Very Worried at MS .net

[Adam Sampson]

MJ Ray <markj at cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> writes:

> I'm more concerned about these developments in another way: why does
> GNU feel the need to play catch-up to a Microsoft attempt to play
> catch-up to the free tools we already have?  We should continue by
> better integrating the free tools and polishing them, not by this
> silly action.

I cannot help but agree with this. In particular, I'm wondering what
advantage supporting .NET has to us other than making it easy for
people to use Microsoft's products on free operating systems, and I'm
bemused by the degree of support within the free software community
that .NET has received in comparison to Java. 

If I were forced to choose between them, I'd rather be programming to
Sun's APIs than Microsoft's---but I'd rather be writing code in a
language I like which will compile to native code and not force me to
abandon fifteen years' existing work by the community. Certainly,
compiling to bytecode means that binaries compiled once can be run
anywhere---but who cares, when we distribute the source? Why use JIT
when you can compile properly on installation?

-- 
Adam Sampson <azz at gnu.org>                  <URL:http://azz.us-lot.org/>