[DotGNU]FYI: Slashdot interview with Alan Cox with question about .NET

[James Michael DuPont]

Following is a snippet of an interview with Alan Cox,
talking about .NET on Linux.
Hope you find it as interesting as I did.
mike
<SNIP
href="http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/05/20/1314214&mode=nested&tid=166";>
3) Microsoft .NET and Linux 
by SL33Z3 

What are your feelings on Microsoft's .NET and any
initiatives to make the technology work on Linux? 

Alan:

Microsoft has publically stated that it has patents on
critical parts of .NET and will enforce them. If you
think that .NET is a good idea, or cloning .NET is a
good idea, remember you won't have a US market unless
they find you amusing enough to allow to live on. And
if you think Microsoft can be trusted on this look at
their recent activities against Samba. 

The system itself is mildly interesting as a
technology. Its yet another virtual machine, roughly
equivalent to picojava in capabilities. It has an
interesting way to self generate IDL, but one which
their own papers say cannot represent all programming
languages. 

The more dangerous parts of all this are not so much
.NET but chunks of the model that not only the .NET
product and the Java standards rely on. Things like
xmlrpc, soap and the stuff on top of them are designed
to "interwork through firewalls". A better phrase
would be "go through the firewall like a knife through
butter in a way that prevents the companies involved
monitoring the activity". 

When all you have is an encrypted SSL session how are
you going to figure out if its a legitimate bit of
ebusiness with a related company or someone in your
company uploading your entire company customer
database? 
</SNIP>


=====
James Michael DuPont

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience
http://launch.yahoo.com