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Microsoft Plans "Shared Source" .NET
raelity writes "Microsoft has announced its first foray into the waters of publicly shared source. In an O'Reilly Network interview, Tim O'Reilly talks to Microsoft program manager (and FreeBSD sympathizer) Dave Stutz about Redmond's plans to release shared-source code of parts of the .NET framework. The offerings include: a C# compiler, C# based ECMAscript compiler, and shared-source CLI for Windows and FreeBSD. The announcement comes against a backdrop of Microsoft's
recent attack on some aspects of open source software development, particularly against the GNU Public License (GPL)." I think Jamie put it best when he said recently 'open source: "share and enjoy"; shared source: "look but don't touch"'. This is most certainly an interesting development- so far the Open Source/Free Software division has been the main one, but not we have a third branch. Imagine what would happen if MS adopted a fair license? Compatibility and competition. We would all benefit.
--
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Ohhh, those clever Microsoftians....
They've picked up on the scism between the *BSDs and Linux over the GPL, and they're playing one off against the other. "It's not Open Source we don't like, it's the GPL!" - presto! They get instant allies from the *BSD folks.
Evil evil evil. But clever.
How long before we are faced with a version of "Microsoft BSD"? - enhanced and extended of course. After all, to run Office For BSD, you'll need *this* little kernel patch, and IIS For BSD will need *this* little tweak to the network stack, and oh, init now requires an instance of Actice Directory somewhere before it'll boot and...
Well, you get the picture.
But for the GPL, there goes Linux!
*BSD folks, be careful. It looks like Microsoft has determined their Open Source strategy - and it's YOU! "Embrace, extend, extinguish"; welcome to Phase One.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
When one installs MSVC, one get's the option to install the source for MFC and their C library (things like ATL come for free being template based). How is this initiative with .net any different? It seems to me that either people have been bashing MSFT unnecessarily, or are now giving them unnecessary attention. Whatever, their marketing department must be loving it.
Oh, come on. Open Source and Free Software are almost completely the same thing. Which name you use is nothing but an indication of the reason why you think the freedom to use/modify/redistribute is important.
"Shared source", however, is a completely different thing. It gives you none of the freedoms both Open Source and Free Software give you.
Calling it a "third branch" is exactly the kind of misrepresentation you'd expect from the Microsoft FUDmeisters, but not from a Slashdot editor.
Translation: we want that legendary legion of eyeballs to do their magic contributing freely to lowering our costs and speeding up our schedule. Of course, it would be Un-American to give up our absolute rights to the results.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
It seems that Micro$oft, or at least part of Micro$oft, *may* be finally starting to "get it". This might just be a first step towards a bigger goal. Of course, given its recent anti-open-source statements, it seems that there still is quite a bit of intra-company conflict between traditional and progressive ideologies.
Of course, no one has actually considered the following question: is it a Good Thing for them to "get it"?
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SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
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Well, I might just be a paranoid but... I keep seeing "The license isn't available yet" and "It will allow hands-on usage". Until the license is available, none of those statements count for diddly. It's not beyond the tactics of MS marketing to make a goody-goody announcement, reap the good PR, and then release something that, um, fails to live up to the hype. By the time the license is available, the press will have moved on...
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
After reading this:
3 281,00.html
.NET. I'm not sure if I should laugh or be scared.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,509
(yes, that's right, Microsoft and others will spend a collective $1,000,000,000.00 marketing Windows XP)
I have to wonder how much they'll market
Get ready to fight the FUD.
First of all, he flat out states that the license will be setup in such a way that non-commercial ports to Linux (or any other OS most likely) are 100% OK.
.NET framework. The offerings include:
.NET scripts on other platforms. We'll also have the C# compiler on other platforms. The kicker is the CLI, which gives us the base runtime for C#, C++, VB, Perl, or any other .NET app to run.
This section of the article was particularly telling, in terms of what will be offered in source format and what won't.
Stutz says that the CLI being offered as shared source is a subset of what's in the
the ECMAscript compiler, written in C#, which runs on both platforms (Windows, FreeBSD)
the C# compiler, which also runs on both platforms
and the shared-source CLI.
OK, that's good. It means we can run
It doesn't include
ASP.NET
ADO.NET
Windows Forms
I don't see ASP.NET as a problem, since it is so tied to IIS anyway. ADO would be a HUGE boon to Linux in terms of database programming. Of course having a standard windowing model between Windows and other OSes would be great too, but it appears that is not to be.
He did state that MS is always willing to work with commercial porting companies. This is only a list of what they are letting out in source form for free. A company, say RedHat, could very well port ASP.NET to run on Apache, or Borland could sell a Windows Forms environment for the various *nixes.
Anyhow, he goes on:
When this shared license is revealed, it will certainly be the most liberal software license Microsoft has offered. But Stutz says it's not out of the question that in the future, Microsoft's licenses will become ever more open.
"This is all about Microsoft getting serious about sharing source code in a very wide way," he said. "And it's also a serious long-term commitment to establishing the CLI as a basis for web services. It's really not a short-term, tactical Java battle."
-- russ
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)