Very Worried at MS .net

[home at alexhudson.com]

On Mon, Jul 16, 2001 at 08:59:58PM +0100, John Peter Tapsell <John Tapsell wrote:
> If they gain full control of a globally and totally accepted passport
> scheme, they will control all.

Passport is worrying. But, people don't seem to be taking to it. The UK
Govt. has rejected it for it's gateway IIRC, and are actively seeking open
solutions. Don't confuse Passport with .net - it's a .net service, but I
think people won't use Passport.

> I'm starting to think that if we stick to FS, we are going to lose big time.

Don't worry. Take time out to actually research .net. .net isn't about ASPs,
or network-centric apps, or any of the other buzzwords. Microsoft have
finally owned up to their stable of shoddy interfaces and legacy crap (COM,
DCOM, MFC, Win32, Win16, ActiveX, etc...) and are junking them, in favour of
one API - .net. That's it - no more, no less. It's just an API (as well as
an ABI to an extent, given the run-time stuff). 

I don't think .net will necessarily be 'good' for Free Softare, but I think
it will help. The Wine people, and the Mono people, and all the others doing
the same kind of thing, will have _one_ target to aim at - not the host of
all the different interfaces which currently exist. We also have a goodly
amount of low-level documentation for .net - it has, at least partially,
been sent to a standards body. 

Microsoft are moving further up the chain - they're going to be less
concerned with OS and more concerned with platform (ie, .net) on which they
run their apps. I think this move upwards will leave a vacuum, which Free
Software can fill. 

Cheers,

Alex.


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