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Open.NET — .NET Libraries Go "Open Source" 310

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the close-but-no-cigar dept.
An anonymous reader writes "whurley just posted a blog about Microsoft's announcement To Make .NET Libraries available under a crippled 'Open Source' program using their new Microsoft Reference License. The post includes the official pr doc from Microsoft as well as several points about how this really isn't open source. One example: If a developer finds a bug in the code, rather than fixing it themselves and submitting a patch to the community they'll be encouraged to submit feedback via the product feedback center."
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Open.NET — .NET Libraries Go "Open Source" More

Open.NET — .NET Libraries Go "Open Source"

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  • Could be worse (Score:5, Interesting)

    by east coast ( 590680 ) on Wednesday October 03, 2007 @12:59PM (#20840467)
    they'll be encouraged to submit feedback via the product feedback center

    In some ways I'd rather see these things organized "under one roof". As long as the product feedback center is responsive I don't think this is going to be a big deal for most.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Rob T Firefly ( 844560 )
      Maybe I'm biased - ok, definitely I'm biased - but this just doesnt feel like "open source" to me so much as "beta-testing with a peek at the code" or, to be blunt, "do our debugging for us."

      • Re:Could be worse (Score:4, Insightful)

        by moore.dustin ( 942289 ) on Wednesday October 03, 2007 @01:08PM (#20840627) Homepage
        So what? If they want you to do the debugging for them via this method then it is up to us, the users, to satisfy that. If you do not want a part of it then do not participate. It is as simple as that. If there are people out there that are willing to look and submit bugs then the program is a success to Microsoft and that is all that matters here, how it helps Microsoft. Remember though, that is not a bad thing, it is just business.

      • Re:Could be worse (Score:5, Informative)

        by Goaway ( 82658 ) on Wednesday October 03, 2007 @01:10PM (#20840673) Homepage
        Yes, you are right. This does not feel like "open source". You know why? Because it is not open source. Nowhere in their announcement do Microsoft claim it is open source. They even explicitly mention that it is not open source.

        • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

          by cstdenis ( 1118589 )
          If you can see the code, its open source.

          It's not FOSS. It's not OSI. Its not free as in beer or freedom. But it is open source.

          • Re:Could be worse (Score:5, Insightful)

            by JebusIsLord ( 566856 ) on Wednesday October 03, 2007 @02:47PM (#20842253)
            If you can see the code, it's visible source. The word "open" has many different connotations. Open to view? Open to change? Open to redistribute? The open source community almost always assumes the latter two definitions, so Microsoft has done well by avoiding this loaded terminology. As you can see, the author of the article puts the words "open source" in Microsoft's mouth anyhow, because they knew it would cause controversy where there otherwise isn't any.

            • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

              by dvice_null ( 981029 )
              Son: *slams the door and locks the dad behind it*
              Dad: Open the door!
              Son: The word "open" has many different connotations. Open to view? Open to change? Open to redistribute? ...
              Dad: Just open the god damn door and let me in!

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by asd-Strom ( 792539 )
        Yeah real open source is like "beta-testing with full control of the code" or, to be blunt, "do our debugging for us and also fix the code".

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by suv4x4 ( 956391 )
        Maybe I'm biased - ok, definitely I'm biased - but this just doesnt feel like "open source" to me so much as "beta-testing with a peek at the code" or, to be blunt, "do our debugging for us."

        Yup, open source is "do our coding for us". I'm talking about when a corporation opens their source and wait for the community to do their work for them (Mozilla, Sun etc.).

        Microsoft isn't worse, at least they explicitly state in their license what is this about.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tim C ( 15259 )
        but this just doesnt feel like "open source" to me so much as "beta-testing with a peek at the code" or, to be blunt, "do our debugging for us."

        You're right - if it was open source, it would be "do our debugging for us, and fix it, and submit a patch".

