How to run SimpleHTTPServer on IronPython on Mono

[Paul Boddie]

sanxiyn at gmail.com wrote:
> Paul Boddie wrote:
> > [1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/08/msg00089.html
>
> Do you realize *I* was the person asking for clarification of the license
> on debian-legal mailing list?

Yes. And I thereby deduce that you also believe that having Debian
approval would mean a lot for IronPython's acceptance, since the Debian
people are regarded as being the most stringent with respect to Free
Software-compatible licensing in distributions.

> > If IronPython users consider themselves to be
> > part of the wider Python community, is it a good thing that they're
> > reliant on Microsoft to keep that community from fragmenting?
>
> I quite don't get what you are trying to say here.

This was about how CPython can get away from other implementations by
adding new features. As we've seen with Jython, if there's relatively
little community interest in keeping other Python implementations
up-to-date, and if there's no sponsor with the manpower on hand to do
the work, then everyone in the CPython camp is busy using such new
features in their code, while everyone else is busy wondering if
they'll ever see such new features. Microsoft seem to be committed to
delivering IronPython, and perhaps if they lose interest the community
will step in and do the work, but in such a situation I feel that the
whole Python community (users of CPython *and* other implementations
combined) will suffer "fragmentation" as CPython speeds ahead and
IronPython lags behind just as Jython has done.

Sure, choosing Jython or IronPython is usually a trade-off between
wanting some of the nice Python libraries and wanting access
respectively to Java and CLR libraries, and perhaps many people using
these implementations don't consider themselves as part of (or primary
members of) the wider Python community; if so, it could be said that
the Python "brand" is somewhat diminished already, since people may be
willing to accept slightly more limited variants of the language, using
implementation-specific libraries where standard library facilities
exist, and generally writing an increasingly divergent dialect of the
language.

Personally, I think that having more implementations is a good thing
for the language, mostly because it leads to new and interesting
technical opportunities, but more engagement and support from the
community "standards legislators" will definitely become necessary over
time to avoid confusion about what is and is not "proper Python",
especially if more people don't arrive at Python via CPython.

Paul