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.
RIP Java! (Score:0, Interesting)
Better languages, library, and environment than Java and, unlike Java, actively maintained and expanded? Sign me up!
Oracle can kiss most of the money the spent on Sun Microsystems goodbye and I, for one, won't be shedding any tears for Larry Ellison.
Post-Ballmer Microsoft (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't think I'm defending Microsoft here because I am old enough to remember Microsoft at its worst and still have the deep seated hatred of Gates and Balmer era MS. Hell, anti-trust BS aside I still hate them for what they did to my MechWarrior franchise alone! However, under the new leadership that seems to be taking the company towards an era of Glasnost and Perestroika, the hatred is given pause as I wait for the next dick move that may never come. At the very least, Microsoft has moved into a position that is no more or less "evil" than Google (yes, do no evil no longer applies here) or Apple. Given this, I wonder how many people here truly rationally hate MS anymore as opposed to hatred through nostalgia (like me) or hatred through "it's the way we do things around here" syndrome. As a developer that uses MS products and support in his profession, and develops Linux, Android, and Arduino apps as a hobby, I still prefer the current open source way of doing things over the MS way... but as far as the hatred? It cannot be said yet that Microsoft is the same company it was in the Balmer days. They at least *look* like they're moving towards a path that looks similar to the one Sun Microsystems was beating through.
Die, mono, die! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, they're just quaking their boots for the 3% Apple market and 0.8% Linux share.
The point is right there in the second paragraph of the article: "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"
The cloud market is dominated by Linux and linux-like systems, no one is doing Windows in the cloud except Microsoft Azure and that hasn't been going very well for them (hard to make money selling yourself OS licenses). So, get the stack into the cloud and maybe just maybe companies doing hybrid cloud deployments or are otherwise cloud-averse due to the lack of Windows presence can now get their feet wet. If they stick with .net, they will no doubt be still buying Windows licenses and MSDN subscriptions for a while. Without this bridge, companies just make the jump completely away from Microsoft.
Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" (Score:2, Interesting)
I'll agree that I haven't seen very much Qt out in industry, but I haven't seen much .NET either. Java seems to be the big thing locally.
Linux is actually fairly present in local universities as well, and a fair number of places look for at least basic Linux skills when hiring for entry level positions.
Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" (Score:5, Interesting)
Sounds reasonable. I don't think they are legally bound to keep that promise, but that they spell it out like that is a good thing. An interesting question that comes to mind is if the promise also covers modified code, it looks like the definition of covered code only covers code published by Microsoft. But still, better than nothing.
Re:Open, but will it run? (Score:5, Interesting)
In concept making the .NET framework open source sounds cool. But, does making it open source mean that I can make a change to the framework, recompile it, distribute the binary framework along with my dependent application, and expect that someone else can just install my version of the framework and be good?
Yes exactly that. Imagine you wanted to change System.Xml.dll. You'd do that, and distribute your modified version of the binary alongside your app. (You won't be installing the binary framework system-wide; you'll only be distributing your updates to it locally).
disclaimer: I'm on the VB/C# language team.
Re:Brutal Load Times (Score:5, Interesting)
.NET applications still need read about 1GB of libraries from the disk (only portions are kept in memory). This is why .NET applications are so brutally slow to load. Will this improve?
.NET Native speeds up startup times considerably. The way it works is it compiles your .NET app into native code, does whole-program optimization, and "shakes out" all the bits of the framework that aren't actually even needed by your code. (.NET Native is still under development, and currently available in preview form for store apps)
disclaimer: I'm on the .NET team (in particular on the VB/C# language team)
Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" (Score:3, Interesting)
Easy peasy, M$ can just manufacture an off balance sheet company and sell the patents to them and that company can then sue the crap out of you. So the M$ promises are empty unless the patents are specified, otherwise the future 'owner' can argue which patents are or are not covered, seeing that shite like rounded corners can killed a product under corrupt US Patent law, the risk still seems grossly excessive.