I really feel for you situation, and I would love to help by chatting. I've been involved in many different startups, from working with friends on no salary, to our current $12 mm series-A endeavor. I've seen tons of startups rise and fall, all sorts, and I think I may be able to lend some advice or just be a sounding board.
Please send me an email if you're interested: carter@gameclosure.com.
Microsoft owns the .NET ecosystem; they probably are looking to expand/protect their rights on C# et al. more than they want to make a direct attack on Android... (though it is a nice bonus for them.)
Weren't some people here suggesting some months ago that Google could use C# as an alternative to Java for Android, because C# is an ISO standard or something, and it's protected against Microsoft doing what you're suggesting?
I don't know much about the C# license, but to me suggesting Google would use C# seemed very strange, and probably very foolish on Google's part if they were ever to do that, but a lot of people thought that would be a good idea at the time.
Either way, I think this is just another vector of attack from Microsoft towards Google to hurt them, along with stuff like #droidrage, scroogle, the push for the Google search anti-trust, and now the push for the Android anti-trust in EU, too. They just want to hurt Google, badly. It doesn't really matter how they'll do it. They'll simply explore and take advantage of all opportunities to do that. It's actually a very similar strategy they've used in the past like a decade or more ago. Microsoft hasn't changed.
Making the language syntax and semantics a standard is only part of having a working runtime. MSIL, the VM, and the class library are also part of a complete implementation.
In Android, the Java language syntax and semantics are used. In part, the class library is derived from Apache Harmony, though the implementation has substantially diverged, and in part is the original work of Google. The runtime is all specific to Android. The VM does not use Java bytecodes. It uses Dalvik bytecodes.
This is a neat trick: You can use Eclipse and most of the Java compilation chain. It diverges from Java where Java bytecodes are translated to Dalvik bytecodes. That means that every tool, even the ones that depend on Java bytecodes, works for Android development.
But (!) that elegant way it all snaps together means you need to start by making C# a JVM language, which, as far as I know, hasn't been done.
A deep, dark irony of this is that the modern Microsoft runtime environment and class library stems from Visual J++, which Sun sued out of existence. At the time, it was by far the best Java for writing interactive.applications.
C# and the entire .NET platform is an ECMA standard.
Mono is a non-MS backed implementation of that standard. All of these uses of C# and .NET are legal, as far as I know.
On a side note, I've noticed that pretty much every Microsoft story posted on HN includes an antagonistic comment by you. It seems like you have quite the grudge against Microsoft.
For example, here is a comment by you dumping on Microsoft after TypeScript was released -- a completely open source language contribution that was also accompanied by plugins for non-MS editors/IDEs.[1]
I don't even really feel like discussing things with you. You've obviously made up your mind.
Basic idea is this: You put all your real-time stuff in a message queue (MQ) which communicates directly with the browser. For authentication / authorization and various other forms of permission / logging, you have the MQ communicate with the web framework via http callbacks (Webhooks) and a standard REST API. So the architecture is:
User <--Websocket--> MQ :: publish/subscribe
MQ --Webhooks--> PHP/Django/Servlets/etc. :: user signed on, user joined a channel, etc.
PHP --REST--> MQ :: publish(msg), remove(user, channel), etc.
The key is to include cookie information in the callbacks from MQ -> PHP so the callback happens in the context of the user session. Suddenly you can do things like write a chat app in 30 lines of php + js, or a persistent time series in 20, and it really feels magical.
I actually started Hookbox almost as a statement of irony, because I was really frustrated about the major pushback I was getting to sockets in web browsers at the time. I'd just finished writing/submitting the initial proposal for Websocket, and I wrote this tongue-incheeck piece about the mismatch between typical web development and network server programming: http://svwebbuilder.wordpress.com/2008/10/20/html5-websocket...
So Hookbox started as a 2-3 day project that took on a life of its own for a while and ended up being really useful. This project was one of my smaller open source codebases and to this day I receive tons of interest and requests for maintenance, though I've abandoned it for years due to time.
I'm sure there's a huge market for this sort of thing. It's great to see Pushpin, I'll definitely check it out!
I would never publicly post opinions that could put me or my current or future employer/company into legal jeopardy with respect to discrimination against protected classes.
Yet, there seems to be quite a bit of this on here.
Entrepreneurship isn't about having a magical nose for value, and unerringly finding chests of gold at every turn.
Rather, it's about the optimistic spirit, the emotional strength, and ultimately the endurance to keep going even when it's so hard you don't want to get up out of bed.
If you figure this part of entrepreneurship out, as Eric has, you can probably build something amazing.
I think you need to lay off the entrepreneurship porn.
Entrepreneurship is about building a business, and people have demonstrated they can do that even if they're a pessimist, lack emotional strength, or have any kind of endurance.
There is so much noise out there that mediocre companies manage to position themselves as the best of the best, or at least manage to make the best companies look foolish at this point.
The problem is that it's a lot easier to imitate the talking points of successful startup than it is to actually imitate the success.
Off hand, I'd guess that the contractor who builds the house puts in the cheapest thing he can find, it works until it breaks and the HVAC guys get called "cuz the heat's broke". If a new thermostat is required, the cycle begins again.
If this is indeed the case, then its no surprise that thermostats are the most boring, user unfriendly things imaginable because they are more or less universally selected by price alone.
I feel like there's a lot of room for another kritik at the point when the 'quals' of this card are called suspect: Opp questions 'quals' of famous blogger, thus marginalizing independent authors in favor of institutionalized analysis... which limits free speech... leading to tyranny and nuclear war.
Please send me an email if you're interested: carter@gameclosure.com.