CoreCLR is now open source

Source is I worked there for eight years. Left two years ago. There was a push around the time I left to standardize more on TFS, but historically, VS was regarded internally as a bit non-hardcore.

Your opinions of Clojure seem to mirror mine. I absolutely love the simplicity of the syntax, and after having learned a bit of Clojure then coming to F# I released it's syntax for describing data collections had forever ruined me. EDN is fantastic.

Unfortunately I have to love Clojure from afar. Partly because I only touch it for Riemann so I'm always rusty, and partly because the JVM. I'm really hoping that all this open source .NET business will bring more attention to ClojureCLR though. ClojureScript is a wonderful thing and I know there are some F# and CIL->JS transpilers but LightTable->ClojureScript->Chrome is a wonderful thing. A similar story, complete with insta-repl, with F# would be crazy cool.

If I owned a car, it might as well have been welded shut – I am not a mechanic. Does this fact make it ethically OK for someone else to sell a “closed” car to me?

> […] I'd simply not buy that car […]

That was not the question. The question was if would be ethically OK to sell that car, not if you (or anyone else) would buy it or not.

> But you'll be hard pressed to convince me it's a problem for your $3 copy of Canabalt.

It also wouldn’t really be a large issue with a simple enough car or car-like conveyance, like maybe a bicycle, or a Segway. Does this make it OK?

> It doesn't need an oil change.

Software needs updating. Static software is dead code.

>> I'm familiar with the philosophical differences between Free Software and Open Source.

But in this context you seem to imply that there are practical differences i.e: Not all Open Source licences are considered Free Software in the practical sense.

The Open Source Initiative (OSI) was certifying all sorts of licenses as "open source" under their definition. Basically if you allowed people to see your source code it was considered open source. That's not really practical and most open source licenses had an agenda of the company retaining control, which means people can't really do what they want. To most developers there are basically the BSD/MIT licenses that allow you to do whatever you want, and the GPL/LGPL licenses that allow you to do what ever you want - so long as you pass that freedom on to your users. These are both forms of Free Software, though the distinction causes much argument. Every other "open source" license is generally more restrictive and meant for someone to retain ultimate control, including the old Microsoft licenses.

In my opinion the OSI did more harm to the movement than good by "certifying" a huge number of irrelevant licenses so companies could claim be doing the cool new thing. None of that code can be integrated into anything else under different terms - at least not without consulting a lawyer.

> True, but in this situation they have the same effect which I wanted to highlight, i.e. loss of control on the part of the owner/user.

Analogies are a bit awkward. With cars, DRM would equal to each car manufacturer having their own road barred to other car manufacturers. If the welded-shut-bonnet bothers you just switch cars. This is what I meant with open data - it's what one does with the product that matters, and can one practically choose another.

As to the "evilness" of the situation, I cannot think I could work professionally in software as a field - which I love - if there were no established large companies with closed source products. If my analysis is flawed I would value pointers why.

As my employer is a closed source software vendor, to me the economics situation looks as follows: vendor provides software, end user uses it to add value to their work. End user reports bugs, vendor fixes the bugs. There is an efficient responsibility interface to the whole thing. And the area is well competed in, if vendor a screws up customers will move to vendor b, c, or d...

With an established product there is an established revenue stream which enables stable income for all employees.

The way I choose to work on my profession, I will take stable revenue stream with specific work hours over some 24/7 freelancer role to fix bugs here and there. This simply would not be compatible with a family, with small kids I'm barely able to cope with the stresses at home and work as they are. If I had to worry after the next mortgage payment I would probably go nuts, and that is no exaggeration.

Open source simply does not work that well as a revenue model in general. It works as an enabler for all sorts of practical interactions, and is absolutely essential, but people need to eat and feed their families. Open source provides value, but few people are able to capture that value. That's why there are non-profits to organize critical work in this area.

If the product of my company was open sourced, several enterprising individuals would simply copy the product, relabel it, and sell it. Thus eating to the market share, thus probably leaving me to find another job. Thus, to me, closed source software provides housing, food and security to me and my family.