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Microsoft Launches Its .NET Distribution for Linux and Mac

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Re: Microsoft Launches Its .NET Distribution for Linux and Mac

#41

Post by phkahler »

wtetzner wrote: post #37
tdicola wrote: post #31

This is interesting but is there any commitment to support it long term? I remember when Silverlight was supposed to be the savior that brought .NET to Mac and Linux, but that didn't last more than 5 years. Would be nice for MS to say they guarantee support for 10, 15, etc. years.

One thing that's nice is that it's now open source, so as long as it remains open source, it will likely remain cross platform. Contributers that are on non-windows platforms will likely notice when something breaks on their platform, and get it fixed.

Only core components and now a stripped down IDE are open source (core is actually free software IIRC). I will only be impressed if the entire runtime stack becomes open source. Otherwise it's still a platform for DRM or other forms of lockdown.

If you're not porting a .net application to MAC or Linux, I would avoid this for quite a while still. We don't know where this is going long term.

Re: Microsoft Launches Its .NET Distribution for Linux and Mac

#42

Post by bdcravens »

RCampbell wrote: post #36
tdicola wrote: post #31

This is interesting but is there any commitment to support it long term? I remember when Silverlight was supposed to be the savior that brought .NET to Mac and Linux, but that didn't last more than 5 years. Would be nice for MS to say they guarantee support for 10, 15, etc. years.

Silverlight is still supported by Microsoft - https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle?c2=12905

Your username sounds very similar to the .NET Rocks host :-)

Re: Microsoft Launches Its .NET Distribution for Linux and Mac

#43

Post by bdcravens »

tdicola wrote: post #31

This is interesting but is there any commitment to support it long term? I remember when Silverlight was supposed to be the savior that brought .NET to Mac and Linux, but that didn't last more than 5 years. Would be nice for MS to say they guarantee support for 10, 15, etc. years.

Has Google/Mozilla made the same commitments to Go/Rust?

Re: Microsoft Launches Its .NET Distribution for Linux and Mac

#44

Post by zobzu »

eloff wrote: post #26
jgrowl wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. I'm a big fan of MIT style licenses, but it also means that Microsoft could at anytime start making proprietary updates. It could mean we could start adopting it and then at some point down the road they could discontinue the open version and start making closed features/updates. Don't get me wrong, I'm very pleased that this is the direction Microsoft is taking. I am just still very skeptical.

The GPL doesn't protect against that either. They still own the code, either way, and can make new development closed whenever they want.

thats a good point - however they can relicense the code you have written on top unless you always give them the copyright

Re: Microsoft Launches Its .NET Distribution for Linux and Mac

#45

Post by mikegerwitz »

chc wrote: post #24
jgrowl wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. I'm a big fan of MIT style licenses, but it also means that Microsoft could at anytime start making proprietary updates. It could mean we could start adopting it and then at some point down the road they could discontinue the open version and start making closed features/updates. Don't get me wrong, I'm very pleased that this is the direction Microsoft is taking. I am just still very skeptical.

In fairness, as long as they have copyright assignment from contributors, they could just as well do that with a GPL software.

Copyright assignments can preserve freedom if done properly; the FSF's copyright assignment, for example, guarantees that your contributions will always be Free (as in freedom). RMS' rationale in this case was to protect against a scenario in which FSF was overtaken/purchased, so GNU software couldn't be made proprietary.

Re: Microsoft Launches Its .NET Distribution for Linux and Mac

#47

Post by tdicola »

bdcravens wrote: post #43
tdicola wrote: post #31

This is interesting but is there any commitment to support it long term? I remember when Silverlight was supposed to be the savior that brought .NET to Mac and Linux, but that didn't last more than 5 years. Would be nice for MS to say they guarantee support for 10, 15, etc. years.

Has Google/Mozilla made the same commitments to Go/Rust?

It's a bit different when there's a runtime required to run the apps. An app written in Go/Rust today will run on a machine 10, 20, 100 years from now as it's just an entirely self-contained executable. A .NET app will only run on a machine that has a functioning and supported .NET framework.

Re: Microsoft Launches Its .NET Distribution for Linux and Mac

#48

Post by cannam »

nutate wrote: post #28

F# is a real breath of fresh air in comparison to something like Scala. It's direct ML heritage really shows, also just diving in with an IDE (like Xamarin, or I suppose Visual Studio) is super easy. I see it as the future of pop-functional programming. For example look at the way it handles type inference w/ JSON parsing. Compare that to what you have to do to parse JSON in Scala. It's subtle, but a major usability…

I did a toy comparison of ML-derived languages running on Linux the other day (http://thebreakfastpost.com/2015/04/22/four-mls-and-a-python...) and found F# already simple to get along with and fast to run, at this beginner level. It could become a really interesting option.

Re: Microsoft Launches Its .NET Distribution for Linux and Mac

#49

Post by cheald »

u04f061 wrote: post #23
kin wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows and .NET are different things. I'm fairly confident being able to run .NET on unix machines won't affect you very much so you can stay a happy Linux User. Also, times are changing man, for the better. Embrace it.

The only part which scares me is that people will start making Linux apps using dotnet technologies. >Also, times are changing man, for the better. Embrace it Yup. That is why MS had to realize that *nix is eclipsing it in cloud and to grab extra some extra pennies out of our pockets, they are releasing their products on these platform just to fool us that they care. Actually they don't care us at all.

Given that said .NET technologies are open source, why does this bother you?
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