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Despite best efforts .NET is still not an open platform

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Re: Despite best efforts .NET is still not an open platform

#41
post #5
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does Microsoft get labeled like this while Apple, one of the most brutally closed off companies, is loved by developers? Microsoft is very responsive on GitHub issues I have filed, and I have benefited a lot from their open source offerings, namely VS Code and F#.

Because people are still living in the 90s and even the best developers just love to gobble up Apple's propaganda bullshit.

I don't think there is that much devs doing actual work in Apple ecosystem - they use Macbooks but not Swift or Objective-C and no one is using XCode for their day 2 day development.

Just check StackOverflow 2021 survey - Swift is like 5%

Re: Despite best efforts .NET is still not an open platform

#42
post #9

I'm somewhat confused what's going on here.

Microsoft is starting to port VS studio (IntelliSense) which is proprietary to VS code which is opensource. Current C# plugin (Omnisharp) is opensource, so they announce that it will be replaced by a closed source selector that let you choose the opensource or the proprietary plugin with the proprietary as default. It's Embrace, Extend, Extinguish just in front of our eyes, so opensource people are pissed.

Ah come on! It's more complicated than that.

Most of the heavy lifting in OmniSharp is done by Roslyn [0]. Roslyn is the open source C# compiler and code analysis library maintained by MS. You cannot overstate how much effort has gone into Roslyn, and how much money MS has invested to make it work. OmniSharp is essentially a wrapper[1] around Roslyn (before Roslyn it was Mono), and while the OmniSharp team did a nice job developing a nice intellisense UX around it all, it is not like MS is taking it all away from them. Incidentally, it is almost certain that new intellisense plugin by MS will also be built on top of Roslyn.

[0] https://github.com/dotnet/roslyn [1] https://github.com/OmniSharp/omnisharp-vscode#the-c-extensio...

Re: Despite best efforts .NET is still not an open platform

#43

This is exactly the same as what MS did for the Python extension when the open-source LSP was replaced by the proprietary Pylance. I get the feeling that MS becomes more and more likes Google. For example, on Android, the core experience is provided by GMS while the AOSP is provided as an open-source core. In terms of VSCode, the core editor is free and open-source, but some key experience is baked by proprietary com…

Why didn't MS just contribute to the existing one, instead of writing its own from scratch?

Re: Despite best efforts .NET is still not an open platform

#44
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft is starting to port VS studio (IntelliSense) which is proprietary to VS code which is opensource. Current C# plugin (Omnisharp) is opensource, so they announce that it will be replaced by a closed source selector that let you choose the opensource or the proprietary plugin with the proprietary as default. It's Embrace, Extend, Extinguish just in front of our eyes, so opensource people are pissed.

Worth pointing out that VS Code is not really open source. The builds are proprietary. It’s based on an open source core but the builds can include anything that Microsoft thinks will be commercially useful to it.

There is a libre version of VS Code but it is missing features like access to the official extension marketplace.

https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium

Re: Despite best efforts .NET is still not an open platform

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Apple never pretended to :heart: opensource. But they did. They claimed part of Mac OS, Darwin, is open source. Like Google like to brag about Android being Open Source even if you have to put a ton of proprietary software on top of the open source parts to make it usable.

Claiming that part of Darwin is opensource, which it was, is not quite the same thing as claiming to love opensource, and yet slowly close it up once you have mindshare like with VSCode. Apple didn't take ownership and then start closing CUPS, but they have also never pretended to be a friend of OpenSouce. They haven't produced anything opensource since then. There have been a couple of projects, like their rebrandin…

> Apple didn't take ownership and then start closing CUPS, but they have also never pretended to be a friend of OpenSouce. They haven't produced anything opensource since then.

Two counter-examples:

They open sourced Swift in 2015 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_(programming_language)#H...), and Swift-DocC in 2021 (https://www.swift.org/blog/swift-docc/)

Apple bought CUPS in 2007 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUPS#History)

Re: Despite best efforts .NET is still not an open platform

#46
post #28

.NET is open. You can find its source on Github. The .NET platform being open doesn't mean everything targeting the .NET platform is open, too.

You could however reasonably expect that core tools like debugger and LSP will be open too.

Maybe? These are just implementations, right? Others will still be able to build tools? JetBrains isn't pushed out by this, is it?

Java flight recorder, for example, wasn't always open source. While it's not ideal, I'm not sure the idea of closed source tools in an open language is all that unheard of.

Re: Despite best efforts .NET is still not an open platform

#47
post #33

I can definitely say that for me, this is the straw that breaks the camel's back. I am turning my back on the .NET ecosystem, after having written C# for 7 years. The `dotnet watch` debacle from last year, still having key parts like the debugger closed-source and now again with this: It's just too much. I do not want to build anything of value on top of such a shady platform that's completely controlled by one Megac…

The problem with MVPs is that they are effectively Microsoft sponsored marketing outlets. I know a few of them personally and they are great people but damn have they drunk the kool-aid.

Re: Despite best efforts .NET is still not an open platform

#48
post #4
post #3

Quoted post unavailable.

Why does Microsoft get labeled like this while Apple, one of the most brutally closed off companies, is loved by developers? Microsoft is very responsive on GitHub issues I have filed, and I have benefited a lot from their open source offerings, namely VS Code and F#.

I think Apple catches a lot of flak here for their practices, but they have a very strong, vocal fanboy community that MS has never had, and probably can never hope to have.

Many Apple (especially iOS) developers seem to be just generally frustrated about the platform, but suck it up and deal with it because they have to if they want to be in the App Store.

Additionally, I don't think Apple has been anywhere near as fervent as Microsoft about embracing open source. Sure, Darwin (a fairly tiny part of macOS/iOS) is open source, but Apple seems to only grudgingly embrace and use open source components when it suits their purposes. Consider how they've been shipping a super-old version of bash because they're paranoid about GPLv3, how they've been heavily involved in LLVM and clang (at least in part for licensing reasons), and how they barely mention anymore that WebKit is based on KHTML. And it's a safe bet that if KHTML hadn't been more permissively-licensed, Apple would have happily kept WebKit closed.

Re: Despite best efforts .NET is still not an open platform

#49
post #32
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Loved by developers how? Because they own Macbooks?

Basically yeah - you can show off that you are working in rich company (so by association you know who is making that sweet $$$$) because you have a new Macbook for dev work.

That's not really love; that's just recognizing that a particular consumer product is a status symbol, and buying it to hold that status.
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