- cross-posted to:
- linux@programming.dev
- linux@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- linux@programming.dev
- linux@lemmy.ml
I am no Microsoft fanboy, but I get the impression people are a bit overly skeptical here.
I think this is fairly obvious. They have no further use for it, they can either let it rot or they can do the tiniest bit of effort and get some positive PR. It might also just be as simple as an initiative from some employees.
Wasn’t it open source all the time? The article spins it more like microsoft don’t want to shepherd the project any more, another group takes over?
Isn’t it just less work for m$ or what am I missing?
That’s my take too
Edit: Yup, Microsoft kindly abandoned their work to others.
Yup, what they needed from Xamarin was absorbed into .NET and now that have MAUI for cross platform stuff, it was either sunset mono or give it to someone else
Now if only they would add Linux support to MAUI.
Maybe they’ll add it to Mono.
Someone on that page commented:
“It was always open source. They just bought the company who created* and maintained, it, moved the devs over to their own fork and closed down the original, graciously allowing the wine team to maintain their own fork of the old code, as if they needed a permission, lol. It’s a good PR move (also for Wine, mind you) but nothing else.”
Jeezus. Microsoft can’t do anything without people talking crap about them 😂
It’s almost like they have a terrible track history and hold the gold medal for antitrust and enshitification.
It’s embarrassing at times, much like it was almost two decades ago when Slashdot used to shit on “Micro$oft” for everything. Lemmy also has a tendency to be emotional to tech news rather than factual, so there’s that too.
Pretty much every tech company is shit in some way, but it’s not productive to call it out everywhere. This is a good thing.
What people don’t realize, is that Miguel de Icaza actually started gnome and mono.
Xamarin got acquired by Microsoft.
I’m so tired of watching the community crap on every company which donates open source (I’ve been watching for 25 years at least now). Even Redhat which basically is a major factor to the survival of Linux is getting crapped on. Systemd developers, etc.
If people are genuinely interested in Linux growing, they need a positive community. Because developers like myself mostly stopped providing free code (as a hobbyist developer) because whilst finding help is difficult, it’s not hard to find people willing to abuse you and your projects unfortunately
Even the VLC developers can’t escape the abuse
No corpos does something for the good of the people. It just so happen that this particular thing does.
Behind every move, there is a price tag attached to it.
By doing that, Microsoft is trying to get good PR.
Do you think they’re going to ask for this one back? 😂
Whatever it is, it benefits the community.
What price tag do you think is attached to this one?
Things can be beneficial to both parties… Not everything corporations do need to screw someone else 😂
Microsoft primary motivation was not to benefit the community, but to gain good PR in that case. It just so happen that this move also benefits the community as well.
And that’s my point. Sometimes, corpos’ decisions benefit the community, but this is only a side effect, not the intended purpose.
You’re not wrong, but if we want companies to keep doing things for good PR, we need to reward them for it.
They’re basically giant badly trained dogs that happen to control every aspect of our lives.
I agree actually. They’re not giving ANYONE incentive to donate to open source, and that mirrors my own experience where the community were asses to me too for my own project (which got lots of publicity including international print media, frontpage slashdot, etc. But after putting up with trolls telling me to do it a different way and calling it crap I dumped it. Fortunately a major distro had a similar idea at the same time and implemented. And thats a distro these same guys have also shat on honestly over the years.
People turned on Redhat too fairly quickly, and they donated a metric ton of code. And my experience in a lot of open source projects honestly is that on most of them, the community contributes next-to-nothing. Canonical too… SystemD? Constantly getting attacked.
it’s why I personally stopped creating my own projects.
If the community stopped using code from these companies they constantly crap on, I think they would be surprised just how little of linux is left (like Wayland is by a Redhat Developer, and Keith Packard from Xorg worked at HP).
And somehow, there is always some weird conspiracy too. Like even releasing Windows 1.0 source code would be something Microsoft does to try to trick linux users or whatever lol
They have burned their good will and trust long ago. When someone untrustworthy suddenly does something nice, you look for hidden hooks and definitely dont just take them for their word. If they actually did something nice then good for them, maybe if they keep it up they could eventually clean their reputation a little.
Because they’re crap. Pretty obvious right?
How does this help open source?