        No-one is under any obligation, moral, legal or otherwise, to do anything more than tell MS that it's broken. (Or in fact, even to do that much)

        At least if you have the source you have a better chance of figuring out what's going on, and whether it's your code

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bigpat ( 158134 )

      In some ways I'd rather see these things organized "under one roof". As long as the product feedback center is responsive I don't think this is going to be a big deal for most.
      As long as when the product feedback center becomes unresponsive you can go take the code, give the software a new name and organize the software project under a new roof, then it is open source. If not then it is just "open source" marketing.
    • Not to mention, it's impossible to put a codefix in a text based feedback. I mean, it's not like computer software is initially written in text...

      is it? ./sarcasm --off
    • giving a "won't fix" answer to a bug is still considered 'responsive' in some circles.
      Would this be an acceptable response if you have a problem?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ILongForDarkness ( 1134931 )
      I couldn't agree more. I also agree with MS on this. You don't want people screwing around with custom builds of the framework. Then something stops working and you end up being a flamebait for the mass media. I suspect must have seen the 20 min, or 3 page articles in newspaper/TV. In this case it would be like:

      Blah, blah, .Net causes crashes, crashes caused airline reservation system to fail, medical devices weren't working ... etc. Somewhere near the bottom, users were using Uberfast .Net 3.0 an opensource distrobution of the .Net Framework. MS refused to comment.

      The end result would be that MS gets blamed for bugs that aren't theirs. Their is plenty of flamebait from MS already, it is good to see they are trying to be helpful without risking themselves to m

    • Also -- "encouraged" or "required"? If it's not required, I don't see what the problem is. MS may of course encourage people to do things however they wish.

  • More objective summaries (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pembo13 ( 770295 ) on Wednesday October 03, 2007 @01:05PM (#20840571) Homepage
    Seriously, most of us capable of seeing the negatives don't need help from the poster to see them. All those who don't see these licenses as not completely open source aren't going to have their minds changed by mini rants.

  • Unemployable? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by overshoot ( 39700 ) on Wednesday October 03, 2007 @01:05PM (#20840575)
    Then there's the fascinating question of future employment prospects once you've seen the "crown jewels." A key part of copyright law is whether you've had the opportunity to copy the material rather than recreate it (clean room.) Keeping your developers "uncontaminated" can be a tricky business.

    Being exposed raises some serious issues regarding the future employability of the "exposed" developers.

    • Open source opponents complain that the GPL is viral. I think Microsoft's "open source" license is also viral.

      Download a copy. Look at the source code. Now your brain is infected with the Microsoft "Intellectual Property" virus. If you ever work on Mono, could the fact that you have looked at Microsoft's source become some basis for a lawsuit?

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by stinerman ( 812158 )

        If you ever work on Mono, could the fact that you have looked at Microsoft's source become some basis for a lawsuit?

        Looking at a copyrighted work and then making a similar copyrighted work is completely legal. Otherwise, any of us who watched a James Bond movie would not be able to make our own spy movies. Copyrights aren't patents. Copyright infringement only occurs when you copy works you don't have the rights to copy. Think of looking at the source and then making your own version an analog to "putti

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by DaHat ( 247651 )
      There is nothing of the sort.

      Your argument is like saying "If you've ever read a book you can never write another book on a related subject as your insights would be contaminated by the earlier reads or through outright copies."

      "Nyeh, it.s not an original movie/song... they could have copied from this previous work that was similar. They shouldn't have made their own."

      The issue of copying of code or misappropriating of IP is as old as both have been around... and is generally only relevant in very specific

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You know it's funny how you Open Source people constantly wave this red flag about lawsuits and contamination when the reality is Microsoft has never sued any individual over these issue. The corporations they have sued have always been after long tedious attempts at out of the court resolutions.

      • Re:Unemployable? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Mspangler ( 770054 ) on Wednesday October 03, 2007 @09:14PM (#20846583)
        "You know it's funny how you Open Source people constantly wave this red flag about lawsuits and contamination when the reality is Microsoft has never sued any individual over these issue."

        But their stooge, SCO, did sue IBM over the exact same prInciple. Once you've seen the holy (SysV/.Net) code, you are forever doomed to merely recreate it's glory, and therefore your work is really their work, and you have to pay them to use the code you wrote.

        Yes SCO lost, but can you afford several million in legal fees to exonerate yourself? Especially since Microsoft has already been making noise about all the patent violations already in Linux? They want a fight that they can win against Linux. Since SCO has flamed out, they will be more careful the second time; to wit, they will make sure there really is some code that at least looks like theirs before they file suit.

        So, in proper /. format;

        1) Get hapless kid to look at .Net code.
        2) Kid then goes and implements something similar in Mono or elsewhere in Linux.
        3) Sic the lawyers on the kid, terrorizing said kid into admitting he copied the secret code.
        4) Wave around headlines "Linux coder admits copying secret MS code!"
        5) Turn loose Lyons, Enderle, O'Gara, Didio, and any other shill they can buy to terrorize PHBs.
        6) Profit!!

