Despite best efforts .NET is still not an open platform • Hacker News Board

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

#401

Post by Conan_Kudo » Thu, Jun 16, 2022, 4:43 PM UTC

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #318

someotherperson wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opinions like this have always been weird to me. Not wrong, but weird. Any contribution that M$ (remember when people would sub the S for a dollar sign?) makes to open source or open standards is to support their own bottom line and we shouldn't expect anything else. The directors have a legal responsibility to the company and to boost the share price, not for the betterment of humanity. To this effect, companies wil…

"How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been; how gloriously different are the saints." - C.S. Lewis I still recall people fawning over how Google was going to be "different" in 2006, and how it was going to save us from Microsoft. Nowadays, they are essentially what MS was in its' heyday. Blind faith in corporations is not the way forward. I've always understood the hacker ethos to have str…

Well, this site isn't about hackers in the classical sense. It's about people working on building businesses and startups. The URL tells you everything: "news.ycombinator.com".

This is, first and foremost, about the business, not the people or the technology.

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

#402

Post by Conan_Kudo » Thu, Jun 16, 2022, 4:44 PM UTC

alxlaz wrote: post #327

oaiey wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but we are not talking about a two man company or a historic trust fund in southern France. We talk about an US shareholder company which leadership (do not be nitpicky) can be sued for by shareholders by not doing the best for their money. And law indeed differs... But everywhere someone will be made responsible for not getting the best for their buck (the simplest case: being fired). That applies to FAANGMxyz…

I was under the impression (based on the USSC's opinion back in 2015, see e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co... ) that this was not true even in the US. Has anything changed in the meantime? Or did I get that article wrong from the beginning?

It is not true in the United States. Officers of the company are required to do best by the company and all stakeholders, but the officers can generally define how they approach that. Most go by the share price, because it's used as a proxy to measure company success.

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

#403

Post by akagusu » Thu, Jun 16, 2022, 4:51 PM UTC

chenzhekl wrote: post #15

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…

Sorry to say, but it is not like M$ is becoming more like Google.

Google learnt their playbook from M$.

What you and others are seeing here is M$ at its best, playing like they always played, but without the "we love open-source" mask.

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

#404

Post by saghm » Thu, Jun 16, 2022, 4:51 PM UTC

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #309

rtpg wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The LSP situation with Python was very frustrating, because it totally breathes the oxygen out of "proper" OSS implementations. I feel like with a _loooot_ of coordination it should be possible to have proper, open source LSP implementations that are very performant. Mainly a question of finding enough people willing to fund this work, because it's definitely work! I personally also have gripes about ending up with s…

Indeed. And even very intelligent, competent AND benevolent MS employees downplay this: https://twitter.com/bitecode_dev/status/1537357261554733056 Steve cannot see how it will lead to attrition or vendor lock in. It's not that there are no good people at MS, but the internal marketting is strong as well.

I can't even see what the reason for making an LSP implementation proprietary would be other than lock-in. The argument seems to be "we make it closed so that it can't connect to other things that are closed", which feels pretty silly. Being closed is bad when other people do it, but good when you do it?

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

#405

Post by camelite » Thu, Jun 16, 2022, 4:55 PM UTC

someotherperson wrote: post #71

kelnos wrote: post #37

This sort of thing has been MS's playbook since I was a kid, or earlier. It surprises me that people are still surprised when things like this happen. I especially think someone with Miguel de Icaza's experience should know better[0]. It's interesting to see the generational difference here. Many of my somewhat-younger (even only by 7-10 years) programmer/techie friends just don't remember the Microsoft of the 80s an…

Opinions like this have always been weird to me. Not wrong, but weird. Any contribution that M$ (remember when people would sub the S for a dollar sign?) makes to open source or open standards is to support their own bottom line and we shouldn't expect anything else. The directors have a legal responsibility to the company and to boost the share price, not for the betterment of humanity. To this effect, companies wil…

https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co...

"There is a common belief that corporate directors have a legal duty to maximize corporate profits and “shareholder value” ... this belief is utterly false."