I’m not sure how the community has grown to be so toxic recently that it becomes risky to release a product as open source, and we’re losing opportunities. This has huge benefits to projects like wine
Are you guys suggesting they should retract the offer and close source everything?
All I said was MS is crap. I stand behind my statement. Looks like their PR team is working overtime here.
Mate. I don’t even use Windows anymore lol
And I started a few open source projects and contributed to a lot of them.
This is why Linux still isn’t gaining market share because for 25 years I’ve been watching the community scare off developers and treat them like crap. It happens constantly.
You’re not giving anyone any incentive to assist
In all likelihood they donated this code because it doesn’t benefit them anymore or became a burden. The developers aren’t sitting there thinking “mmm, this is gonna make us so popular”.
Did you know the guy who stayed mono is actually the guy who started gnome? They got acquired by Microsoft.
People have experience.
Nobody forced them to be ruthless monsters and monopolize computers for 40 years.
As the great philosopher and poet, George Bush, said:
Fool me once can’t get fooled again!
If someone evades billions in taxes but one day donates 50 dollars it doesn’t absolve their wrongdoings whatsoever. This is just an attempt at trying to improve their image.
In my experience, generally the most vocal contribute the least lol
These corpos are very vocal in arguing to maintain their low tax contributions so perhaps you’re right.
It doesn’t mean there is some evil plan either 😂
You’ll find that developers in these companies tend not to care so much about politics either.
Like I used to sell apple gear. The sales people were political. When I went to a developer conference, the developers were absolutely upfront about everything and normal people
“«Sorry Luke. I’m just doing my job. You gotta appreciate that.»
«Nah. Calling it your job don’t make it right, boss.»” —Cool Hand Luke (1967)
What’s the twist? There must be some reason.
They officially don’t care about running .NET applications on Linux anymore. They never really did before but so few people fell for that trap Microsoft is finally ready to turn in the towel
What the hell are you talking about?!
They are saying very little in Linux world moved to .NET/C# : https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=mono
It’s just not popular in Linux world despite MS attempts to make it so. It’s a Windows people language.
If nothing else, a lot of (containerized) .NET (web) services run on Linux. Also note that .NET apps can be packed as standalone (ignore the size) and as such are as any other standalone app.
You got some stats? The Debian stats say no one is using it on the desktop or traditional server stuff. I can believe Windows C# Dev are porting their closed service to Linux to improve, well, everything.
No stats, just what I see and consider logically. If you have a .NET (web) app, it makes sense to run it (for free) under Linux (directly or using docker/kubernetes/etc.) instead of paying Windows server license. Sadly I don’t see download counter for dotnet linux images but they would be some sort of an indicator. I can believe Desktop apps are not many, though, for historical reasons mostly. But now one can create a standalone nice looking app as well, perhaps they will be more frequent in future, who knows.
I think it will remain a Windows dev thing. Even if they sometimes use Linux as a runtime. Linux devs will use Python or something else. PHP is legacy really now. Go is popular for apps started at a certain time, but Rust seams to be replacing it. Which is good as Go is as Google as C# is MS.
Very few package maintainers even like providing packages written in C#/.NET. For example, the linux version of git-credential-manager (included with git on windows) is only available on gentoo, nixpkgs, and the AUR. There’s linux builds in the github releases, but nobody will ship it.
It’s more they are focused on running ASP and CLI apps on Linux, there is no official MS GUI library/framework for Linux which is one big thing missing from modern .net, there are a couple of thrid party ones like Avalonia however.
Huh, you are very much mistaken. Since .NET they have official and vast support for running on Linux and MacOS. Before they didn’t and hence Mono/Xamarin.
I guess it’s simply the framing: You don’t ‘donate’ open source projects, they’re already open. Is simply a case of a new organisation taking over a stalled project.
Most of the time a company does something like this they would just let it die. It’s good that Microsoft have at least made the effort to hand it over to a team who’s willing to keep it going.
It’s certainly good, I’m not arguing that. My point is, if the wine team is interested, they can fork the unmaintained project, and work on that. Eventually, people will switch over to the active fork. What Microsoft is doing, is helping the process along, and making it easier. So it’s good, and helpful - but not really a “donation” to winehq.
Actually, wine used to maintain a fork.
…Like MS-DOS getting open sourced. It’s pretty much worthless unless you need to use some really old device.