        Optional #7, buy wreckage of Novell for two ship's peanuts, set up program to "Help honest businesses bamboozled by those Linux Pirates to convert to a safe, legal operating environment."

        A simple straightforward business plan with a very low set up cost. And no downside. If it fails, (no one takes the bait) in a year no one will remember it anyway.

  • .NET is already open (Score:5, Informative)

    by iONiUM ( 530420 ) on Wednesday October 03, 2007 @01:06PM (#20840583) Journal
    You can already see all the source of the .NET framework using Lutz Roeder's Reflection tool. I use this all the time to see how the innards of functions work when something goes screwy with .NET.

    If you're interested you can check out the free tool here: http://www.aisto.com/roeder/dotnet/ [aisto.com]
    • But the Reflector tool doesn't include comments in the code, doesn't allow for integrated VS 2008 debugging, (including downloading source code on-demand, matching the exact .NET lib that you are debugging), and a whole lot more.
      http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/10/03/releasing-the-source-code-for-the-net-framework-libraries.aspx [asp.net]

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Allador ( 537449 )
      Not quite.

      The reflector re-generates source code based on the IL. But there's no guarantee that its the SAME source code. It is perfectly possible and reasonable to have two different sources compile to the same IL. Now they're not going to be drastically different, but they can be meaningfully different. But you're always going to lose some information content when compiling down to IL.

      In addition, the VS.NET debugger will grab symbols for the source code as well, which allows the debugger to link dire

  • encouraged (Score:4, Funny)

    by garlicbready ( 846542 ) on Wednesday October 03, 2007 @01:06PM (#20840591)

    they'll be
    encouraged to submit feedback via the product feedback center

    I do not think that word means what you think it means

  • Thanks, open source spin doctors (Score:5, Informative)

    by Goaway ( 82658 ) on Wednesday October 03, 2007 @01:08PM (#20840619) Homepage
    Nowhere in Microsoft's announcement do they in any way claim that they are releasing anything as open source. But hey, don't let that stop you from attacking Microsoft for not doing something they never claimed to do nor have any obligation to do.

  • What's the difference again? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by xxxJonBoyxxx ( 565205 ) on Wednesday October 03, 2007 @01:10PM (#20840665)

    ...this really isn't open source. One example: If a developer finds a bug in the code, rather than fixing it themselves and submitting a patch to the community they'll be encouraged to submit feedback via the product feedback center."


    This doesn't seem that odd to me. Anyone else know of a major open source project where your patch of the day is guaranteed to end up in main line code?

    • The difference is that, while a major open source project might not accept your "patch of the day", you could fork the project into one that *does* include your patch.

      Of course, for major project, forking is usually "in theory" thing rather than a practical thing.

  • IT a Trap! (Step 1 to kill Mono) (Score:3, Insightful)

    by denis-The-menace ( 471988 ) on Wednesday October 03, 2007 @01:10PM (#20840675)
    If you see the code and then create something remotely like it, MS will sue your ass off.
    This way, the more people who see the code will become "Tainted" for clean-room rewrites of parts of .Net

    Brilliant!

    (This is the "Embrasse" portion of the plan to kill of Mono.)
    • The only way you can get into more trouble with reading MS's code than you would otherwise is if you duplicate actual lines of code thus violating their copyright. If you violate their patents, they could sue you anyway and reading their code wouldn't be relvant to the case.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by samkass ( 174571 )
        This is simply wrong. Why? Because "duplication" isn't the legal test to see whether intellectual property has been misappropriated. When code is copied, it's often changed and tweaked substantially, so in court the original author will still claim misappropriation. A lot of code out there tends to look similar, so it will be difficult to show you DIDN'T use Microsoft code.

        In short, Microsoft in one fell swoop has eliminated a huge chunk of .NET developers from ever contributing to Mono, pretty much.
        • You're confused. The only legal issue involved with seeing unsecret code is copyright, not other forms of IP. Claiming that somebody has written code that performs the same function as your code is not a valid argument in a copyright infringement case.

          I doubt that the fact that the code merely looks similiar would carry much legal weight, but if, as you claim, "A lot of code out there tends to look similar", then even clean-room code could look like MS's and you could still be found to be violating MS's cop
    • This is when Mono main developers should move to Europe, and stay protected from Microsoft.

      Then just copy/paste/rewrite at free will, and be protected by the EU. They have already told Microsoft to open up their libraries, so I don't think they will let Mono be shut down.

