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Programming IT Technology

C#, CLI Accepted by ECMA 29

Posted by michael from the moving-target dept.
SlipJig writes "Apparently ECMA has approved standardization of both C# (Microsoft's new programming language) and the CLI (Common Language Infrastructure). While I'm sure this won't entice the die-hard anti-MS folks, I suppose it's a good thing. Here's the article on CNet."
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C#, CLI Accepted by ECMA More

C#, CLI Accepted by ECMA

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  • What good is it? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by wrinkledshirt ( 228541 ) on Friday December 14, 2001 @11:14AM (#2704534) Homepage
    But Microsoft will retain control over who gets to license the technology and how it will be distributed, a company spokesman said.

    This alone makes it seem pretty useless to me.

    What good is creating just any old C# compiler? The point would be to get the compiler to output code that could run on the .NET framework, and it's not like MS is going to be forthcoming with the information to make that possible.

    • Re:What good is it? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The licensing control is over Microsoft's implementation. Mono is under no such restrictions.

      And the CLR is also documented; Mono's C# compiler compiles to CLR that runs fine on Microsoft's runtime.

  • Two Points Bother Me! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 14, 2001 @11:16AM (#2704546)
    Two thigs come to mind:

    1) "..Microsoft will retain control over who gets to license the technology and how it will be distributed.."

    2) "..the ECMA submission from Microsoft only defines a subset of the .Net Framework.."

    At least they actually submitted something unlike Sun with Java!

    This seems like a 'standard' in a limited sense - here's an industry standard but you can only use it if we like you!

  • Interesting to see where this goes... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Friday December 14, 2001 @01:50PM (#2705381) Homepage Journal
    Microsoft's big problem is that they don't play well with others. Hence the IBM divorce. Hence their limited (nonexistent?) role in the development of an XSL standard, despite their domination of early XSL efforts and their ongoing efforts to create new XSL software. Hence their ongoing feud with Sun, which had more to do with technical quibbles about AWT [microsoft.com] and native methods [javaworld.com] than any conspiracy to "poison" Java.

    People often see a dark agenda in MS's actions. And sometimes that's actually true. But I think they play Cousin Dudley more often than Voldemort.

    With .NET, MS has really conflicting goals. On the one hand, they need something to compete with Java, and will insulate apps from the convoluted NT API. But that means something very similar to Java, a software platform that's hardware agnostic. And that means cooperating with other companies, something they just don't like to do. Not a formula for success.

  • I think the number of comments speaks for itself in regards to how big of a ripple this had on everybody perception of an impact.

    The question is now: Other than Miquel D'Icaza, is there anybody out there who's going to try to leverage this in someway or another?

    Better question: To what extent can Microsoft retrict competition with .NET? Are there key patents on key technologies in .NET, or is it another scenerio entirely?

    • No posts? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by fm6 ( 162816 )
      Is this one of those topic-only articles that most Slashdotters never see? Hard to tell without fiddling with your options, and I can't be bothered.

      In any case, don't assume that .NET is a non-starter, just because all the techies you know are yawning. Microsoft projects develop a following because they're from Microsoft. Not fair -- just the way it is.

      Yes, I do remember Microsoft Bob. Not the same. .NET isn't coming out of nowhere. It's Microsoft's answer to Java. Which hasn't lived up to the early hype either, but has found a certain acceptance.

      • .NET is very important. Java was in many ways a move backwards. The language itself is great, and makes a useful alternative to C++ in many situations. But the ideology behind Java was (at first anyway) "Write all your software in Java and have the freedom to use whatever hardware/OS you like".

        The ideology behind .NET is more like "Use the .net framework and have the freedom to use whatever language you like (p.s. only runs on Windows)"

        The second is, IMHO, slightly more attractive. Being forced to use one programming language as the price for hardware/OS abstraction is just plain dumb.

        • Re:No posts? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by fm6 ( 162816 )
          The ideology behind .NET is more like "Use the .net framework and have the freedom to use whatever language you like (p.s. only runs on Windows)"
          Well, officially .NET is cross-platform. It's tempting to dismiss that as MS marketing noise. But if using .NET means handcuffing yourself to Microsoft, it's hard to imagine people choosing it over Java.

          Incidentally, the Java language isn't the only high-level language for the Java platform. It's just the only one Sun and it's big partners are interested in. He's a list of other languages. [tu-berlin.de] Of course, there are notable gaps -- apparently it's just too hard to make C++ or most legacy languages use the JVM.

          Microsoft claims the CLI is more flexible, and that .NET will support everything from FORTRAN and COBOL on. We'll see.

