Microsoft Open Sources C# Compiler • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft Open Sources C# Compiler

#221

Post by tormeh » Thu, Apr 03, 2014, 9:32 PM UTC

JohnBooty wrote: post #174

leoc wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, here we are then. This now officially the standard play for formerly-dominating computer-platform firms who have fallen on hard times: having before been proudly hard-nosed and proprietary, publicly see the light and present a new image as a new, kinder, gentler company which totally gets it about openness. Former famous examples: IBM under Lou Gerstner (we love Linux and open platforms!), Apple after the NeXT…

Having followed a fair number of MS bloggers/podcasts currently in and around their web tools (ASP.NET, MVC, etc) teams... I honestly believe they understand the value of open source. Visual Studio and their MVC framework continue to impress me (I mostly work in Ruby today, but have to maintain some .NET stuff) and MS takes inspiration from successful open-source tools and frameworks where needed. Many of their recen…

Well, I'd like to see Visual Studio for Linux with support for Java, Scala, Clojure, Haskell and other non-Microsoft technologies. That's my wishlist in this bright new era of Microsoft openness.

I don't like Microsoft but Visual Studio is the only IDE I've ever tried that is substantially better than gedit/jedit. The auto-completion (intellisense) is just delightful to use.

Re: Microsoft Open Sources C# Compiler

#222

Post by scholia » Thu, Apr 03, 2014, 9:32 PM UTC

MagerValp wrote: post #153

leoc wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, here we are then. This now officially the standard play for formerly-dominating computer-platform firms who have fallen on hard times: having before been proudly hard-nosed and proprietary, publicly see the light and present a new image as a new, kinder, gentler company which totally gets it about openness. Former famous examples: IBM under Lou Gerstner (we love Linux and open platforms!), Apple after the NeXT…

I don't think it's particularly fair to lump Apple with the rest since 14 years later [1] the core OS is still open source [2], and they're actively working on several high profile open source projects (e.g. Webkit, CUPS, and clang). They're not exactly irrelevant either. [1] http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2000/04/05Apple-Releases-Dar... [2] http://opensource.apple.com/

Apple took advantage of things that were already open source. How many innovative, profitable programs has it developed itself and then made open source?

The fact that the core OS is still open source doesn't actually mean much when there's a huge layer of proprietary code on top, does it?

Re: Microsoft Open Sources C# Compiler

#223

Post by gress » Thu, Apr 03, 2014, 9:33 PM UTC

danford wrote: post #199

eropple wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only thing Apple has going for them is the iPhone. And the iPad, which is kicking the hell out of Android tablets (to my consternation, because I'm primarily an Android user and their tablets are terrible). And the Macbook Pro, which is making pretty major inroads at leading-edge companies. A buddy of mine is working on *nix software at IBM and they asked if he wanted a Thinkpad or an MBP; that blew my mind. They don…

You're right, how could I forget the iPad, the thing is the business model they have for all of their products is unsustainable. The iPad is doing well now, just as the iPhone did initially, but less and less people are buying the iPhone because the Android environment has had time to develop. Even chromebooks out sold mac books [1] in 2013. A lot of companies allow developers to use Linux too. The fact that people w…

This is simply false. More and more people are buying both iPhones and iPads.

And as to sustainable business models - the iTunes Ecosystem alone is a large as half of Google's entire business and is growing faster.

Re: Microsoft Open Sources C# Compiler

#224

Post by Yuioup » Thu, Apr 03, 2014, 9:35 PM UTC

This means that you can compile .NET code on a non-MS platform (like Linux) but you can only deploy it to ... Azure.

Microsoft's endgame is in sight.

Re: Microsoft Open Sources C# Compiler

#225

Post by untaken » Thu, Apr 03, 2014, 9:37 PM UTC

dkuntz2 wrote: post #198

ygra wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All this started long ago. Roslyn has been in development for a few years and that was still under Ballmer's leadership. Also many of the other things they're unveiling and open-sourcing now started way before Nadella took over as CEO. But my guess would be that Ballmer stepping down was sort of symbolic in this regard. With a new CEO it looks more like a "new Microsoft" doing all these things.

Just because they were working on it before doesn't mean that the plan at the time was to open-source those things...

They couldn't have done it that fast. They just couldn't do it while Ballmer was there - not after his anti-OSS rants.

And he knew it.