    • Wow. It really does sound like a trap. MS Dev Studio calls home to get the source code. I'm willing to bet that MS will also *log* the IP and the Dev Studio's activation/registration information. I wouldn't be surprised if this feature is enabled by default, or will pop up a license notice that the developer will just click through without reading. Most anyone who works with any MSDN programming product is probably going to find themselves tainted.

      EULAs are bad enough, but this is obnoxious to the po

    • Re:IT a Trap! (Step 1 to kill Mono) (Score:5, Funny)

      by Mongoose Disciple ( 722373 ) on Wednesday October 03, 2007 @03:15PM (#20842715)
      No offense intended, but I'm not sure how a post like this got modded so far up. Are we passing out tinfoil hats at the door now? (I know, I know. I must be new here.)

      Let's take as a given that Microsoft would like all developers to be using their technologies. In their perfect happy world, every developer is using Visual Studio as their IDE, their language of choice is a .NET language, everyone's writing apps to run on Windows, etc. Microsoft all over the place.

      In pursuit of that goal, is it more logical that they would make this move to:

      A) Allow .NET devs to see/debug through the .NET libraries, making developing using their stuff more attractive to some subset of the developer community, or

      B) Begin an intricate long-ranging litigation scheme against something like Mono, that even fewer developers than the subset in (A) know much about, that in no way is currently posing any kind of threat to their dominance (such as it is), on the off chance it might bear some kind of fruit years down the line?

      Shit, Bond villains don't even bust out plans like the scenario you've concocted.

      Sure, MS is greedy. Sure, they don't hold sacred the principles of freedom that you do. Sure, they may be evil -- but they're a generally *sensible* kind of evil, the kind that isn't building an elaborate cannon that shoots heads of lettuce while guns are available.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by grcumb ( 781340 )

        Sure, MS is greedy. Sure, they don't hold sacred the principles of freedom that you do. Sure, they may be evil -- but they're a generally *sensible* kind of evil, the kind that isn't building an elaborate cannon that shoots heads of lettuce while guns are available.

        You, my friend, have obviously never taken a close look at ActiveX. Not only does the gun shoot lettuce, it's e. coli-laden lettuce, and it fires it straight out the back of the barrel down the shooter's throat. 8^)

  • I'm not following... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Otter ( 3800 ) on Wednesday October 03, 2007 @01:11PM (#20840681) Journal
    The Microsoft announcement says specifically and repeatedly that this is not "open source" and explains why they chose not to use such a license. They seem to understand the term a lot better than "whurley" does.
    • I'm glad that MS is not allowing anybody to add libraries and functionality (including bug fixes) to .NET. I don't want .NET to become a bloated pile of libraries like other open source languages have become. When I hire a programmer he doesn't have to figure out all of the cute little ways my company happens to prefer code be written. There are only a limited-but-powerful number of ways of getting the same job done. And that makes code much more readable and maintainable in the near term and long term.

      A

  • Need new terminology (Score:5, Funny)

    by bobdehnhardt ( 18286 ) on Wednesday October 03, 2007 @01:13PM (#20840713)
    We need to come up with a term for Open Source stuff that isn't quite open, just so we can avoid the confusion and dillution of the original term.

    A few suggestions:
    • Slightly Ajar Source
    • Semi-Closed Source
    • Partially Unshut Source
    • Marginally Unobstructed Source
    • Mostly Dehiscent Source


    Okay, yes, I was just pulling words out of the thesaurus at the end there....

  • Wise move by MS (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MtlDty ( 711230 ) on Wednesday October 03, 2007 @01:14PM (#20840743)
    When .NET was announced as a platform independent language, I always struggled to imagine Microsoft developing the framework on anything other than Windows. Can you imagine Microsoft developing class libraries for Linux, or Apple Macs? Surely the world would end.

    So this move is a fairly wise one by MS. There's now a chance that the .NET framework will be developed for other platforms. And once that happens MS can help nuture a happy little band of developers, all sucking up MSDN licenced tools.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by thedarkstorm ( 468783 )
      There is already 2 variations of the .net sdk & libraries on multiple platforms.
      1. There is the Mono framework which can host .net apps on things from Windows to the OS/390
      2. There is the Silverlight framework which can host Silverlight apps on MacOS and soon to be Linux.

    • Did you even read the article? You cannot do _anything_ with the code except to look at it. Heck, you can't even download the code for reference. Instead, MS Dev Studio's debugger will fetch the source code section from a Microsoft MSDN server as you step into it.

