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The Weakness of the .NET OSS Ecosystem

aaronstannard.com

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Re: The Weakness of the .NET OSS Ecosystem

#81

Post by mythz »

buckbova wrote: post #38
daxfohl wrote: post #22

A good chunk of that is the "invented here syndrome". With EF, WPF, ASP MVC, MEF, etc, plus annual MSBuild conferences, .Net has far more internally-developed ecosystem than Java. Which tends to promote the idea that the MS way is the right way, and if I need something else I must be doing something wrong (or I need to wait till next year). Perhaps MS should just kill off all these frameworks and force the community…

> Which tends to promote the idea that the MS way is the right way, and if I need something else I must be doing something wrong This is not exactly true. MS recommends other technologies when they fit. Like Redis for caching on azure. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/cac...

They originally tried competing for years by offering their own AppFabric, until finally they conceded to recommend Redis after having ported it on Windows so you can use it on Windows Servers/Azure.

Re: The Weakness of the .NET OSS Ecosystem

#82

Post by bunderbunder »

buckbova wrote: post #38
daxfohl wrote: post #22

A good chunk of that is the "invented here syndrome". With EF, WPF, ASP MVC, MEF, etc, plus annual MSBuild conferences, .Net has far more internally-developed ecosystem than Java. Which tends to promote the idea that the MS way is the right way, and if I need something else I must be doing something wrong (or I need to wait till next year). Perhaps MS should just kill off all these frameworks and force the community…

> Which tends to promote the idea that the MS way is the right way, and if I need something else I must be doing something wrong This is not exactly true. MS recommends other technologies when they fit. Like Redis for caching on azure. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/cac...

Microsoft's changing their approach, but it tends to take a long time for the rest of the .NET ecosystem to catch up.

Case in point: Judging by all the .NET code Microsoft has up on GitHub, they've more-or-less completely switched over to xUnit.NET for their testing framework.

Meanwhile, in most Microsoft shops MStest is still considered the best-in-breed option purely by virtue of the fact that Microsoft wrote it. NUnit is a strong counterculture alternative in the same way that espresso drinks are still considered a counterculture beverage in some circles. And nobody has even heard of xUnit.NET.

Re: The Weakness of the .NET OSS Ecosystem

#83

Post by mdpm »

tpetricek wrote: post #64
mdpm wrote: post #61

Really the simple issue has always been the same with MS-platform based OSS; People look to MS to provide the canonical frameworks, tools, and libraries. MS is far more used in corporate environments as a portion of their market, and are more subject to business decision making; much of that focused on RAD / designer tooling. There's a different philosophy in the open source world - python, perl, c - none really have…

There is a lot of truth in this. I think there is a shift happening slowly that simply needs to progress and happen fully. With more developer stuff coming from Microsoft embracing open-source, people just need to realize that Microsoft is a part of a larger .NET ecosystem space. Not the other way round.

Absolutely. They've pulled an amazing turnaround, momentum is going to take a while still.

Re: The Weakness of the .NET OSS Ecosystem

#84

Post by dozzie »

0xCMP wrote: post #74
hokkos wrote: post #8

The fact that until recently .Net only run correctly on windows where the licensing is more expansive than linux, and that all the big player use linux to develop their cloud capacities; it means that the ones who seek to develop at scale didn't bother with .net. Now that .net is open source, MS has still at lot of work to fix all the issues on linux, but maybe the ship has sailed and developer won't bother to port o…

There is always new stuff and C# is going to still be much faster than say a python or ruby so just like go replaces a lot of stuff written in those languages it wouldn't be crazy to see C# used as well. The ship hasn't sailed, but when they get to the ship it better be good enough.

C# does not compete with Python or Ruby. It competes with Java, which is already entrenched.

Re: The Weakness of the .NET OSS Ecosystem

#85

Post by jerven »

hokkos wrote: post #9
jerven wrote: post #3

Instead of re implementing could something like ikvm work for their users/usecases?

IKVM is slower than JVM and more error prone, so for big class of work why bother if you can directly use the JVM ?

Yes and I completely agree, but a slow AKKA seems easier than rewriting if from scratch in C#. e.g. seemed a smaller investment to me.

Re: The Weakness of the .NET OSS Ecosystem

#86

Post by fineman »

jameshart wrote: post #60
JamesBarney wrote: post #39

Here is some blatant speculation about the problem with .NET and OSS. The the larger problem is one of self-selection. C# devs are not alone in not contributing to opens source software. The vast majority of devs don't make meaningful contributions to OSS. It's just the the few people who get really stoked about open source software and love making a positive contribution to world through software have been turned of…

"Microsoft's behavior for the last 10-15 years" The 'bad stuff' from an OSS point of view is, generally, longer ago than that. - "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish": 1995 - US vs. Microsoft Corp: 1998 - Halloween Documents: 1998 Scraping under the 15 year bar: - Microsoft vs Sun settlements: 2001-2002 - Ballmer "Linux is a Cancer": 2001 SCO vs IBM was 2003, so I guess fits into the '10-15' ballpark, but I think "over the l…

> Can we begin to move on a little?

