Microsoft To Open Source .NET and Take It Cross-Platform
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An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft today announced plans to open source .NET, the company's software framework that primarily runs on Windows, and release it on GitHub. Furthermore, Microsoft also unveiled plans to take .NET cross-platform by targeting both Mac OS X and Linux. In the next release, Microsoft plans to open source the entire .NET server stack, from ASP.NET 5 down to the Common Language Runtime and Base Class Libraries. The company will let developers build .NET cloud applications on multiple platforms; it is promising future support of the .NET Core server runtime and framework for Mac and Linux. Microsoft is also making Visual Studio free for small teams.
Sounds like what Sun did (Score:5, Informative)
This is actually a pretty smart idea, but it sounds like what Sun did with Java and parts of Solaris. .NET was designed to be a Windows-only application platform, requiring Windows clients for fat applications and at least Windows servers for web applications. Now Microsoft is seeing Windows become less relevant, but they do want people to be using their software stack regardless of platform.
Same thing with Visual Studio being made free...kind of like XCode being free for MacOS, and the open source IDEs being free. It's a bold move because now the .NET ecosystem needs to stand on its own, and I guarantee they're going to try to tie this in with Azure somehow (like making you run the free VS in Azure VMs you pay for or something...)
One scary thing from my side of the house (systems engineering/integration) is the number of new security flaws and the sheer volume of patches that are going to be released once .NET gets more scrutiny. A good thing, yes, but patching .NET is already a pain in the butt.
Re:What license? (Score:5, Informative)
The MIT license. Are you certain that was your only question?
Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" (Score:5, Informative)
They're taking it Mono a Mono. With nasty patent clauses, no doubt.
:) Microsoft's patent clauses are spelled out here https://github.com/dotnet/core... [github.com]
I guess these are the key paragraphs:
Microsoft Corporation and its affiliates (“Microsoft”) promise not to assert any .NET Patents against you for making, using, selling, offering for sale, importing, or distributing Covered Code, as part of either a .NET Runtime or as part of any application designed to run on a .NET Runtime.
If you file, maintain, or voluntarily participate in any claim in a lawsuit alleging direct or contributory patent infringement by any Covered Code, or inducement of patent infringement by any Covered Code, then your rights under this promise will automatically terminate.
Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, but I am on Microsoft's VB/C# language team
Re:What license? (Score:4, Informative)
While the .NET Core is under the MIT license, Roslyn appears to be under the Apache 2.0 license.
I can see the reasoning behind the different choices - I'm just saying is all.
Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" (Score:5, Informative)
You are twisting his words. Ballmer was not talking about Linux, but about the GPL and it's 'viral' nature.
And to their defense, MS has released more open-source software and libraries in the past. Also they actually contribute to the Linux kernel.
There's plenty left to dislike MS for without twisting the truth.
Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Sounds like what Sun did (Score:5, Informative)
"Visual Studio still costs over four thousand dollars"
WTF are you talking about? That's not even close to true. VS Pro is about $500-600.
The 4k you're talking about is if you buy the entire MSDN suite of MS tools (which will have VS in it), but that includes everything under the sun pretty much made by MS, that's 4k, sure, but you're grossly misinforming, or just trolling, when you say VS costs 4k.
Re:Sounds like what Sun did (Score:5, Informative)
Real cross-platform is HARD (Score:5, Informative)
To make it cross-platform for real is hard. Lots of programmers don't try to avoid platform-specific and write code such as:
...instead of:
Another mistake is using explicitly hardcoded paths that only exist in Windows. And another challenge would be case-sensitivity of the filesystem on Linux; this can break programs that were developed and tested on Windows only.
The framework must provide for platform-independent ways to do things so that it is easier/shorter to do it the right way than using a naive but non-portable approach. Or programmers not really thinking things through will simply keep writing non-portable code anyway. The example above illustrates that; it is way more conventient to combine pathnames with such a non-portable string concatenation than it is with the right approach.
Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" (Score:5, Informative)
The early Sherlock Holmes Novels, and the Character of Sherlock Holmes entered Public Domain in the past year
It does happen, we just don't notice most of the time. I noticed this time because the Arthur Conan Doyle Family filed a big lawsuit to try to keep it under copyright and lost.
Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" (Score:5, Informative)
I don't think they are legally bound to keep that promise
They are: Promissory estoppel [thefreedictionary.com]. It is like a one-sided contract - i.e. one that you do not have to sign for it to be legally binding for Microsoft.
Cite for "Linux is a Cancer" (Score:5, Informative)
You are twisting his words. Ballmer was not talking about Linux, but about the GPL and it's 'viral' nature.
No. You are totally incorrect. Here's the quote, from it source [archive.org] in the Chicago Sun-Times (via the internet archive):
Q: Do you view Linux and the open-source movement as a threat to Microsoft?
A: Yeah. It's good competition. It will force us to be innovative. It will force us to justify the prices and value that we deliver. And that's only healthy. The only thing we have a problem with is when the government funds open-source work. Government funding should be for work that is available to everybody. Open source is not available to commercial companies. The way the license is written, if you use any open-source software, you have to make the rest of your software open source. If the government wants to put something in the public domain, it should. Linux is not in the public domain. Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches. That's the way that the license works.