      No one is going to use this "open source" code for anything without MS's explicit permission. I'll bet that the MSDN server will log your IP and product activation information. Thus anyone who uses the "open source" code will be tainted and

    • Re:Wise move by MS (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Almahtar ( 991773 ) on Wednesday October 03, 2007 @07:46PM (#20845777) Journal

      And once that happens MS can help nuture a happy little band of developers, all sucking up MSDN licenced tools.
      If you think they'll settle for that you are misled.

      It was wise for Microsoft to release this code, yes. And it would be wise for open source developers not to touch it or .NET with a 10 foot pole. Candy from a stranger is stupid, candy from a known backstabber is beyond retarded.

  • So fucking what? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by m50d ( 797211 ) on Wednesday October 03, 2007 @01:15PM (#20840753) Homepage Journal
    So they encourage you to report things to them rather than distributing a patch yourself. So what? Trolltech does this, MySQL does this, Sun does this, Mozilla does this; in fact virtually every significantly-sized open source project encourages you to fix problems through their own channels rather than throwing a patch around yourself. It's just good sense.
    • The catch is, with fully open-sourced projects, you can distribute the patch freely and anyone who wants to use your version is free to do so. The only reason you submit your patch is to get it into the main line code.

      The Microsoft license does not permit you to distribute your patch.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by BokLM ( 550487 ) *
      The question is not what they encourage you to do. The question is what they ALLOW you to do. Even if some open source projects encourage you to report things to them (and it's usually better if you have a patch), they do allow you to distribute the patch or a fixed version yourself. I'm not sure it is the same here.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Trillan ( 597339 )
        Reading it, I'm pretty sure developers are not permitted to distribute the patch. This is really not "open source": this is "viewing source." Microsoft is providing view only, and only downloading the source as you step through it.

        Now, like I said, this isn't really open source in any true sense of the word. But being able to step into your framework's code to see what's really going wrong isn't anything to sneeze at, either. Being able to read the code to determine exactly what triggers a bug is quite usef

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by truedfx ( 802492 )
          Delphi used to come with the source for the runtime library with the Professional editions, but now includes it in all editions, even the free (gratis) version of Turbo Delphi. It was and still is extremely useful.

  • Remember IBM? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Null Nihils ( 965047 ) on Wednesday October 03, 2007 @01:26PM (#20840949) Journal
    Rememeber IBM? They used to be the gigantic Evil Empire everyone thought would either become the overlords of humanity, or implode gloriously in a blazing fireball of liberation.

    Instead they became just another business, later honorably defending (their contributions to) the Linux source code against the wretched SCO. Their interests have become more aligned with that of their customers.

    I think Microsoft has less wiggle-room to remain viable than IBM did when they lost total domination over their market (because MS's business is mainly about using restrictive copyright licensing to make sure they're the only ones controlling the software on PCs, which quite different from what IBM's business is) but something similar is happening, however slowly and painfully.

    Microsoft knows, to some degree, that in order to remain relevant it must give people access to the guts of its software. The software market has become far too complex for the ancient ways of floppies-in-a-box style business to work. However, as their Open.NET idea shows, they're still trying to keep as much control as possible, for as long as possible...

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by turgid ( 580780 )

      Instead they became just another business, later honorably defending (their contributions to) the Linux source code against the wretched SCO. Their interests have become more aligned with that of their customers.

      IBM's empire collapsed in the early nineties (with a $5G loss IIRC) because no one wanted to buy their over-priced, underpowered and incompatible (MicroChannel) PeeCees any more. Microsoft cleaned up.

      IBM's support for Open Source and Linux is for publicity, to get back at Microsoft and to get at

  • Just like MFC (Score:5, Informative)

    by Speare ( 84249 ) on Wednesday October 03, 2007 @01:26PM (#20840963) Homepage Journal

    The original 1991 team that developed the Microsoft Foundation Classes 1.0 (to go with the first Microsoft C++ compiler, and even before the first C++ Visual Studio) was planning to go completely "closed source." It makes sense from a library point of view to close access to the implementation, and only offer the interfaces in header files. However, I was one of the folks on that team that felt that since this was the first "thin" wrapper on the C Win32 API, it was more important to show just how thin that wrapper was, and to offer visibility into the MFC implementation. It wasn't "open source" but it was "source provided as documentation." You could still build MFC on Borland's Win32-ready compiler, in fact. Since I myself was fairly experienced with Win32 but not with C++ (as was the target market), I felt this was a reasonable compromise.

