Microsoft Open Sources C# Compiler • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft Open Sources C# Compiler

#351

Post by Maarten88 » Fri, Apr 04, 2014, 7:07 AM 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.

> Well, I'd like to see Visual Studio for Linux with support for Java, Scala, Clojure, Haskell and other non-Microsoft technologies.

Which is exactly what you can now create using the Roslyn technology that is now open sourced. Add these languages and they will get all the fancy support that Visual Studio provides, like (remote) debugging and code completion.

Re: Microsoft Open Sources C# Compiler

#352

Post by brc » Fri, Apr 04, 2014, 7:11 AM UTC

einhverfr wrote: post #294

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…

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…

It's obvious to me that they see their future as providing an integrated toolset between development and the cloud. They want to build tools that let you push code direct to Azure, and they're becoming more agnostic about whether or not that is a microsoft stack code or other code.

They renamed it from Windows Azure to Microsoft Azure to remove the windows connotaiton - specifically mentioning that 15% of all Azure deployments are Linux OS. So I would say that this is where they see the future, although there are still some very byzantine sales processes to go through to buy enterprise azure, because of the existence of the partner network. In that sense, they're almost like the car manufacturers forcing you to buy through a dealer for their direct-to-consumer products.

Re: Microsoft Open Sources C# Compiler

#353

Post by Shamanmuni » Fri, Apr 04, 2014, 7:17 AM UTC

einhverfr wrote: post #295

eitland wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Non-copyleft licenses can easily align with the "embrace, extend, extinguish" strategy. What? I would think if anything giving everyone else a crippled license while retaining copyright etc yourself that would be an even bigger setup for a EEE. Remember, MS can do w h a t e v e r they want with that code anyway it is not lke they'd be bound by a copyleft on their own code. (Unless they also started accepting patche…

Exactly. There's a reason why more restrictive licenses are more conducive to dual licensing models than less restrictive ones. A non-copyleft license effectively means that Microsoft, should they try EEE, has to compete not only with free as in beer and free as in freedom, they also have to compete with all the closed source competition they are subsidizing in this effort. If you believe that more competition is goo…

Copyleft licenses are more conductive to dual licensing because they give you no other choice if you want to sell a closed source premium version. That's the only reason. And for that to work you have to get copyright assignment.

I think your view is pretty naive. They develop the platform and own the IDE that's synonymous with it. They can keep any other compiler off the IDE if they want that, you would be competing with them at their house, which is doomed to fail.

With copyleft without assignment at least any later version would effectively remain free for all, whether Microsoft wants it or not. You don't have to believe and hope, it's just the way it is.

Re: Microsoft Open Sources C# Compiler

#354

Post by mehrdada » Fri, Apr 04, 2014, 7:30 AM UTC

rimantas wrote: post #338

mehrdada wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

KHTML was licensed under LGPL. Releasing the code was not a choice, but an obligation.

How about LLVM?

The raison d'etre for Apple's LLVM-based compiler was avoiding GPL3 restrictions of having to publish source code, it seems. They are frequently laggards in publishing parts of LLVM they care about and think of as competitive advantage (e.g. ARM64[1]), and they seem to not contribute much to parts of LLVM that they don't use themselves[2] (not that I find anything wrong with it, but portraying them as innate altruists is just not gonna fly.)

I would not be surprised if they get worse and worse over time in giving back to LLVM.

In short, Apple publishes free software, generally because they either (1) have to, due to GPL, or (2) feel the gain from the project is bigger than the cost of having to maintain a separate branch, so it makes perfect business sense.

(I am not criticizing that Apple has published free software and that is a good thing in general, regardless of the intent, but to say that they don't have their business interests in mind at all times and they fundamentally care about free software more than Microsoft is simply not true.)

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[1]: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTY0NzE

[2]: In our own experience developing techniques to uncover more than a hundred bugs in production GCC and LLVM (http://mehrdadafshari.com/emi/paper.pdf), we found GCC folks much more responsive to bug reports than Clang/LLVM folks, of which I draw the conclusion that the project is relatively under-resourced, at least in parts that are less relevant to Apple Darwin x86/64/arm backend.

Re: Microsoft Open Sources C# Compiler

#355

Post by weavie » Fri, Apr 04, 2014, 7:39 AM UTC

Interesting to see that they don't shy away from using goto in their code.

http://roslyn.codeplex.com/SourceControl/latest#Src/Compiler...

Something I've just learned from looking at the code is you can jump between cases in a switch statement :

    switch (a) {
       case '1':
         ...
       case '2':
         goto case '1';
    }

Never realised you could do that.

Re: Microsoft Open Sources C# Compiler

#356

Post by copter » Fri, Apr 04, 2014, 7:45 AM UTC

I suspect Scott Hanselman has huge impact on this. Thanks for pushing it Scott.

Re: Microsoft Open Sources C# Compiler

#357

Post by sbuk » Fri, Apr 04, 2014, 7:50 AM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #268

tjl wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has made Darwin open source. That, WebKit, and LLVM are pretty core technologies. A good portion of their technology is open. So, it's not just using free software and not giving back.

Isn't WebKit a fork of GPLv2 code?

As with everything in technology, it's far more nuanced that that. See podcasts and articles featuring Don Melton for reasons why...

Re: Microsoft Open Sources C# Compiler

#358

Post by sbuk » Fri, Apr 04, 2014, 8:01 AM 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…

Ah. Apple is doomed. I see.

Re: Microsoft Open Sources C# Compiler

#359

Post by nightski » Fri, Apr 04, 2014, 8:10 AM UTC

jussij wrote: post #312

lugg wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why they would. This has been an obvious move for a long time, keeping it closed never really made any sense to me. They gained nothing from .Net being closed except hate and utter avoidance from people like me (vocal early adopters.) MS doesn't really make money off C# or .Net directly, they make money off the windows licenses you need to run the resulting code. Open C#/.Net = stronger, longer lasting co…

> MS doesn't really make money off C# or .Net directly, they make money off the windows licenses you need to run the resulting code. On this page: http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/02/microsoft-updates-visual-st... There is this quote: Microsoft also today announced that Visual Studio 2013 has sold over 3.7 million copies since its release less than five months ago. That makes it the fastest-selling release of Visual Stu…

I payed $99 for VS2013 Professional, as did many others. Which is probably a key factor in why it is the fastest selling release.

Re: Microsoft Open Sources C# Compiler

#360

Post by MarkSweep » Fri, Apr 04, 2014, 8:24 AM UTC

SneakerXZ wrote: post #106

sixbrx wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the main thing I would be interested in also, but I'm thinking that's one thing that we WILL NOT see. That could seriously undercut the need to buy Windows servers.

The .NET VM would be pretty much useless on other platforms. It is tied to Windows and it would be pretty hard to rewrite. But standard libraries would be different story.

Microsoft has released the source for a .Net VM (CLR) in the past: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_Source_Common_Language_I... It supported FreeBSD and MacOS X. This suggests it would not be impossible for them to make a multiplatform .NET in the future.