Re: Microsoft Open Sources C# Compiler

#226

Post by emn13 » Thu, Apr 03, 2014, 9:38 PM UTC

leoc wrote: post #216

MagerValp wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's particularly fair to lump Apple with the rest since 14 years later [1] the core OS is still open source [2], and they're actively working on several high profile open source projects (e.g. Webkit, CUPS, and clang). They're not exactly irrelevant either. [1] http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2000/04/05Apple-Releases-Dar... [2] http://opensource.apple.com/

Yes, although I could pick nits about the significance of each of these (Webkit being open source is somewhat less significant that it appears since web browsers nowadays are de facto somewhat unforkable; the open-sourcing of clang was partly or mainly an attack on the GPL). But while Apple's continued doing many of those things (and done some similar things like GCD), they've also started doing other things they wer…

Not to mention the fact that webkit itself is a fork of khtml - so while apple's contributions are clearly valuable, it's quite a different story. If apple had not open sourced webkit, given its origins, that would have been resoundingly bad PR at the time.

Apple built on oss foundations, and most of what they've open sourced is simply a result of them not closing forks of once open projects, which is very valuable, but nevertheless less impressive that releasing important bits of their own making.

Re: Microsoft Open Sources C# Compiler

#227

Post by leoc » Thu, Apr 03, 2014, 9:41 PM UTC

danford wrote: post #199

eropple wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only thing Apple has going for them is the iPhone. And the iPad, which is kicking the hell out of Android tablets (to my consternation, because I'm primarily an Android user and their tablets are terrible). And the Macbook Pro, which is making pretty major inroads at leading-edge companies. A buddy of mine is working on *nix software at IBM and they asked if he wanted a Thinkpad or an MBP; that blew my mind. They don…

You're right, how could I forget the iPad, the thing is the business model they have for all of their products is unsustainable. The iPad is doing well now, just as the iPhone did initially, but less and less people are buying the iPhone because the Android environment has had time to develop. Even chromebooks out sold mac books [1] in 2013. A lot of companies allow developers to use Linux too. The fact that people w…

Eh, while it may be accurate enough to say that to a first approximation Apple is an iOS company now, I don't think that's an unsustainable thing to be by tech standards. They may not need new triumphs to be very profitable for a long time: think of the golden decade or so MS had after '95 mainly from milking its already-existing successes.

Re: Microsoft Open Sources C# Compiler

#228

Post by emn13 » Thu, Apr 03, 2014, 9:44 PM UTC

JohnBooty wrote: post #194

danford wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hate to burst your bubble, but the only thing apple has going for them is the iPhone, which is arguably a fad. The reason Rolex never goes out of style is because they never change their style, and apple is no Rolex like a lot of people seem to think. People easily forget about all the hype around the iMac g3. Sure, it changed the company, but they still have yet to over take windows. Now Android is out selling the i…

Apple isn't dominating any market. You're obviously going by the number of units sold, not the profit share. And you're not technically wrong. But isn't that a little bit like measuring the number of swings a baseball player takes instead of the number of times he gets a hit? In the PC market Apple is absolutely destroying all comers: 45% of the profit share in 2012. HP, Lenovo, Dell, Acer and Asus combine for the re…

Profit share is a poor measure because it's reliant on expenses, and those are notoriously easy to massage - companies do that routinely for tax purposes. Who's to say what's a cost and what's an investment?

If you must, at least attempt to include accumulated value as part of the equation - so that "fake" costs that are actually investments appear as increases in company valuation. Of course, this still looks good for apple :-), but given the volatility of share prices and what that says about how easy it is to determine "value" it should be clear that the one thing these comparisons cant' be is clear.

Re: Microsoft Open Sources C# Compiler

#229

Post by keypusher » Thu, Apr 03, 2014, 9:45 PM UTC

tormeh wrote: post #221

JohnBooty wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having followed a fair number of MS bloggers/podcasts currently in and around their web tools (ASP.NET, MVC, etc) teams... I honestly believe they understand the value of open source. Visual Studio and their MVC framework continue to impress me (I mostly work in Ruby today, but have to maintain some .NET stuff) and MS takes inspiration from successful open-source tools and frameworks where needed. Many of their recen…

Well, I'd like to see Visual Studio for Linux with support for Java, Scala, Clojure, Haskell and other non-Microsoft technologies. That's my wishlist in this bright new era of Microsoft openness. I don't like Microsoft but Visual Studio is the only IDE I've ever tried that is substantially better than gedit/jedit. The auto-completion (intellisense) is just delightful to use.

Is Visual Studio auto-complete significantly different from IntelliJ or Eclipse? There are many great editors an the continium between gedit and Visual Studio, such as Sublime, hell even vim and emacs have autocomplete plugins.

Re: Microsoft Open Sources C# Compiler

#230

Post by Mikeb85 » Thu, Apr 03, 2014, 9:45 PM UTC

shmerl wrote: post #197

McGlockenshire wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The releases are under Apache License 2, which has both a patent grant and a patent retaliation clause.

That's good. But that's just the compiler. What about APIs (i.e. .NET)? I don't think Oracle claimed ownership over Java compilers in the example above. It was primarily about Java APIs.

The precedent has already been set that API's aren't patentable... So I think we're good.