Microsoft .Net Libraries Not Acting "Open Source"
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figleaf writes "Three years ago, with much fanfare, Microsoft announced it would make some of the .Net libraries open source using the Microsoft Reference License. Since then Microsoft has reneged on its promise. The reference code site is dead, the blog hasn't been updated in a year and a half, and no one from Microsoft responds to questions on the forum."
Re:Of course (Score:4, Interesting)
The scary part here is that I'm sure plenty of people here are surprised. I wasn't ready to trust Microsoft, and I'm sure many others here weren't either, but an astonishing number of people -including some people in very high places, and yes, Mr. de Icaza, I am looking at you- were. Enough that there were flamewars any time anything remotely .NET-related or Mono-related came up.
Hopefully, we'll be able to get on with our lives now. This has happened before, and will probably happen again, and the community always survives. Some very interesting tools will either die or need to be ported, but that's always how it goes.
Misleading (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Summary Misleading (Score:1, Interesting)
1. It's true that the reference source site has been down for several days but now appears to be up again .Net 4.0 source code, or any other question for that matter about reference source
2. It's also true that NOBODY from MS has been responding to questions about the lack of
I'm not bashing MS in general; in fact, I make my living by developing solutions centered around MS technology. However, I'm extremely annoyed at the lack of proper maintenance of the reference source archive. Not only about the bits that have never made it there to begin with, but that almost a month after the release of .Net 4.0/VS 2010, there's still no code for .Net 4.0. !
Big chunks released under Apache license (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How is this different? (Score:1, Interesting)
The difference is that the "dead" sourceforge projects are maintained by usually one person and that person has lost interest, or was satisfied with the code. On the other hand, Microsoft is a large corporation which should be able to maintain large projects in the long term.
I Was With You Until... (Score:3, Interesting)
I was getting your point until you hit Java. After watching the litany of trainwrecks that is the expensive java experiment in our company, Microsoft IS a safe alternative. In fact, I'd rather replace all our "successful because they delivered" java projects with a group of elderly asians with abacuses... aba... abacii? That'd be a warm and fluffy alternative to Java.
In other areas of the company they've been delivering
It's because FOSS is no longer the biggest fear (Score:5, Interesting)
Three years ago, the FOSS movement looked like one of the biggest potential threats against Microsoft. This move was designed to mitigate that threat, so it was worth investing energy in it. The idea was to dilute the concept of FOSS in the mind of the public, thereby weakening the FOSS "brand" as a competitor.
Today, it is appears that Apple and Google are far bigger threats to Microsoft than FOSS ever will be. So Microsoft will not be investing significant energy in trying to dilute the concept of FOSS anymore.
Re:Forking (Score:3, Interesting)
It works only if the reference code site is alive.
The site was dead for a week. I check it a few hours ago when debugging is Visual Studio.
Microsoft seems to have restarted the site when this story hit Slashdot!
Re:It's because FOSS is no longer the biggest fear (Score:3, Interesting)
Today, it is appears that Apple and Google are far bigger threats to Microsoft than FOSS ever will be.
Both Google and Apple are significant supporters of FOSS. Maybe the enemy hasn't changed all that much? Maybe Google and Apple wouldn't be so threatening had their attacks on FOSS been more successful?
Re:This should have been seen from the start (Score:2, Interesting)
The "express" version is free, limited yes but you can get to the documentation TFA is about through it.
http://www.microsoft.com/express/ [microsoft.com]