Why? Why should we forget that the entire company (currently) is funded by the crimes of the past?

Are they a person who made mistakes when young and now deserves a second chance?

I'm not anti-capitalistic but I'd never deal with, for example, a consultancy that cheated me in the past even if they had all new consultants and managers - some things just don't change. And even if... they might have turned over a new leaf but do they deserve another try and are you obligated to give it to them? Wouldn't it be better for everyone to offer the opportunity to a potentially honest competitor?

As long as people are willing to forgive companies, companies are prepared to bilk them.

Re: The Weakness of the .NET OSS Ecosystem

#87

Post by jameshart »

fineman wrote: post #86
jameshart wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Microsoft's behavior for the last 10-15 years" The 'bad stuff' from an OSS point of view is, generally, longer ago than that. - "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish": 1995 - US vs. Microsoft Corp: 1998 - Halloween Documents: 1998 Scraping under the 15 year bar: - Microsoft vs Sun settlements: 2001-2002 - Ballmer "Linux is a Cancer": 2001 SCO vs IBM was 2003, so I guess fits into the '10-15' ballpark, but I think "over the l…

> Can we begin to move on a little? Why? Why should we forget that the entire company (currently) is funded by the crimes of the past? Are they a person who made mistakes when young and now deserves a second chance? I'm not anti-capitalistic but I'd never deal with, for example, a consultancy that cheated me in the past even if they had all new consultants and managers - some things just don't change. And even if...…

And if people never offer forgiveness, then there's no incentive for them to improve. I guess you're just hoping that if you ignore them they'll go away?

Re: The Weakness of the .NET OSS Ecosystem

#88

Post by starik36 »

brightball wrote: post #68
daxfohl wrote: post #22

A good chunk of that is the "invented here syndrome". With EF, WPF, ASP MVC, MEF, etc, plus annual MSBuild conferences, .Net has far more internally-developed ecosystem than Java. Which tends to promote the idea that the MS way is the right way, and if I need something else I must be doing something wrong (or I need to wait till next year). Perhaps MS should just kill off all these frameworks and force the community…

That's one of my favorite things about Microsoft. Whenever they release a framework or a product, there's a tendency to just call it whatever the name of the technology is as if they invented the whole thing. SQL Server - When .NET developers say SQL they mean SQL Server 90% of the time it seems. MVC - MVC4 is a .NET Rails clone. Named MVC as if Microsoft originated the design pattern that was used to clone another f…

Actually, MVC is called ASP.NET MVC. And at this point, it is very far from a Rails clone.

Re: The Weakness of the .NET OSS Ecosystem

#89

Post by jameshart »

jasode wrote: post #70
maxlybbert wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Java had a lot of open source projects around it before Sun released the source code.

Whether/when Sun released the source code isn't as relevant as the fact that JDK and JRE 1.0 in 1995 were free . Microsoft .NET 1.0 development in 2002 required paid tools and a free version (Visual Studio Express) didn't happen until 2005. VS Express was also crippled in comparison to the paid product (VS Professional). We can't just look at the technical features and syntax of C# and compare to Java. (E.g. they bot…

In general, you're correct about the difference being social, nt one of licencing. You're wrong on one thing: Microsoft's .NET 1.0 CLR and compilers were also free from day one. You never HAD to use VS to develop with .NET, any more than you HAD to use NetBeans or Eclipse to develop with Java.

Re: The Weakness of the .NET OSS Ecosystem

#90

Post by bunderbunder »

jameshart wrote: post #89
jasode wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether/when Sun released the source code isn't as relevant as the fact that JDK and JRE 1.0 in 1995 were free . Microsoft .NET 1.0 development in 2002 required paid tools and a free version (Visual Studio Express) didn't happen until 2005. VS Express was also crippled in comparison to the paid product (VS Professional). We can't just look at the technical features and syntax of C# and compare to Java. (E.g. they bot…

In general, you're correct about the difference being social, nt one of licencing. You're wrong on one thing: Microsoft's .NET 1.0 CLR and compilers were also free from day one. You never HAD to use VS to develop with .NET, any more than you HAD to use NetBeans or Eclipse to develop with Java.

True, but I shudder at the thought of having to manage msbuild files by hand without the help of Visual Studio.
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