Paging Product Manager Yoda

With the impending Borgification--yeah, I know I'm mixing sci-fi metaphors--of Sun (and thus Java) by Oracle, it seemed logical to hedge my cross-platform programming bets with .NET. A few months back, Microsoft more or less agreed to remove the legal cloud that had been hanging over Mono, an open-source, cross-platform implementation of parts of .NET. Big ups to them for that.

So I returned (after a multi-month hiatus) to the Mono website tonight, all set to start downloading and installing and "Hello, World!"ing, and...wait a minute...whaddya mean that Mono 2.2 implements something between .NET 2.0 and .NET 3.5? That's a little...imprecise. And, uh-oh, not all the APIs are documented...I don't even know what some of them do. Oops, and the on-site articles haven't been updated since 2007. A couple big red lights started flashing.

Okay, open-source usually means volunteer work: I get that. (I've taken enough flak about the deficiencies of code I've written on my own time--trust me, I understand the limitations.)

The problem I actually have is that the project is officially sponsored by Novell. It's not a SourceForge-hosted effort. Nor is it the silver standard, meaning a project under the wing of the Apache Foundation. (The gold standard being, of course, the Linux kernel itself.) I mean, we live in an age where companies will pay obscene amounts of money to slap their name on a ballpark. But here, Novell (a software company) has the opportunity to make a highly professional impression on a highly relevant customer demographic (programmers), but it puts its logo on a clearly under-funded, under-staffed effort.

The upshot is: Whatever money Novell has put into this effort in the name of marketing has had negative returns. I've blasted Adobe for the moldy crumbs it throws as "alms" to Flash/Flex developers on Linux. Novell doesn't come off as quite so high-handed, but it's the same essential bone-headedness at work. Unlike Adobe (who spawned Flex), Novell has the option of disowning their support of the Mono effort. Sure, they'll take some flak, but is that really worse than being so tight with their actual support? Me, I don't think so.

Closed-source companies supporting open-source projects isn't always so lame. True, I prefer Ubuntu Linux overall, but few years ago was successfully running OpenSUSE, which (ironically enough) is also sponsored by Novell. (I only went back to Ubuntu after the OpenSUSE had issues with a new motherboard.) Then, too, I see the regression test results from Sun Microsystems come through the Derby mailing list every day--which is all the more remarkable when you consider that Sun is thus supporting software originally developed by IBM.

I'm not arguing that companies that make software are in any way obliged to supply open-source project with money, staff, hosting, code or other resources. But, for pity's sake, none at all looks better than treating the open-source project like the proverbial red-headed stepchild. Master Yoda had the right of it: "Do or do not. There is no try."