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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

#151

Post by zamalek »

ashmud wrote: post #112
AdeptusAquinas wrote: post #105

Seems to me its more on the people who solve hard problems than on the current crop of .NET developers - if you are writing a complex game/MMO, AI system or what have you, and you choose to do so in Java, C++ or similar when C# might be the better option, the faults on you not the .NET community. If the whole pool of developers world wide was considered as a big pie, and a certain section of that do these 'hard probl…

(Not directly addressing what you're saying.) A few MMOs have been written using .NET. https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/10247/mmos-based...

In addition quite a few MMO server "emulators" are written in C# (e.g. Mangos, WGrid).

Re: The Weakness of the .NET OSS Ecosystem

#152

Post by cbd1984 »

fr0styMatt2 wrote: post #146
deet wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. And it's very possible that the .NET OSS ecosystem will grow dramatically soon, once its core components, compilers, and build tools finish being open sourced and become stable on non-Windows platforms. The article accused people using .NET of not choosing to work on hard problems. I suspect that's it's the other way around. People working on hard problems have chosen other tools that they felt were more appr…

I think the status of the development tools has/had a lot to do with it. As a .NET developer, it's always been unclear until a few years ago as to how you could get the free tools and what you could do with them. I'm specifically talking about Visual Studio here. So there was always this perceived barrier to entry, even if it wasn't true -- for example with C++ I know I can just grab a linux box and have gcc and use…

> They aren't seen as "hacker's languages" but "ewww yuck big bank enterprise-y languages".

They're seen as "Languages this evil SOB of a company owns and who knows if it could decide to patent something and enforce it against me".

As in, patent law is complex. Guarantees sound more like marketing of the used-car-dealer and sawdust-transmission variety than actual known-good documents like the GPL, which is, after all, founded on copyright law. Copyright law seems simpler: You own specific files, not abstract hand-wavey ideas. You can't use copyright law to go after someone for the unforgivable sin of coming up with the same idea a bit after, or a bit before, you did.

(Edited to add: Before you accuse me of FUD, tell me how I could know I'm not spreading FUD without becoming an IP law expert first.)

So:

.Net is Microsoft's ecosystem.

Java is Oracle's ecosystem.

Which company is less likely to find a loophole in whatever guarantee they've pledged and use it to squash me like a gnat?

Re: The Weakness of the .NET OSS Ecosystem

#153

Post by fr0styMatt2 »

tacos wrote: post #40
vdnkh wrote: post #17

Yes, the author is correct. There is a distinct lack of OSS in .NET. I've been trying to find a project to contribute to among the graveyard on Github. However, I think the author falls flat explaining the why. I have a few thory on this. For so long C# has been a walled garden of closed source software. This closed source software, for the most part, works damn well. Why reinvent a square wheel when there is a shop…

The tools and libraries from Microsoft are so solid that frankly you don't need an entire class of open source projects. I don't need to "contribute" and "socialize" with some Python craziness named after a dolphin (though I did!) because Amazon provides a real .NET SDK for talking to AWS. I don't need to wrestle with three different constantly-patched Ruby image libraries because .NET has been able to load and save…

Why oh why oh why did I have to think about Visual SourceSafe ever again? :P

Re: The Weakness of the .NET OSS Ecosystem

#154

Post by trentmb »

felixgallo wrote: post #117
blakeyrat wrote: post #111

His main argument seems to center around a "reactive socket server middleware" being absent in the .NET ecosystem. I frankly: 1) don't know what that is, and 2) can't even imagine what it could consist of other than a few lines of code exercising System.Net.Sockets.

then why are you posting, instead of going and learning?

I regularly ask questions before seeking knowledge on my own, just to check back on my post a few hours/days/weeks later.

The point of asking the question is to leverage others experience to guide your learning, and provide a reference for those in the future that have a similar question.

Re: The Weakness of the .NET OSS Ecosystem

#155

Post by felixgallo »

trentmb wrote: post #154
felixgallo wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

then why are you posting, instead of going and learning?

I regularly ask questions before seeking knowledge on my own, just to check back on my post a few hours/days/weeks later. The point of asking the question is to leverage others experience to guide your learning, and provide a reference for those in the future that have a similar question.

