is Predictable.

[jimstapleton]

agreed, and while Microsoft's implementation may not be free or portable, I've yet to see a good reason why Mono doesn't make .NET portable. Admittedly, Mono isn't completely finished, but any .NET applicatino that runs in Mono (and it's not unheard of) is an example of portable .NET

It's in their interest Not to...

[blueforce]

With the proliferation of Web Applications and SOA, and the diminishing relevance of desktop software, it's in Microsoft's best interest NOT to make it cross-platform.

Let's say that a full implementation of the .Net framework was available for *nix or OS X - all of the framework libs, ASP, WinForms, etc. What incentive would I have to fill a Web server farm full of thousands of dollars of Windows Server licenses when I could run my ASP.Net apps on Apache? The only real costs to add machines to the farm are hardware-related. .Net already has providers for Oracle and MySQL. Suddenly, Microsoft's Operating systems and platforms become irrelevant to developers who have years of experience and time invested in learning .Net.

Simple

[VincenzoRomano]

Because Microsoft never made a single portable product!
Where "portable" means "on other OSs than the Microsoft's ones".

Re:Terrified, they aint.

[Trailer Trash]

"Terrified" isn't really the word, but "paranoid" would probably do. Microsoft, as an organization, doesn't like to compete with other companies. So, their way of doing business is to rig the system so that they have such an overwhelming competitive advantage they don't have to compete. This is why they are paranoid about someone figuring out their file formats, certain network protocols. And they're paranoid about their army of developers being able to quickly and easily develop for other platforms. Look at their actions and you'll see that.

Frankly, that paranoia got them the $50B in the bank, so it's hard to argue against.

That said, they have as much interest in making cross-platform development tools as they have in supporting ODF, and basically for the same reason. The WWW is one of the only truly cross-platform development environments left; why do you think they want so badly to make a "flash-killer"? It's not about flash - it's about the web.

Re:Terrified, they aint.

[suv4x4]

Indeed. If Microsoft has a fault, it's the fact their marketing does claim they'll be just as cross-platform and open, as Adobe Flash is, as a web platform (talking about Silverlight and the open-sources CLR here).

Adobe open-sourced part of the platform as they feel the heat from Microsoft. Microsoft did the same as they feel the heat from Adobe (yes, having 50 billion in the bank doesn't mean they're immune to failure, so they DO react quickly to competition).

It's stupid to expect they should spend years developing .NET and then give it all away randomly to make MS-bashers happy (which they will never ever be, anyway).

Acknolwedge the amount of effort that went into .NET and accpet it as a great platform, that's more or less tied to Windows, and has limited deployment on other platforms. That's all you need to do: see through Microsoft marketing, and use technology where it's best fitted.

I'm a Flash developer and would still see lots of uses for .NET/Silverlight, that in some cases even mix Silverlight and Flash in the same experience - why not? Why should I be a nazi and not just give it to Microsoft for having a great runtime, when they do.

Screw bashers.

Re:Java

[hclyff]

Java runtime has to be installed separately, while .NET is preinstalled on Windows.

Duh!

[phillymjs]

Nobody with any sense is going to believe any cross-platform claims made by Microsoft anymore. The Windows platform is their lifeblood, and they'll do whatever they have to to artificially bind people to it. That's why they're fighting and delaying all attempts to truly open up their connection protocols and file formats. On a level playing field, people would desert Windows in droves, and Microsoft knows it.

Honestly, I don't see how this is even still open for debate in 2007-- Microsoft showed their true colors w/r/t portability after they added Windows-only extensions to Java. And that's if you ignore their prior attempt to balkanize the web and cause pain for anyone not running Windows IE.

Their "Flash-killer" and their "PDF-killer" and any other allegedly-open standards they try to foist off on us should be ignored and allowed to die. If we allow them to get a foothold, we deserve everything we get.

~Philly

Re:Snooze.

[Opportunist]

So what you're saying is that what they said some years ago shouldn't be taken serious anymore? Why should I take anything said by MS now serious? Why should I believe that what's being spun today holds any meaning in the future if I am not supposed to believe what I was told earlier?

Don't get me wrong, but when a company makes a statement or announcement, there are two ways to deal with it. Either believe it and expect it to happen or declare it bunk and handle it accordingly. And if the former is expected, the results should warrant it. Either MS follows its words with actions or it has to accept that people ignore their announcements, or, worse, read them for the same reason they read the Prawda: To know what will certainly NOT happen.