So it’s like “gifting” someone a puppy.
Probably simply that they are done with it (mono specifically, and possibly .net framework in the long run)
I would be extremely surprised if they are planning to abandon .NET
With ICAAN introduction of gTLDs now they can drop .NET and pick up .ONLINE
Underrated comment.
Well they said .NET Framework, and I also wouldn’t be surprised if they more or less wrapped that up - .NET Framework specifically means the old implementation of the CLR, and it’s been pretty much superseded by an implementation just called .NET, formerly known as .NET Core (definitely not confusing at all, thanks Microsoft). .NET Framework was only written for Windows, hence the need for Mono/Xamarin on other platforms. In contrast, .NET is cross-platform by default.
Cost cutting.
What’s the twist? There must be some reason.
.NET runs natively on Linux since quite some time. Honestly, I don’t get what Mono is even good for these days. Maybe reverse engineering old .NET versions.
.NET runs natively on Linux
Only
.NET Core
sadlyWhen I moved my personal laptop to Linux I needed WINE to run some source-available .NET apps that were written targeting the Windows-only
.NET Framework
All the new stuff is now on .NET Core/5.0 and up at least.
IIRC Mono was mostly used for WASM as it was optimized for smaller builds than the full fat CoreCLR (talking about .NET non-Framework Mono)
WASM? Are you talking about WebAssembly?
.net core is the future but Mono is still important for running legacy .net framework applications like ones that use WinForms or WPF. That’s pretty much it. Anything new should go straight to .net core.
Hm, WinForms and WPF with Wine you mean? Otherwise makes not much sense. Was WPF ever run in this combination!
Ah yeah. Mono didn’t support WPF, but Mono did support running WinForms apps natively on Linux without using Wine.
The problem with WinForms is that at least serious 3rd party libraries do a lot of direct API calls I guess, hence Wine.
Remember back in 2008 when people were losing their shit if someone created a mono app on Linux? Miguel remembers.
Plenty of good reasons existed for that wariness, and if they are doing this now it’s because it benefits MS in some way. Maybe they just got sick of maintaining it and figured they’d buy some goodwill.
I typed that before reading the article then saw this:
Microsoft maintains a modern fork of Mono runtime in the dotnet/runtime repo and has been progressively moving workloads to that fork. That work is now complete, and we recommend that active Mono users and maintainers of Mono-based app frameworks migrate to .NET which includes work from this fork.
Here you go Wine devs, we’re cleaning our our garage, and by the way, we would really like folks to continue to be hooked to the MS teat of .net instead. Please keep maintaining this for us. Aren’t we great?
Beware of Microsoft bearing gifts…
They don’t give a shit anymore. The business customers are paying for 365 and the gamers are paying for gamepass. Those are the money makers now. If you want you don’t run windows, but you’re still running windows apps (including 365) then Microsoft still gets paid.
Extend, Embrace, Extinguish?
Discard, De-license, Delete
I can’t help but think that Microsoft has decided to proceed in some way that will break compatibility, so they’re done with Mono now.
I know it’s skeptical, but I just have no faith in that company to act in good faith with anything.
proceed in some way that will break compatibility
That’s what new major versions are for.
As much as it is beloved, I don’t think windows sees Linux / wine as any kind of substantial threat.
Very true because the relationship they have with laptop manufacturers will ensure windows domination
I think they do in the enterprise hosting / software dev world, which is the reason for so much effort being poured into WSL, but for standard client applications or the “average user” switching to Linux I agree
Yeah, they want to be able to get people totally off Linux as a root OS.
By creating WSL, they now can say, "Oh, you like to develop for/on Linux? Well good news, Windows has Linux built in! Just come on over to Windows and you can use WSL and Linux on Azure for all your Linux needs!
And WSL is pretty good according to one of the other guys in my department that’s been using it.
The problem for Microsoft is that my entire user experience is better when I boot straight into Linux and use all their software (except vscode) in browser tabs.
I think it is partly that, but I think it is partly all the bright young tech kids coming in from uni want Linux not Windows. I think it’s targeted at inside and outside.
dotnet is now a multiplatform framework itself. Do they still need mono?
Is mono not the .net framework version? .net core has always been multi platform, but is not compatible with .net framework apps. So any .net apps built against 3.5 or 4.x would still need to use mono.
