81–90 of 104 posts
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We are working with very different definitions of "play well with open source;" Mine favors the ideals of free and open source software and doesn't really care much either way what happens to MS.
Do you remember Microsoft of the 90s?
I 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.
Would you feel better if they worked for Apple? Microsoft is a much more open company than Apple, just look at the immense output of Microsoft Research over the years.
I fundamentally do not understand why the .NET foundation exists, and what members gain from joining it. Would someone mind explaining that?
While competing against other companies this strategy worked as MS were larger and able to have a more complete solution. This was enabled by their huge share of desktop computing with Windows. However as the shift to Web and Mobile came, the number of platforms grew (especially outside of MS controlled ones), and the centrally planned .NET experience was breaking down. MS's centrally planned competitors threw in the towel or had gone bankrupt. Java was opened, Sun was out of business and the smaller software development offerings had long since tried to incorporate open source, or had switched to growing only through milking the existing customer base.
Microsoft saw the change coming, as well as the move to the cloud, and was able to see the cost involved with competing against open source, and started their shift to open source. The foundation is their attempt to both reduce their relative investment, by having users start taking on some of the development while controlling the core of the language. Keep in mind this was the time .Net was becomming cross platform, with linux becoming a major hosting option.
Due to these origins it has lead to the foundation being in a central position in the .Net ecosystem. As such if your library is part of the foundation, its likely to be THE standard solution in the .NET space. So the advantage you get is you get to participate, and if your project joins, it becomes the de-facto standard for .NET. That credibility is likely worth a bit for consultants and definitely paints you as an expert in that field. The downside is you cede control. I am not arguing that it is worth it for most people / projects, however I can understand why people want to be involved.
I fundamentally do not understand why the .NET foundation exists, and what members gain from joining it. Would someone mind explaining that?
The .NET community largely grew up having a "source of truth" for best practice, architecture, etc. Microsoft shaped not just the language, but the culture around the language, having vast influence on how people learnt the language, the processes on how they worked and naturally used this to push MS technologies. MS tried to own the whole stack, and thus they had libraries and frameworks for much of what you would t…
The most interesting bit that always comes up with the DotNet Foundation is that all the trusted actors who you would expect to be associated are so worn out that they don't take much of a role, and instead less scrupulous and more power-hungry types take their places.
On the other hand as an example I have experience first hand where this stuff can matter relating to some other comments on this thread: the confusion around which JVM distribution to use is directly tied to the JVM and its different builds. That doesn't seem to be the biggest problem for people in that ecosystem, but just like this .NET foundation topic confuses people outside the ecosystem as people are cautious and don't understand the implications. (i.e. do I have to pay Oracle for support if I need to limit my liability?). If I'm choosing between two tech stacks and only one has this question mark in a time limited fashion I might choose an alternative instead.
Other languages requiring significant investment (e.g. Corporate Languages) have their issues too. The appeal of Java and the .NET platforms to me is their longevity and their seriousness in keeping it alive over the decades.
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> So how is what Microsoft is doing with .NET any different than what Google is doing with Go and Oracle with Java Who said it was? > Is this people unfairly hating on Microsoft for being Microsoft? I don't think so, and Oracle gets pounded on for everything, including what they do with Java, too. Google may be better with Go, or maybe people are cutting them undeserved slack. Not really relevant to the discussion of…
Hey, thanks for your answers. I wasn’t trying to engage in whataboutism, I was trying to find out, as a developer who wants to learn a truly community-driven language/technology without any corporate overlords, what my options are. I’ve looked into Go, but a part of me feels like I’m trading one corporation for another. The languages I think of as strongly community-driven: python, ruby, and javascript, are all dynam…
It 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…
I would encourage you to re-read this with the first reply. I agree it looks like it's an effort to placate and build a favourable image, but I think the intentions are to build something more substance beyond this.
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If you go this way, why even bother with whole .NET ecosystem? It is all Microsoft. It would be easier to go with Python/Ruby maybe Java.
Going Java and dealing with Oracle is easier than .NET and Microsoft?
I 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.
Would you feel better if they worked for Apple? Microsoft is a much more open company than Apple, just look at the immense output of Microsoft Research over the years.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We are working with very different definitions of "play well with open source;" Mine favors the ideals of free and open source software and doesn't really care much either way what happens to MS.
Do you remember Microsoft of the 90s?
But also, I've been around long enough to know why; if you think it's because Microsoft "grew a heart" or somesuch nonsense, I bet you also believe that hotels stopped doing small prepackaged bottles of shampoo and cleaning the sheets nightly because they care about the environment.
Microsoft warmed to open source because THEY LOST. Their software was so inferior that they were eventually forced to admit it because they would lose money if they didn't. That's all.