The post has no question marks, nor does it seek knowledge. Instead, it makes declarative statements implying that the knowledge is actually probably useless.

Re: The Weakness of the .NET OSS Ecosystem

#156

Post by fr0styMatt2 »

cbd1984 wrote: post #152
fr0styMatt2 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the status of the development tools has/had a lot to do with it. As a .NET developer, it's always been unclear until a few years ago as to how you could get the free tools and what you could do with them. I'm specifically talking about Visual Studio here. So there was always this perceived barrier to entry, even if it wasn't true -- for example with C++ I know I can just grab a linux box and have gcc and use…

> They aren't seen as "hacker's languages" but "ewww yuck big bank enterprise-y languages". They're seen as "Languages this evil SOB of a company owns and who knows if it could decide to patent something and enforce it against me". As in, patent law is complex. Guarantees sound more like marketing of the used-car-dealer and sawdust-transmission variety than actual known-good documents like the GPL, which is, after al…

I'd agree with this too; at least to an extent -- especially given Oracle's recent actions wrt. to Android/Java.

Now that you mention Intellectual Property, I wonder.... Does the fact that .NET is used in big enterprises and big enterprises tend to have strict employee side-work exclusion clauses or "we own everything you do" clauses also play a part in slowing down the .NET OSS ecosystem?

Re: The Weakness of the .NET OSS Ecosystem

#157

Post by cbsmith »

jameshart wrote: post #43
lectrick wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I liked this analogy. Why is it getting downvoted? It's totally true. Too much cognitive dissonance between open-source on a for-profit foundation.

Doesn't explain why Java developed a robust OSS ecosystem long before it went open source. Java did benefit from the model Sun set up on J2EE of setting out JSR 'specifications' and only providing limited capability reference implementations, which made it possible for the Apache Java ecosystem to spring up, initially around the Xerces and Xalan XML libraries. Maybe - maybe - Microsoft is starting to get on board wit…

I agree there was a lot of similarity between how open Java & C# were as they evolved. However, Sun's engagement with the open source development community was much, much, much better than Microsoft's. Sun had its problems, but they actually had worked with that community in the past. At the time Microsoft was openly combative.

Re: The Weakness of the .NET OSS Ecosystem

#158

Post by batou »

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #139
nl wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but that is a nonsense excuse. The (now abandoned) Spring.NET project[1] was started in 2004, not too long after (Java) Spring started. It's easy to criticize Java Spring, but it's a good example of a long-lived successful Open Source project. It's also easy to argue that Spring isn't as useful in .NET as in Java. But I can pull up many, may other examples (the .NET Lucene port etc). My point is that the .NET…

> The (now abandoned) Spring.NET project It's been abandoned? (serious question) That really is too bad. It was a solid project used on several .NET projects in which I participated "back in the day." BTW, I completely agree with your summary point. There appears to be a cultural rejection of .NET OSS projects.

It slowly fell behind. I made the mistake of using it for a product pre-MVC. When MVC came along they jumped the shark and we ended up ripping it out and replacing bits with Autofac and some light weight abstractions we put together ourselves.

Re: The Weakness of the .NET OSS Ecosystem

#159

Post by trentmb »

felixgallo wrote: post #155
trentmb wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I regularly ask questions before seeking knowledge on my own, just to check back on my post a few hours/days/weeks later. The point of asking the question is to leverage others experience to guide your learning, and provide a reference for those in the future that have a similar question.

The post has no question marks, nor does it seek knowledge. Instead, it makes declarative statements implying that the knowledge is actually probably useless.

> The post has no question marks

Correct.

> nor does it seek knowledge.

Open to interpretation- when someone claims they don't know what something is, I interpret that as an invitation to explanation, exposition.

Re: The Weakness of the .NET OSS Ecosystem

#160

Post by locusm »

saosebastiao wrote: post #28
macintux wrote: post #27

I asked on Twitter long ago for any prominent examples of open source software that originated on Windows and transitioned to other platforms. I think after some discussion we may have come up with an example. Maybe. I certainly can't recall what it was.

And to the other extreme, I know of quite a few open source projects on .NET that have gone proprietary. ServiceStack anyone? Kinda leaves a little bit of a bitter taste in the mouth.

Well, V3 is still open from memory and very capable.
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