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.
Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" (Score:3, Insightful)
Billy Bob Gates
It's good to know Slashdot's irrational hatred is still firmly entrenched in the '90s.
Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah, they're just quaking their boots for the 3% Apple market and 0.8% Linux share.
Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" (Score:3, Insightful)
Billy Bob Gates
It's good to know Slashdot's irrational hatred is still firmly entrenched in the '90s.
Hah, it never ends.
Because it's all on BOOOOSH!!!!
LMAO...There was only Bush 1.0 in 1990-1992. And he did absolutely nothing with regard to computing and policy.
If only the Microsoft hatred here at /. was irrational. Most of us that dislike Microsoft do so because we got tired of dealing with the constantly moving goal posts for competency, the ridiculous lock-ins to proprietary software stacks, and the even more ridiculous costs of everything they made. So, if by fact based dislike for an entire segment of the technology sector, then yes, that would be irrational.
Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" (Score:3, Insightful)
It's good to know Slashdot's irrational hatred is still firmly entrenched in the '90s.
Irrational? In what way?
Presumably because Bill Gates is no longer the CEO, so saying "yah boo sucks to Bill Gates" is about as meaningful as saying "Microsoft limits filenames to a ridiculous 8.3 format"
Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, they're just quaking their boots for the 3% Apple market and 0.8% Linux share.
Actually, yes, they are. The Mac OS X market is growing on the desktop and the Linux server market has been kicking ass for some time now. Microsoft is losing developers for Windows and they have recently gone through some pretty massive layoffs in the last five years, more than 23,000 employees. They are losing ground in the console wars with the Xbox One, and are struggling to keep their Nokia purchase from tanking. Add to that the abysmal Windows 8 reception and the Surface fiasco that is just starting to show some rays of hope for that device and you have a tech company on a significant downward slide. Also note how most of the older employees are cashing out and going on to other projects. Signs that the ship is going down!
If they're not collectively quaking in their boots, they ought to be!
Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" (Score:5, Insightful)
AFAIK both Bill Gates and Steve Balmer don't control Microsoft anymore.
This is a new Microsoft with a new CEO, so we should at least give them the benefit of the doubt.
Microsoft is not less evil,more companies are Evil (Score:5, Insightful)
They are still as evil as they used to be. They missed the boat with search/internet services and mobile- so they have a weeker position now. And now we have other evil companies like Apple and Google, and other evil organizations like NSA and GCHQ that affect the internet and computing world. But given emergence of new evils and reduction of power of Microsoft does not make them less evil.
--Coder
Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" (Score:4, Insightful)
Digia doesn't have the money to keep Qt up where it was. Cocoa is 100% entirely Apple. GTK never really worked all that well outside Linux. Java applications are well out of favor and Oracle isn't throwing much money at it. .NET is the most widely used widget set in the world, it faces no meaningful competition. Why wouldn't it be the cross platform standard almost instantly?
Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" (Score:5, Insightful)
I've spent years using both Java and C# professionally. C# wins hands down. For many years before Sun's demise the languages would leapfrog one another in functionality, but Java stopped keeping up a couple years before Sun went down. Java 8 is about where C# was 5 years ago now. It's night and day.
The real question for MS is: what about phones? MS has partnered to get mobile cross-platform C# working with Mono, but it's not free if you want VS integration. Being able to write and test on the PC and then run on any phone or tablet (well, at least modern ones) is a big deal.
Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" (Score:2, Insightful)
*another* development stack... pity's sake, don;t we have enough already?
Now its just another thing that will pollute our systems - no longer will you install some shitty little app and find it pulls in all the Gnome libraries, now it'll pull in a heap of .NET ones and probably Gnome libs too!
The reason Microsoft likes it is possibly because of the sentiments in this article [joelonsoftware.com]
Think of the history of data access strategies to come out of Microsoft. ODBC, RDO, DAO, ADO, OLEDB, now ADO.NET - All New! Are these technological imperatives? The result of an incompetent design group that needs to reinvent data access every goddamn year? (That's probably it, actually.) But the end result is just cover fire. The competition has no choice but to spend all their time porting and keeping up, time that they can't spend writing new features.
Yeah, so now Linux people - you too can spend all your time rewriting in the latest cool new development stack, while Microsoft gets on with building whatever it was you used to build.
Add to that "developer mindshare" and we might just give up on anything decent, having to put up with crap like ASP.NET MVC Razor 5 with EF6.1 frameworks.. and if you don't know all that blackbox magic, forget trying to get a job.
There's a lot of people who will code in .NET because it purports to be easy, and they will use Visual Studio sooner rather than later, and then they'll find writing for Windows first is the norm, just for development.. and eventually they'll think why bother actually doing the little porting work.
so I'm not convinced its a good thing overall, even if it is good for me as I know that shit already.
Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" (Score:5, Insightful)
No kidding. An open sourced .NET should get praise rather than grumpy old complaining. Some spend years complaining and then when a company takes a step in the right direction they deride it. Sure it is a decade overdue, but they did it.
Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" (Score:4, Insightful)
But further, Microsoft still stifles innovation by wielding its patent portfolio offensively against other companies. Microsoft has more profits than Google, and Google - which is plenty evil in some other ways - only uses its patents defensively. Microsoft has also waged FUD campaigns against competitors as recently as earlier this year (Scroogled).
You can put a tuxedo on a gangster, but he's still just a crook.
Re:Microsoft is not less evil,more companies are E (Score:4, Insightful)
I have long ago concluded that on Slashdot success = evil.
Because more often than not it's true? Market power corrupts, monopoly power corrupts absolutely. Or maybe you should say it's more of a latent behavior in profit-maximizing companies, they simply lack the means to be a market bully until they're successful. Or you're seeing a company in the early phases of an "entice, entrap, exploit" strategy where they act nice and friendly until they got you locked in good and bleed you dry. You might call it good turned evil, they'll call it return on investment and a success. And a tool is a tool, Google used Mozilla to break the IE monopoly and it might have been good for open source and web standards but they were a pawn in a corporate play. And pawns get sacrificed when the goal is in sight, they're not your friends for life.
Of course there are companies that really do stick to making good products and services that the customers like and are happy and willing to pay for, but most sooner or later turn to the dark side. Particularly if they see a downturn in business and is facing cut bonuses and lost jobs, very few businesses go nobly down the drain. And almost anything can be excused with "it's a free market and we're only charging what the market is willing to bear", or at least that's what you say out loud even if you know they had absolutely no real choice in the matter. Particularly in business to business there's absolutely no hesitation or shame in grabbing as much of the other company's money as you can.