It is the .net framework version. I’m not sure mono is used in anything but Xamarin and a handful of gnome apps. Xamarin has a clear upgrade path to MAUI but not without some effort and the risk of missing nugets, I did it on a small app once. This isn’t super useful.
I can’t help but think that Microsoft has decided to proceed in some way that will break compatibility, so they’re done with Mono now.
It’s essentially right there in the article:
Microsoft maintains a modern fork of Mono runtime in the dotnet/runtime repo and has been progressively moving workloads to that fork. That work is now complete, and we recommend that active Mono users and maintainers of Mono-based app frameworks migrate to .NET which includes work from this fork.
We’re done with it, you guys can take the scraps. By the way, ours is better and folks should move to it.
Microsoft has had dotnet-core for awhile. If you are running production dotnet loads (eg a C# app), you’ve probably been using those Linux containers for awhile. This doesn’t surprise me; they usually aren’t interested in maintaining an open version of software they have more restrictive licenses for. Enterprises will continue to use dotnet-core and Microsoft will probably do something to shoot mono in the foot in a few years.
Actually everybody will use .NET and not Mono if possible, as it’s officially supported and a successor.
The reason to use mono over dotnet is political. This is stirring up some really old shit; I expect a continuation of that shit now. Mono is currently MIT as is dotnet core. Who knows what direction each project will go now? MS has a history of fucking with licenses and Wine uses copyleft setups.
.Net sucks, compared to mono. The compiler is slower, filesize after optimization is still higher and the character set in cli is far more limited when I compile an app with .Net.
Source? I’d like to see some modern numbers about those compile times. Hasn’t been my experience at all.
… and execution speed is faster. And they’re both open source. I mean, good thing we have choices, right?
Are those the most important factors for a framework? Or in the top 5?
Now give us DirectX on Linux
But Vulkan is better anyway
Even so, having more software natively supported will always be a good thing. Half the reason why people drag their feet on switching to Linux is because of the lack of support for their favorite software.
Right? Dude Vulkan has impressed me a bunch lately. I use it for Deadlock and it feels much smoother than the streamers I see using DirectX, which is crazy since Deadlock is super early alpha. More stuff needs to support Vulkan
wait, you got deadlock to work? Mine crashes trying to join a match. (tbf, i haven’t cared enough to dig into why).
For end users, sure. It’s specifically designed as a lower level interface that’s harder for developers to implement.
Windows users use DXVK to boost framerates, it was the solution for making Elden Ring playable it’s first month
I would say at that point the cost/reward is worth it
Microsoft is cancer but then so much of tech is going that way. We shouldn’t lose sight of small victories, this is a good result. The EU is enforcing more openness and transparency in the sector. These are the type of changes we need.
FYI - the owner of this site, gamingonlinux, was a mod on the !linux_gaming@lemmy.ml community until they were caught abusing their moderator powers. Then they deleted their account and complained on mastodon that it’s stupid design that mod logs are public.
I’m boosting this and the screenshots too, but just thought I’d point out for quick scrollers that it does not seem as dramatic as this comment initially lets you believe.
I mean it’s awkward, but just seems more like your usual social awkwardness/incompetence than malicious behavior as such.
I agree that the main interaction was mild, but if they were willing to go this far to try to hide this, then that shows how low the bar is for them to try to manipulate things to their favor and liking with the trust that was given them as a moderator.
Look at the screenshots few comments down. That was a shitty mod. They can have those back at reddit.
I really dislike that guy. I was interested in his website but lost interest because of him. I already forgot why I started disliking him. But this just adds to that.
You seem very hurt about that one interaction you had with him months ago. If you’re gonna comment that under every gamingonlinux article you’ll have a lot to do.
It has nothing to do with “being hurt”. They showed the kind of scummy person they are.
They showed that if they were willing to go this far to try to hide this, then that shows how low the bar is for them to try to manipulate things to their favor and liking with the trust that was given them as a moderator.
I don’t like the idea of that kind of person reaping the benefits of their site being linked to on the platform they tried to manipulate.
I don’t like the idea of people not facing the consequences of these kinds of actions.
I think people should know who this person is, since they showed their true self and then tried to hide it.