          • for MS products "cross-platform" usually means 95, 98, me, nt, 2k & xp

            • Crossed (Score:2)

              by fm6 ( 162816 )
              Very funny. But in fact there are only two OSs called "Windows", the DOS-based product, and NT. All the other names are just brands/labels for various releases. If MS still used a consistent version scheme, ME would be Windows 4.2 and XP would be Windows NT 6.0

              This is not a minor point. MS hates having to support more than one OS. And no one is sorry to see the last of their original OS stream, with its roots in a badly-written CP/M clone. Unfortunately, MS has caved into developers who don't won't migrate until NT incorporates some of the old systems mistakes, such as raw sockets. Which will make an already tempremental OS even more so.

              No I take it back. Not funny. Glib and ignorant. MS does plenty of cross-platform work. They have products that run on Solaris, HP-UX, and Mac. The last is particularly significant, since Mac Office is the only thing that keeps Apple in business.

              The only major platform they don't target is Linux. Penguinites should take heart at that omission -- presumably Mister Bill thinks that Linux is NT's only serious competition.

              • *Cough* Do you know what raw sockets are?
                9x never had them, just in case you weren't aware of it.
                NT starting from 2000 has it. And Linux and all the other *nixes had it for a long time.
          • At MS' PDC in October they had some speakers giving status updates on their FORTRAN, COBOL, & Eiffel work. All I really remember was a nice graph that showed increased functionality with OO COBOL (wasn't that destined to be standardized at some point?) and lesser functionality with COBOL 85 (85 right? It's been a while). Anyway, it seemed as though they were running into some square peg - round hole issues, but the outlook seemed good..
  • For those of us who are hopelessly out-of-touch on this issue,

    1) How long will it take (in your opinion) for C# to become a marketable skill (ie, how long until someone might need to hire a C# programmer?)
    2) Will this ECMA approval make #1 arrive more quickly or not?
    • I think C# programming is already a marketable skill. I have my doubts about how successful .NET will actually be, but it's bound to have some following, simply because MS is pushing it so hard. Which is why people are already working with beta versions of .NET and C#.

      That being said, I wouldn't count on C# training by itself to make me employable. The .com bust should have weeded out nitwit hiring managers who only ask "what products do you know how to use?" and not more basic questions like "what do you know about OOP? algorithms? relational dbms design?" At least I hope it did.

  • It took a few times before I noticed the recurrence - they tried this with DNS, and now with CLI. I am so done with Microsoft - it seems like they can't make a single move without wanting to own or subvert a technology.
  • "Microsoft is working on its own version of .Net building blocks for the FreeBSD version of Unix with help from Corel. But that version of .Net for FreeBSD will be released under a "shared source" license that lets researchers see and modify underlying source code but not use it in commercial projects.

    ...
    More than two years ago, Sun said it would turn Java over to the same standards body, but withdrew its proposal on fears that it would lose control of Java's evolution. Java proponents argued that making Java an industry standard would give other companies a much stronger position in defining Java and determining the direction of the software. But Sun executives implied that standardizing through ECMA could result in a version of Java that worked differently from Sun's. "


    What's wrong with this picture? How come Sun couldn't come up with similar licensing to control Java? I bet Microsoft sure as hell will maintain control over C#. What does ECMA approval mean, do they take over administering rules for the standard? Sun sure made it sound that way when they didn't submit Java.

    And what is this new "shared source" licensing? Microsoft asking for free pseudo-open source programming services? Wasn't open source founded on the principle of protecting authors of free software from this very kind of commercial exploitation? This is too ironic.
    • And oh, I almost forgot this one. Microsoft is working with Corel? Overload. Cannot compute. Has the world gone bannanas? I guess there are no hard feelings about MS quite intentionally running DR DOS into the ground. Or from that lawsuit last year when MS representatives worked out a deal with the Labor department to sell them Office instead of Wordperfect even before bids began. I guess $135 million can make anyone change their tune though.

      "Pshaaw! What anti-competitive practices! Please! Come on in and have a seat Bill! Can I offer you a drink? A cigar? My dignity?"

      This is capitalism at its worst and we need some regulation here, except our government is in cahoots with this parasite, oblivious that it too is a victim. Special interests sure as hell have thrown our system off balance and we're slowly starting to spiral. We better fix this before we spin out of control.
    • Anyone can take the CLI and do whatever they want with it, like Ximian does.
      MS doesn't have any control over it anymore.
      What they *do* have control of is their BSD.NET version, which you can use, or modify for non-commercial uses.
      They don't *want* 100% compatability, they basically says, "Yes, you won't have 100% code portability between Windows & BSD, but that is fine from our point of view, because we aren't going to force our UI model on X server, or NT security on Solaris."

      The idea is that you have all the basic services, and your code logic will port, the only parts that you'll have to change are parts that rely on classes not found on the platfrom, and those you can write (or get from the .NET provider, more likely) to get the functionality that you need.

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