    Before you throw eggs at me, let me point out that I then left that group before they invented CDocument and all the ugly MFC hell that has become associated with bloat. Before CDocument, it was essentially a reasonable alternative to STL with some HWND wrappers. Afterwards, the command-routing and OLE-managing framework turned almost any MFC app into a real rats' nest of unmaintainable spaghetti. I still wrote apps in MFC, but I have less and less stomach for it, in the rare instances I must develop Win32 at all.

  • Slashdot spin at its finest (Score:5, Informative)

    by I'm Don Giovanni ( 598558 ) on Wednesday October 03, 2007 @01:57PM (#20841481)
    I was wondering how slashdot would report this story. I knew that they would give it negative spin because it's not open source, but I didn't think they would actually try to suggest that Microsoft claimed that this was open source and then bash them for not meeting that claim.

    Microsoft fully acknowledges that this code is to be released under MSRL, "Microsoft Reference Licenese", which Microsoft does not claim to be an open source license (it is not one of the Ms licenses that were submitted to OSI).

    But the code is still valuable as it eases debugging. This similar to Microsoft's providing the source code to ATL, MFC, and their CRT. Much of this code was already available under Rotor2, but now we get lots more code, including WinForms and WPF, and more will be rleased in the future.

    And it's not just code, but Microsoft including integrated debugging of .NET libs into VS 2008, including downloading the appropriate source from Microsoft's site on demand. There are other goodies as well.

    See here for detaitls:
    http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/10/03/releasing-the-source-code-for-the-net-framework-libraries.aspx [asp.net]
    • Great Slashdot story submission - much better then the actual Slashdot article :-)
    • Thanks, I understand better now what this is all about. And that means it's good news for us that develops some things in .NET. The point seem to clearly be to assist people in debugging their apps by seeing more what .NET actually does without using the unofficial .NET Reflector tool, like we've been able to do all along with e.g. MFC. I often wondered why we didn't get the same with .NET but am happy to see we do that now.

    • Re:Slashdot spin at its finest (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Todd Knarr ( 15451 ) on Wednesday October 03, 2007 @03:20PM (#20842797) Homepage

      It does introduce a big problem, though. Suppose someone's seen Microsoft's code, and in code they've written there's a stretch that's suspiciously similar to Microsoft's code. How does one go about proving that they didn't copy that code from Microsoft's in violation of the license? Access may be great for the programmer themselves, but if I'm not them and I'm using their code I suddenly acquired a big headache. And for me this isn't a theoretical excercise, I've been caught up in a lawsuit about exactly that sort of illicit propagation of code. I'd have to recommend not employing anyone for .NET work who's agreed to that license, and not using any .NET code created or touched by anyone who has, unless and until we've gotten our own license covering the Microsoft code in question. Anything else leaves too many legal question marks that're too easily avoided by just not tempting fate.

  • The ignorance on here surprises even me! (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 03, 2007 @02:03PM (#20841595)
    Ignoring the flame-bait and complete ignorance... The *reference* implementation for .Net which is remarkably similar to the production version is here:

    http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=8C09FD61-3F26-4555-AE17-3121B4F51D4D&displaylang=en [microsoft.com]

    It contains the C/C++ source for the CLR, CSC and C# source for the Framework that compiles on FreeBSD, Windows and OS X. There are PPC/ARM/x86/x86-64 ports in the code.

    It can and will be run anywhere. .Net is pretty damn open. Remove your heads from your asses.
  • This post has a very misleading title.
    Microsoft is deliberately NOT open sourcing the .Net Framework.
    They are releasing it as SHARED SOURCE.

    Read more here: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/10/03/releasing-the-source-code-for-the-net-framework-libraries.aspx [asp.net]

    And slashdot, please fix the title.

  • "We're the richest corporation on the planet..." (Score:5, Funny)

    by rnturn ( 11092 ) on Wednesday October 03, 2007 @03:21PM (#20842809)

    "No-o-ow... who wants to fix our bugs for free?"

    [chirp chirp chirp]

    "Anyone?"

    [chirp chirp chirp]

    These guys crack me up. Really.

  • Look at the progress... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by segfault_0 ( 181690 ) on Thursday October 04, 2007 @08:28AM (#20850701)
    Look at the progress made by the open-source community, Microsoft is releasing source code for big projects - even if it is under undesirable licenses. The concept of open source has permeated Microsoft to the point where they feel they need to open up some to compete - a big victory, even if not complete, for the OSS community in general - IMHO: nice work guys/girls, keep it up.

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