Re:Does it matter?

[Ucklak]

Cross platform for Microsoft means it will work on Windows, Xbox, and mobile devices that run Windows.

It's just another word to ignore when Microsoft says it versus say Samsung when their printers are cross platform which means Linux/Mac/Windows.

Re:Terrified, they aint.

[Locutus]

It's for the customers man. Those poor thoughtless, ignorant, and mostly naive people who have bought into Microsoft's lies and are now stuck with them with no way out. Like a cute fuzzy forest creature following a food trail into a dastardly trap. You feel sorry for the thoughtless creature and want to help it out of its cage. So too is the desire to lead the caged masses out of the trap(s) Microsoft has lead them into. ;-)

LoB

Re:Terrified, they aint.

[dubl-u]

Why is Microsoft the only company constantly expected to make decisions anti to their business model?

I think Slashdot is pretty consistent in expecting companies to make decisions in favor of Slashdot readers. And when they don't, we expect them not to lie to us too much.

The problem with Microsoft is that their business model, which involves creating a fair bit of vendor lock-in and maintaining their monopoly by any means necessary, is one that doesn't fit well with either of those criteria.

Re:Hmmm...

[symbolset]

Why should they be afraid? Because given 30 years and more money than the GNP of Texas they can't come up with a better OS than a finnish nerd's geek vanity project, or a better language than c++. They should be afraid because the future is Open.

Re:Snooze.

[CmdrGravy]

Why yes, of course because we all know that Microsofts strategy today was largely determined yesterday afternoon. A large multinational company like Microsoft with product lead times measured in years would never have discussed the actions they're taking today 5 or 6 years ago would they. You muppet.

Re:Terrified, they aint.

[suv4x4]

It sure seems like ANY company who makes software for Microsoft Windows is Microsoft's competition these days. Get it?

I wonder if you actually get it. Windows-only applications that are useful and popular make Windows stronger. Microsoft will lead the desktop OS market for a long time to come, because apps make it useful.

Adobe's a danger to Microsoft not because it's making software for Windows, it's making *cross-platform* suite that makes Windows less relevant, and now they're owning the cross-platform runtime (Flash) that replaces many uses for rich applications and WMP on Windows. This makes Windows, again, less relevant.

So Microsoft can stay idle and look how Windows is made less and less relevant by Adobe, or move in and claim that market with its own solution. Which is what they did.

Re:Terrified, they aint.

[CmdrGravy]

No one is asking Microsoft to give .net away, we're just wondering why a supposedly platform independant, er, platform isn't available for much in the way of non Microsoft platforms.

The reason you can't use .net on Linux has got nothing to do with .net. If the only consideration was .net then Microsoft would make more money by making it available for as many platforms as they could rather than restricting it to Windows.

The problem with doing that, for Microsoft, is that if people can run their .net applications on other platforms then they have no reason to by Windows operating systems anymore and Windows lose money and this is the problem with Microsoft, all their products are forced to bow down before the overwhelming goal of maintaining a Windows monopoly rather than being allowed to fulfil their true potential.

Re:Terrified, they aint.

[suv4x4]

The reason you can't use .net on Linux has got nothing to do with .net.

If the only consideration was .net then Microsoft would make more money by making it available for as many platforms as they could rather than restricting it to Windows [...]

all their products are forced to bow down before the overwhelming goal of maintaining a Windows monopoly rather than being allowed to fulfil their true potential.

Why is any company expected to kill its most profitable product, so some other less profitable product can realize "its full potential"? No one can ask from Microsoft to take active steps in destroying its profits and going bankrupt.

Imagine you worked your ass off for long years to afford a good house and a shiny car, and some hippie asks you to move out and let homeless people live in your own place and drive your own car, since it's "realizing your asset potential" better. Do you do it, or tell the hippie to piss off.

Re:Terrified, they aint.

[suv4x4]

Find that Microsoft internal email where they say "cross platform will never work" and "lets steal Java" and then come back and tell us how much effort Microsoft put into .NET

I'd prefer to eat my own gonads than infect my system with a CLR, speaking of which haven't Sun just open sourced Java :P


I've read the memo, and I don't think it's so terrible. Microsoft has reasons to not have believed in crossplatform, because they've tried it before and it failed - the first version of MFC was cross platform (OS/2, Windows and more) and it was so slow and bloated they had to scrap it and redo it slim, just for Windows.

