Good for those who have to slave for the evil empire.
Poison for the rest.
Microsoft has opened its .Net programming framework to the developer community by releasing the code for a broad range of .Net-related software as open-source projects under the stewardship of a new, dedicated foundation. The surprise announcement came during the Thursday keynote at Redmond's annual Build developer conference …
Roslyn is the real meat here because many of the other libraries are apache open source already, which is great, but the next step is to offer the MS .NET runtime for {Unix,linux bsd,posix} deployment, very few will use it, but will settle concerns about Mono performance/compatibility.
Ironically, we've had to wait for the one that coined the phrase to fly away to see some more steps in that direction... not really, what has happened is that Ballmer used developers to spread the Windows application portfolio. Once MS reached world domination, they started to look for other means of locking in customers.
Hopefully this will spur cross platform development using .Net technology, to the point of having a decent set of tools that don't have any hard locks with the Windows world. Which ironically for a technology invented to displace Java, is the only way for .Net to survive at least as long as Java has.
Perhaps MS has not realized the irony that becoming more open makes easier for their customers to move away from their software? Or it is that they intend to compete on price and quality instead of "embrace, extend, extinguish"? I'd really welcome the former, and the latter would be business as usual.
"De Icaza has long been one of the most vocal proponents of open-source development using Microsoft technologies"
'The project looks to be concerned with permitting “Open Source” programs to work on the Windows platform and thus divert valuable developer time away from free platforms such as Gnu/Linux.`
Never met the guy and I really haven't heard much of what he's up to for the last few years, but it should be remembered that, prior to his involvement in Gnome, he had tried to join Microsoft but was unsuccessful, IIRC, due to not having a degree and therefore not being eligible for a visa at the time.
Not a criticism, but he's always come across to me as having something of a fixation with Microsoft and I always thought it's a matter of time before he joins their ranks (I have nothing against that, on the contrary--see below).
On the other hand, I do sort of blame him for Gnome, him being one of the main drivers behind it.
I have development experience with Gtk+ and in my opinion that's a fine toolkit for lightweight GUIs (I used it for GUIs running on embedded devices in the early 00's), so I am not criticising that at all--besides, Icaza has nothing to do with it. But Gnome the desktop environment... ☹ ☹ ☹ Something which is neither a proper lightweight environment nor a technologically and ergonomically advanced one. With apologies to the many talented devs that have worked on it over the years, but I find it disappointing both as a developer and as a user, and I think the FOSS desktop ecosystem would have been much better without the distraction and expense caused by Gnome.
Not saying that Icaza has intentionally tried to sabotage FOSS on the desktop, but really, I'd rather he would have gone and got himself a degree and joined MS back in the day.
Just my opinion, with all due respect to Icaza. Feel free to disagree.
Best thing is that Microsoft is now putting its money where its mouth is with regards to software patents, or at least in relation to the dotNET ones. I'd still like to see Microsoft release most of its obsolete OSes and software development environments and productivity software under the GPL v3 so as to declare an enforceable "software patent truce", and redirect money from the law courts to software development and the solution of problems instead of their creation. (Of course, Microsoft would need to talk to IBM and HP about them open-sourcing the obsolete OS/2 and VMS source trees as well, since Windows and WinNT are bound up with those two source thickets as well.)
@Lapun Mankimasta: "I'd still like to see Microsoft release most of its obsolete OSes and software development environments and productivity software under the GPL v3"
Even if they wanted to, they couldn't, because the GPLv3 places a number of restrictions on what you can do in source code that are incompatible with existing software bases.
"...an independent group [that] will include representatives from Microsoft Open Technologies and Redmond's .Net development team, along with Xamarin CTO Miguel de Icaza".
Doesn't look very independent to me.
Let's see:
A company representative, a company representative and a MS shill.
Nope, just a blind to fool the naive and unwary.
At least de Icaza had the courtesy to use a Mac and not a Linux box to demonstrate his latest Trojan Horse.
As the old saying goes: "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts."
When .NET was announced, back in 2000, I'm pretty certain it was mentioned as layer which would (could or should) be platform agnostic. I.e. - it didn't *have* to run on Windows. As long as the .NET framework was supplied, an application would run.
I thought at the time it was a clever move, as it meant MS could still punt a .NET version of Office to other OS users - Mac and Linux being key.
Why did it never pan out that way ?
I thought at the time it was a clever move, as it meant MS could still punt a .NET version of Office to other OS users - Mac and Linux being key.
Why did it never pan out that way ?
A/V for linux anyone? (frisk's product is decent, but really, do we want that beast from Intel ?)
I do hope that the ASP.Net stuff is thoroughly severed from the OS connections it relies on now.
Personally I'd still not be inclined to install (.NET) anything on my desktop.
That said, despite DLL hell on the MS side, this will make some things (hint, games) more likely to see the light of day on the *nix side of the battle.
Certain parts of ASP.NET were IE specific even when it was about version 2.x - browser repositioning being one. Also, it was supposed to be clean enough that you could just write code - but I found that anything non-trivial needed VS - which then compiled in all sorts of stuff and made deployment a nightmare.
I really tried with ASP.NET, I really did - but LAMP proved to be far more powerful and deployable.
Indeed. Let me join you in your cynicism.
If the article is to be believed, all the freed software is compilers and language tools. Given the maturity of this branch of software engineering (yacc and lex are as old as I am), I'd have thought writing a C# compiler was the least of your problems in trying to make C# or .NET useful on non-Windows platforms. Even if it weren't, Microsoft already give away a perfectly usable C# compiler.
Have they also released the extensive framework libraries that you need to do anything useful? Is this the same .NET that was pushed into the sidings with the announcement of WinRT a year or so back? Is there anyone at Microsoft who would be excited to be moved to the .NET team today?