I’d rather have that than have moderators bringing their shitty reddit leftover mentalities and think they can throw tantrums anytime someone critiques their post title. I mean homie was a moderator, who quit the site entirely as his reaction to the same interaction you are criticizing homie here for his reaction after bringing up a relevant commentary about the individual from the post.
Edit: Plus!, how often does anyone on the internet ever actually follow up a real live relevant to the post anecdotal account AAAAAAND follow up with empirical evidence lol.
That’s one of the things I love in lemmy. Moderation transparency.
lemmy.ml doing .ml-things
What does this comment mean. No other communities have bad moderators?
Oh they absolutely do, but ml has a reputation for being particularly poorly moderated
And it’s a behaviour that stems from the admins who’ll ban users from the entire instance if they disagree with their opinions.
It’s the only instance I have blocked at my account level so I don’t see their communties.
You really should look it up since you’re on the site. Make your own mind up about if you want your account to be associated with people like that.
Fuck that guy.
All moderators should be assumed to be abusers. Acab
Well yeah that’s why the mod log is public. It’s a feature not a bug
Exafuckingly, no moderators should be offended by what I said, it’s a truism. Transparency is just the first step, there should not be “a” moderator, it is a collective duty that all must participate and that none of us can be trusted alone with.
Do you have any sources for this?
Deleted comment:
I called them out for not following their own community rules:
Please be nice to other members. Anyone not being nice will be banned. Keep it fun, respectful and just be awesome to each other.
and they deleted their account.
Yep, they had proof.
What was wrong with them removing your comment? You were being annoying 🤷♂️
Their response seemed perfectly measured to someone being needlessly pedantic.
Yes, their comment was extremely annoying, both in tone (whining) and content (TL;DR: “pls spoonfeed me basic reading comprehension”). If the mod simply removed the comment, or issued an official warning, it would be 100% warranted.
However, what the non-mod user is saying ITT about moderator abuse is still spot on. The mod in question answered to the whining in tone, tried to cover their own arse with content removal, and then went to whine in Mastodon about the events, or the fact that there’s transparency functionality in Lemmy (the mod log) against the exact same behaviour that they showed there.
So it’s a case where both sides were wrong but given their relative positions the mod being wrong is a bigger deal.
Yes, their comment was extremely annoying, both in tone (whining) and content (TL;DR: “pls spoonfeed me basic reading comprehension”). If the guy simply removed the comment, or issued an official warning, it would be 100% warranted.
It’s your right to have an opinion on whether or not you think I was annoying. However, the rest of that is just wrong and needlessly rude. My comment was only to point out how many different ways the title could be interpreted without being explicit in what happened. There is no need to be so rude with your wild assumption. I just found the title to be mildly frustrating due to being vague because of the missing word, and I thought I would express that. Does that warrant moderation action? No. It breaks no rules and there was no intent to be disrespectful, nor is there any real tangible proof of any disrespectful intent.
Didn’t you leave Lemmy?
I could write a full wall of text explaining everything wrong with your comment, but to keep it short:
Cut off the crap. You aren’t fooling anyone here by playing the victim.
Don’t bother.
I absolutely agree with you but it didn’t really need to be said did it?
You 100% understood what the title was saying, so complaining that the title was ambiguous, and barely so, was pointless wasn’t it?
Clearly everyone else agreed since you were downvoted.
I don’t agree with you, but you can think all you want about how annoying or pointless my comment was. That is no excuse for their response, then they doubled down and tried to hide it by abusing their moderator powers. That’s the only part of this that matters.
Yeah I would ban 24 hours and continue with life.
I agree with you, but what does a moderator do once they engage with the user other than remove the whole interaction? They deleted the whole thread, not just their opposition.
Seems like the the whining on mastadon about transparency was more because this guy is following them around harrassing them via public modlog screenshots, when on any other forum it wouldn’t even matter… unless it actually mattered.
In this situation, my view is OP made a mess, pissed jannie added to the mess, OP feigned shock, pissed jannie thought better and cleaned the mess up.
Yet OP here is still trying to stir the pot like the mod was silencing their opinion or something. It was a worthless comment.
I agree with you, but what does a moderator do once they engage with the user other than remove the whole interaction?
You think before engaging. And if you fuck it up, you apologise to the community (not to that specific user) for what you’ve done wrong. But unless the content is sensitive (for example, the other user posted something illegal), you keep it alone, at most you lock it.