Even if a high level exec says "let's steal Java" it doesn't mean they downloaded the sources from Sun and did s/java/net. The fact they said that outlines their strategy, not the amount of effort it took to develop .NET.

If you *actually* worked a lot with Java and .NET you'll see how different they can be in some areas, the similarities are only in some of the basics (we got IL, we got runtime, we got Java/C++ like language syntax, called C#). .NET was developed highly modular, so today, it can be cross-platform. If Microsoft doesn't want it to be, it's their product, it's their call.

If they did announce "hey we're making it officially run on OSX and Linux", we'll have people like you come here to whine "omg it's a trojan hourse designed to kill Linux with patents and all that!".

If Linux companies were smart they'd actually stay away from .NET, as it could for very real make Linux dependent on Mictrosoft technology. Microsoft would love that.

Don't be stupid, it isn't meant to be portable.

[CFD339]

The whole point to the .NET framework is lock-in. It's the classic trade off Microsoft has always made. Back in the early 90's you could write Windows 3.x apps with standard C++ language tools, but if you used their framework you got to market 6 months quicker because you didn't have to create your own windowing code. So, you could hit 90% of the market six months faster and you did, but then you gave up cross platform C++ by relying on their windows only libraries, and thus your software didn't work on Mac. That was the play then, and it is the play now.

By developing for the .NET framework, you get a lot of things. You get easy install kits, a 'contemporary professional' look and feel, you get drag and drop design, and you get cross platform use from the standpoint of different windows desktop, server, and mobile platforms.

If you're willing to limit your app to Microsoft platforms, .NET saves you time and money on development. It really does. I prefer to write in Java, but when I'm doing something within the .NET scope, it makes sense to use it.

The whole point of this play is to tie users to Windows platforms. They're in business to make money, and this is one way to continue doing that.

Java was created specifically to provide an alternative to Microsoft based development as a way to thwart Microsoft. That was a (not the, but a) primary goal of its development and licensing structure from the world go. It wasn't created to make money and while its goals are laudable, they aren't always realistic. It has been an abject failure at the desktop and even as browser based applets. A huge amount of effort went into making it useful for web servers (j2ee) but even those are barely cross platform and are themselves rife with vendor lock in. It's not like you're ever going to host IBM's portal product on someone else's J2EE server instead of Websphere after all.

Re:Does it matter?

[jedidiah]

...sounds suspicously like Unix actually, as Java did before.

Now unix has actually be successfully indpendently reimplemented in practice. Even java has.

It remains to be seen if .net will be in any meaningful fashion. It already has a sort of commercial Unix clannishness already built in.

Ultimately, any universal platform is "owned" suddenly becomes useless in terms of being "universal" simply because of that ownership. The legal definition of ownership is the ability to exclude.

Of course not, what did you think

[guruevi]

Microsoft won't make .NET available to other platforms than their own, just because it's the only thing that keeps developers and architects from moving to a more stable Unix-like solution.

Another problem is that Windows is not POSIX compatible. Sure you can get the add-on that makes it a bit more POSIX-like but still .NET developers (unless they're knowledgeable on the subject) won't use the POSIX-compatible definitions in .NET/C# because they're fed/learned to use the 'simple' Windows way. Eg. defining a path. You could define a path as follows (yes, in .NET): (pseudocode): $userdrive + $platformseparator + dirname + $platformseparator + filename. Every developer though uses $DRIVENAME + \DIRNAME\FILENAME making it utterly inflexible to be used on another platform.

Multiple implementations is not portable.

[twitter]

A software product/framework can be portable, cross platform without being Free.

It's not portable if you can't move it to a platform of YOUR choice. Something that's not free may have SDKs for more than one platform, but that does not really make it portable. Being "open" does not help either. They could publish their entire source code but it would not be free if it was patent and copyright restrictions that keep you from doing what you want with it.

These days, that lack of freedom is a distinct disadvantage that will cost M$. It's always been a disadvantage to non free code, but the saving grace was a lack working alternative and someone might pay you for it. Because there are now entire free software systems, non free code has run out of saving graces. It won't even make money. Control is a loser.

Why wouldn't they? Very simple

[zukinux]

Cause' they don't want to make it multi-platform, so developers will use .Net and develop their stuff and when they want to use it, they will be able to use Linux/whatever, and Microsoft doesn't want the developers to enjoy with their code on Linux since they want them to buy another Windows (which is legitimate to them that they want to sell. The problem is that they are doing it very ugly.)