I fundamentally do not understand why the .NET foundation exists, and what members gain from joining it. Would someone mind explaining that?
Detailed thoughts on the State of the .NET Foundation
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Re: Detailed thoughts on the State of the .NET Foundation
#12I fundamentally do not understand why the .NET foundation exists, and what members gain from joining it. Would someone mind explaining that?
See https://dotnetfoundation.org/about .
If you follow the link to Miguel de Icaza comment, you'll see the original comment that shows that no one knows what it actually does.
Re: Detailed thoughts on the State of the .NET Foundation
#13I fundamentally do not understand why the .NET foundation exists, and what members gain from joining it. Would someone mind explaining that?
Among other things, the CLA for .NET projects assigns copyright to the foundation (a non-profit) instead of Microsoft and also has some similar patent terms to protect people who use those projects
So essentially, this means that the foundation is setup for the benefit of companies that would otherwise deem the use of open-source software too risky since they cannot be legally sure that they will be able to use this software for their business.
Re: Detailed thoughts on the State of the .NET Foundation
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
The comparison with UN is weird, UN does not have 1 member that is super special. Anyway the issue seems to be that the messaging does not match the reality, MS needs to be transparent and very clear in this, then projects can decide if they agree with the conditions. Java world had from a long time foundations that were independent of Sun/Oracle.
Well they have 5 five permanent members of the UN Security Council (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) with veto power ...
So they are all one-fifth special then.
Re: Detailed thoughts on the State of the .NET Foundation
#15I fundamentally do not understand why the .NET foundation exists, and what members gain from joining it. Would someone mind explaining that?
In short, if someone wants to pick a fight with an open source dev over e.g. copyright, it's much easier (and more of a deterrent) if it's an entity like the .NET foundation defending the project, instead of the dev having to foot all the bills (and time) themselves.
Beyond that, the .NET foundation would, in theory, also be able to provide resources for project maintenance (think CI hours) and events (funding for conferences/meetups etc.).
(Disclaimer: I am entirely uninvolved, this is what I recall from reading the discussions.)
Re: Detailed thoughts on the State of the .NET Foundation
#16In the first comment, Miguel explains the setup of the .NET Foundation combining Microsoft and Gnome.
No, he explains that the structure of the .NET foundation was based on the structure of the Gnome Foundation, with concessions to Microsoft.
Gnome and the Gnome foundation were not involved. They're just the model he used when planning how the .NET foundation should work.
Re: Detailed thoughts on the State of the .NET Foundation
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Among other things, the CLA for .NET projects assigns copyright to the foundation (a non-profit) instead of Microsoft and also has some similar patent terms to protect people who use those projects
So essentially, this means that the foundation is setup for the benefit of companies that would otherwise deem the use of open-source software too risky since they cannot be legally sure that they will be able to use this software for their business.
Well, it also means that you as an open source dev don't have to constantly worry about someone challenging your copyrights or trademarks. And if they do, you don't have to worry about the legal expenses.
Re: Detailed thoughts on the State of the .NET Foundation
#18It feels like it only exists to try and emulate the look and feel of a community-driven and community-governed FOSS construction while at the same time being in commercial control of Microsoft since that it what the value is to them. This makes sense, being beholden to shareholders and profit and all that, but not even pretending it's just commercial developer advocacy/evangelism (which would have been fine - lots of companies do this to various degrees of success) is red flags all over.
It feels like they want to 'buy' and 'construct' community, which is generally not how those come to be. It's much more like the VB and COM days where they just try to convince developers that in the land of closed systems they haver the best development experience to reach business goals. But in the land of open systems, that push doesn't work.
They would have been better off either copying the Apache Foundation or the CNCF, or just incubating their stuff in to one of them. But the first option would not have come with a community, and the second one would be risky since they would have to soft-compete with what's already there and they aren't all that convincing in their value proposition when you make that comparison.
The foundation isn't inherently evil or bad, it just isn't what the larger FOSS or OSS communities expect and thus it's not getting the same traction and benefits, making the whole exercise feel dead in the water and not useful to anyone.
Re: Detailed thoughts on the State of the .NET Foundation
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
So essentially, this means that the foundation is setup for the benefit of companies that would otherwise deem the use of open-source software too risky since they cannot be legally sure that they will be able to use this software for their business.
Well, it also means that you as an open source dev don't have to constantly worry about someone challenging your copyrights or trademarks. And if they do, you don't have to worry about the legal expenses.
On the other hand: it's not like a foundation has infinite resources either, and as an open source dev I don't really worry about copyright or trademark challenges (neither constantly nor intermittently). I'm not entirely sure how big of an issue this is anyway, your comment here is the first time I've actually had to do some thinking about it.
Maybe this also depends on how litigious your current context of development/living/residence is.
Looking at some individuals that apparently did get into some legal stuff: it has almost always turned out fine, and when needed the EFF and FSF have been helping plenty.
If legal issues are really a thing, then a foundation isn't what we need, but just more money and people for the EFF.
Re: Detailed thoughts on the State of the .NET Foundation
#20I may be an out of touch old-timer but I still find it kinda sad and weird that Miguel and Nat, both of them heroes of mine in the early 2000s now work for Microsoft.