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

#406

Post by nightski » Thu, Jun 16, 2022, 4:56 PM UTC

Etheryte wrote: post #373

csmpltn wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "You want to know what's better than having actual MS developers interact with your issue on GH? Being able to submit a MR yourself and actually have that MR be merged in within days of it being good to go." .NET isn't your average hobby project - it's used everywhere. It's imperative that changes go through the proper due process here. It takes time to prepare design documents and review them, discuss the changes…

This is an absurd straw-man. Nowhere did the parent comment say anything of the kind you're arguing against. In fact, they highlighted that you should the follow the procedures and rules. This is silly.

The parent said within a few days. That might not be realistic with the processes in place and I think that's all they were getting at.

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

#407

Post by jodrellblank » Thu, Jun 16, 2022, 5:05 PM UTC

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #309

rtpg wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The LSP situation with Python was very frustrating, because it totally breathes the oxygen out of "proper" OSS implementations. I feel like with a _loooot_ of coordination it should be possible to have proper, open source LSP implementations that are very performant. Mainly a question of finding enough people willing to fund this work, because it's definitely work! I personally also have gripes about ending up with s…

Indeed. And even very intelligent, competent AND benevolent MS employees downplay this: https://twitter.com/bitecode_dev/status/1537357261554733056 Steve cannot see how it will lead to attrition or vendor lock in. It's not that there are no good people at MS, but the internal marketting is strong as well.

Unhappy that you can't have his work for free, you asked /him/ to hand you an equivalent on a plate. He said no. What's he downplaying?

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

#408

Post by saghm » Thu, Jun 16, 2022, 5:08 PM UTC

jsmeaton wrote: post #223

lin83 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the previous Python support extension started out as an independent open source project until Microsoft hired its main developer. > It’s baffling. Vendor Lock in? Same reason you can't use the VSCode marketplace of mostly open source extensions on a non-Microsoft build of VSCode or any of the remote work features.

The Python extension itself is not closed source and is still maintained by the original developer that MS hired. It’s the language server that went from an OSS Microsoft project (that replaced the initial Jedi server) to the closed source LSP server. Lock in doesn’t make sense to me. The main competition is Pycharm which has its own set of tooling. I can somewhat understand the remote extensions being closed source…

Idk, it seems pretty clearly like lock-in to me. Microsoft first came up with LSP when VS Code was a lot newer, so they made it an open standard to help them get market share by enabling language developers to more easily support their editor. Now that they're a much bigger player in the text editor space (which VS proper never really played as hard in, not being cross platform and being much heavier weight), they're trying to build a moat to ensure that they don't lose that to other players, which means making it harder for anyone to re-use the tools they used to gain share in the first place.

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

#409

Post by goto11 » Thu, Jun 16, 2022, 5:14 PM UTC

The linked "article" is confusing, but the issue seem to be this: The C# language server for Visual Studio Code (the components which provide language-aware UI like tooltips, code completion, squiggles etc.) is currently fully open source, but MS is going to refactor it to incorporate some closed source components.

It is not really clear to me why they are doing this and what they hope to achieve. Perhaps they want to create a for-pay "premium" version of the component? VS Code is probably cannibalizing Visual Studio sales. If enterprise customers move from Visual Studio to VS Code, MS will lose lots of money.

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

#410

Post by lnxg33k1 » Thu, Jun 16, 2022, 5:15 PM UTC

exyi wrote: post #112

lnxg33k1 wrote: post #6

I love C#, had a job doing it on Mono and really enjoyed working on it, but never trusted to work on anything personal with it, in order to avoid being stuck depending on Microsoft since they bought Xamarin, and I resisted even when they published ASP.Net Core on github, really think that microsoft is un-trustable

I'd say that most corporate-backed platforms will have similar issues. The corporations simply have other interests than the community (next quarter profit + control / long term stability + independence). Only way to keep them from doing this is pushing back whenever they try. MS did that with Pylance, it went well and now they are trying again with C#

The thing is that I am not sure how to fight back if not by avoiding corporate tools completely, like they can always change policy by changing a CEO, then what? If you have a product you can just get the hit, what can you do?