Wow, you know that the times are a'changing when something like this happens. Ex-chairman Steve Ballmer used to call linux a cancer and MS had nothing but disdain for open source software. Open source really has made a difference, and Microsoft is reacting in a big way.
Microsoft Open Sources C# Compiler
331–340 of 459 posts
Re: Microsoft Open Sources C# Compiler
#332Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would also add that Google, Apple, Facebook and others are hardly without their track records of "profound fuckery"... and yet it's only Microsoft for which the knee-jerk reaction to any bit of news seems to be "it sucks."
Oh come on, did you miss the huge backlash when fb took over occulus rift? And Google get a lot of shit for closing much used and loved services. But Microsoft wanted to remove the open web, in favour of all their proprietary services, such as Active-X. Places like South Korea foolishly followed the MS paradigm, and they are suffering for it now. Microsoft wanted to control everything, and kill Linux and over open so…
> by spreading FUD
Refers to this, if anyone was not aware: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_Documents
Re: Microsoft Open Sources C# Compiler
#333Earlier quoted context omitted.
You honestly don't get it? I really like microsoft products and I use them every day, however the business model is too lock people in to their ecosystem so that you have to purchase licenses for their products. Mono clearly undermines that b/c it allows you to "easily" jump ship to a free platform. Unless I'm somehow completely misunderstanding their business model - killing Mono just makes business sense.
I work at Microsoft, in Azure. What I hear privately from the people I meet who work on the .Net and Visual Studio side of things is consistent with what the company is now saying publicly. Basically: "We luvvv Mono" :-)
Give Mono 1st class support and you have me willingly locked in into MS.
Re: Microsoft Open Sources C# Compiler
#334Earlier quoted context omitted.
Damn, give it a break those Halloween Documents were over 10 years ago. The pricing thing is one bit, Microsoft hasn't really been too shy about that, but neither has Intel. The whole bundling of IE - how else did you expect someone to browse the web? I don't get it. People don't want IE in Windows yet can never give an answer of how people will get anything else. Then Microsoft has to give people choice. Such a voca…
Yeah. I get so mad when the default Ubuntu install gives me Firefox. Sure I can always just immediately use FF to download another browser, but it is so anti-competitive! Such monopoly! Seriously though, you have to have an initial browser to be able to get the browser you want. Of course a company will make that initial browser the one they make themselves. I've never understood the outrage over this.
I had no idea that Ubuntu made firefox an integral part of Ubuntu and that you couldn't remove it. Or other browsers wouldn't run as well as firefox on ubuntu. Geez, maybe Ubuntu really is like Microsoft! Huh, thanks for that.
Re: Microsoft Open Sources C# Compiler
#335I'm stupid, so I must ask:
What does this mean for the future of C# on Linux?
Re: Microsoft Open Sources C# Compiler
#336They also announced as part of this that they are putting a large swatch of their .NET Source code under Apache 2 and accepting pull requests. Folks, this is a very big deal for Microsoft. Who would have imagined this 10 years ago? Here is an image that shows what they are putting into the community https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BkT9oBcCQAAHIAV.jpg:large
Big fan of the way Nadella is starting out, Microsoft may reverse the polarity of developers from disengaging back to attracting to Microsoft if they keep this up.
Re: Microsoft Open Sources C# Compiler
#337Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you have to define "they" here when you say "they understand the value of open source." There are a lot of people at Microsoft who really do understand the value of open source. When I worked there ten years ago, there were plenty who did. When I wrote interop papers as an outside consultant in 2007, I worked with a unit that did. But Microsoft also has a bunch of real problems that make it hard for them to r…
Outside of my 9-5 work, I've probably deployed nearly as much C# code (via Mono) under Linux as I have under Windows. In a few ways it's been very nice, in others a bit frustrating. I think that if MS Dev-Div buys out Xamarin, we'll see where things are really headed here. It will either be a new era of OSS tools from MS, or back to the old "kill it for cross platform in v.Next" ... I'm hoping that the tooling and in…
> I'm hoping that the tooling and integration gets a lot better in *nix, but nod sure how the Mono license (MIT iirc) and this new C# license (Apache) will jive together.
The MIT license is a lot more permissive than the Apache license. However I see no reason that you can't have different components under each license which work together harmoniously. If nothing else, the MIT license can be easily changed without consulting other contributors because of the sublicensing grant.
Re: Microsoft Open Sources C# Compiler
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
Correction: Webkit wasn't some software Apple made use of. Apple created Webkit as we know it. What they DID use was KHTML, a far more barebones web rendering engine used in KDE, that Apple adopted, and turned into Webkit. Webkit as Apple had it (before Google stepped in) was an order of magnitude more evolved than KHTML.
KHTML was licensed under LGPL. Releasing the code was not a choice, but an obligation.
How about LLVM?
Re: Microsoft Open Sources C# Compiler
#339Earlier quoted context omitted.
Subtle difference: Apple and IBM have made use of free software such as FreeBSD, CUPS, Webkit, etc. Microsoft here is taking core technology and releasing it as free.
Important. Also, Oracle has bought/absorbed free software and slowly suffocated it (lookin at you, MySQL).
InnoDB was Oracles long before Oracle bought Sun (and MySQL with it). If they wanted to hurt MySQL they had that opportunity before acquisition.
Re: Microsoft Open Sources C# Compiler
#340Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah. I get so mad when the default Ubuntu install gives me Firefox. Sure I can always just immediately use FF to download another browser, but it is so anti-competitive! Such monopoly! Seriously though, you have to have an initial browser to be able to get the browser you want. Of course a company will make that initial browser the one they make themselves. I've never understood the outrage over this.
I had no idea that Ubuntu made firefox an integral part of Ubuntu and that you couldn't remove it. Or other browsers wouldn't run as well as firefox on ubuntu. Geez, maybe Ubuntu really is like Microsoft! Huh, thanks for that.
I don't remember other browsers running less well than IE just because it was built into the OS. If anything, I've always remembered 3rd party browsers running quite a bit better.
Not certain if Ubuntu has a browser built in, but I would say that in this day and age, if GTK+ doesn't have any native components for rendering HTML then that would really stand out. It's considered an essential feature on every other platform's GUI toolkit. Just try removing WebKit from Android or an Apple OS, or pulling Gecko out of a Firefox phone.
The last exhibit would be Microsoft scrapping their plans to ship a version of Windows 7 that didn't include IE. (Though I imagine the rendering engine would still be needed - gotta display help files somehow, after all.) Turns out manufacturers didn't want to carry it, because nobody wants a computer that ships without a web browser anyway.