Lemmy is too small and this snafoo is so pointless that I think a community apology would be hilarious.
I think the punishment should fit the crime. Having some weirdo follow your posts around calling you manipulative and toxic for months is just… its too much. It’s a linux gaming forum, some social ineptitude is to be expected. Users shouldn’t feel entitled to continuously attack a mod who “mod abused” them with the assault equivalent of a light shove.
It’s just the most insulated privileged non-problem, my god.
Seems like the the whining on mastadon about transparency was more because this guy is following them around harrassing them via public modlog screenshots
Baseless accusation. Got any proof?
yes. this thread lol
“Annoying” is subjective, and there is no rule against being perceived as being “annoying” in the community rules.
The only rule is to be respectful, which they did not follow at all, then tried to hide it.
Nothing they did appears to have negatively altered the quality of the comments or discussion.
Respect is also subjective. Your initial post seemed to be mocking and disrespectful for no apparent reason. I’d argue the comment section is more respectful with your remarks gone.
Objectively, it appears they were right to delete their account. You’re stalking posts mentioning their site and complaining about this nothing burger.
I would also distance myself from pedantic harrassers and focus on literally anything else productive if I were them.
Are you Liam in disguise or something? Why are you trying to make up shit like I’m “stalking” posts mentioning their site? I’m a user of Lemmy just the same as anyone else and when I see posts that bring up this toxic person’s site, I can easily help inform people of their gross manipulative behavior.
There isn’t even some grand “toxic” or “manipulative” coverup. The mod deleted the whole interaction because it was pointless and rude from both of you. It added nothing.
The jannie took out the trash and you’re still harrassing them about the subjectivity of annoyance and respect. Y’know who makes that subjective choice? The mods.
I have no ties to this, but I am in opposition to this neat little narrative you appear to be creating tossing out buzzwords like toxic, gross, manipulative without evidence to back it up.
Pointlessly snarky comments are one of the worst parts of Reddit and Lemmy and I fully support mods putting a stop to that. I guess the important part is to be transparent about it
But if it was transparent you wouldnt be able to see it
Now that I’ve willfully misrepresented what you said, I am eager for your reply so i can pointlessly be an asshole about it!
/assholesnark.
Whether you consider it whining, depends upon the tone you read it in.
I just read that comment and didn’t feel annoyed enough to even give a downvote and the mod’s reply seemed far too annoying.
The username on the other hand…
The “down” was definitely edited after the fact.
You’re definitely right. But without any sort of context, just the screengrab with the title corrected, it makes OPs rant seem even more pointless.
It could have been one word if they were genuinely confused: “…Shuts?”
Or if they were smart enough to realize it was an error:
“There’s a word missing…”
Not gonna lie he was right about the shuts thing. It’s not a common phrasing but totally legit and you did seem kinda dickish when you pointed it out.
Pointing something out is not inherently being a dick. It did not warrant the response, particularly a response that clearly breaks the rules of the community they were trusted with the responsibility to manage.
It was snarky. Some people interpret it as rudeness. He’s still a shithead for sure.
No snark was intended, but I can see why people could interpret it poorly. I won’t claim to be perfect at communicating over Lemmy comments.
Thanks! Not quite as wild as I was expecting (kind of surprised this was enough to push them to delete their account)
Probably decided “fuck this” and quit volunteering instead of dealing with drama llamas.
Mod abuse is mod abuse, regardless of the level. They clearly felt embarrassed for needlessly being mean and getting caught for it after trying to hide the fact.
Then they tried to excuse it on their mastodon.
If they’re willing to go through all that for something so minor, they would absolutely be willing to do the same to hide worse behavior.
TIL that Mono is a Microsoft project. I always thought it was an open source reverse engineered .NET
It was only a Microsoft project the moment they bought Xamarin.
It was at first, then they became a for profit organization, Xamarin, who was bought by Microsoft.
Read the headline and thought “there’s a catch…”
Finally got around to reading the post and Microsoft is very politely saying “we’ve completed stealing their shit now. Don’t know why anyone would want it, use ours now. You can have it though.”
Thanks I guess? I’m glad it’s out of their hands now and with an open source group that cares and can make a difference.