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Microsoft releases F# under Apache 2.0 license

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Re: Microsoft releases F# under Apache 2.0 license

#12

Does it mean anything in particular that they chose the Apache 2.0 license? Their previously public plans were to use MS-Pl.

The newer projects on the MS backed OuterCurve.org (formerly Codeplex.org) all use either an Apache or BSD license.

I suspect two reasons for MS accepting the Apache, BSD, and MIT licenses:

1) the terms of those license are not very onerous and let the end user pretty much do as they will. This is very important to a company like MS that has a lot of code and needs to be paranoid about subjecting themselves to patent suits.

2) Joe Briefcase has no idea what-so-ever what the "MS-PL" license is - no name recognition at all. The Apache/BSD/MIT licenses have been around so long and are so commonplace that they are generally acceptable to most everyone, and most developers shouldn't have a problem using one of those licenses.

Re: Microsoft releases F# under Apache 2.0 license

#14
post #13

"After some discussion, we’ve decided to do this via a “code drop” model..." They lost me here.

They can't afford to do otherwise. Accepting community contributions will increase the MS surface area for copyright/patent infringements. The F# team is mostly a research outfit - they aren't going to vet patches.

Re: Microsoft releases F# under Apache 2.0 license

#16
post #3

Great News! Mono here we come...

Just got through installing Ubuntu. I expect to see some really good software come out of this. I think Microsoft bought a lot of goodwill with the community with this move.

Any ideas why the compilation is so slow? Compiling a simple "Hello World!" takes a noticeable amount of time on my reasonably well endowed laptop(i5, 4GB ram).

Is it slow just on linux/mono or that's the case on windows as well?

Other than the compilation time, all else seems well. I was following "Programming F#" and didn't run in any blockers on selective examples I tried. Once compiled, the performance is reasonable.

Re: Microsoft releases F# under Apache 2.0 license

#17
post #10

Java is Oracle stack, C# is MS stack, objective-C is Apple stack. Is there an opportunity for an open language with similar VM ease-of-use/performance tradeoffs - or is hardware now fast enough for the ease/speed of dynamic languages to fill that gap (Python, Ruby, Javascript, ...)?

I was under the impression this was/is going to be one of the side benefits of the Parrot VM.

Updated to add: Directly from the Mono Project website "An open source, cross-platform, implementation of C# and the CLR that is binary compatible with Microsoft.NET"

Now with F# on Mono...great things!

Re: Microsoft releases F# under Apache 2.0 license

#18
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just got through installing Ubuntu. I expect to see some really good software come out of this. I think Microsoft bought a lot of goodwill with the community with this move.

Any ideas why the compilation is so slow? Compiling a simple "Hello World!" takes a noticeable amount of time on my reasonably well endowed laptop(i5, 4GB ram). Is it slow just on linux/mono or that's the case on windows as well? Other than the compilation time, all else seems well. I was following "Programming F#" and didn't run in any blockers on selective examples I tried. Once compiled, the performance is reasona…

The compiler and interpreter aren't pre-compiled. Use the --resident flag - it will keep the F# compiler running as a service.

Re: Microsoft releases F# under Apache 2.0 license

#20
post #19

Are we getting any closer of developing .NET / WPF apps on Mac? (Wishful thinking, shameless cry)

Sorry if I've misinterpreted your question as I'm not big on .NET but there are full, commercial OS X apps developed in C# on Mono: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnome.mono.devel/35827 .. an interesting hackaround to get a "native" interface though.
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