MS Releases .NET Source, Sort Of

cam_macleod writes "A friend at Microsoft (he's a nice guy, really!) pointed me to their release of the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) source, which builds successfully on Windows, FreeBSD, and MacOS X 10.2 -- he says Linux too, but their website strangely doesn't mention it!"

Comments

Security

[Trusty Penfold]

Remember "many eyes".

If there are any security problems with .NET it all your fault.

(I'm blind, don't blame me!)

Nothing new.

[cd_Csc]

This is not new. Microsoft released this long ago in an effort to show that .NET really *is* cross platform. Here are the changes (as listed on the website):

Support for Mac OS X 10.2.

Additional code clean-up and bug fixes.

Debugger improvements.

Class reference documentation (separate archive) and additional samples.

Build system improvements and additional test cases and tool improvements.

Evil licensing..

[Ogerman]

Read the license here

This is nowhere near Open Source / Free software. The license specifically states that you cannot use the code for any commercial purpose whatsoever--even writing your own software to use for your own purposes in running a business. Furthermore, the license states:

You may use any information in intangible form that you remember after accessing the Software. However, this right does not grant you a license to any of Microsoft's copyrights or patents for anything you might create using such information.

In other words, they're trying to use software patents to keep people from writing their own implementations of C# / CLI libraries and software.

Which all boils down to: Microsoft wants a programming language for which you have to pay them royalties just to use, with the exception of academic use. They realize that their monopoly on operating environments is crumbling so they want to "own" and control the "next C++ or Java". My opinion: boycott this crap.

Re:Evil licensing..

[informer]

In other words, they're trying to use software patents to keep people from writing their own implementations of C# / CLI libraries and software.

This is a completely bogus interpretation of the goal. The stated goal of allowing people to view and study the source is to gain acceptance for the .NET platform, and to kick-start an understanding of the technologies, and to permit and encourage other implementations. Why have they not started legal proceedings with dotGNU or Mono? Please spare us the doomsday senario's. Evaluate the .NET / C# licenses and technologies and use them if they provide a benefit, otherwise ignore them.

C# is an open standard. The CLI is an open standard.

There are many libraries included with the microsoft implementation of .NET which are *not* part of the standard, and these become more like the Java libraries. Many of those classes and features which are not part of the standard are not included in the SSCLI.

My opinion: boycott this if you want, but dont use bogus arguments for doing so.

Re:Evil licensing..

[Twirlip of the Mists]

In other words, they're trying to use software patents to keep people from writing their own implementations of C# / CLI libraries and software.

Hey, that's quite a scoop there. You've stumbled on the fact that this is exactly what patents are for. They are a limited monopoly on an invention or innovation. Until Microsoft's patents expire, you can't do any of the stuff described in them without an explicit license.

I always get such a kick when people post this sort of thing to Slashdot with such indignation. "They're trying to use patents to keep people from doing things!" How dare they.

My opinion: boycott this crap.

Given the degree of insight inherent in your first observation, I'm not sure how much I value your opinion on this matter. But rest assured; if it's crap, a boycott will be quite unnecessary. In the computer industry moreso than any other, bad ideas wither on the vine.

Re:Evil licensing..

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Wrong? Immoral? Unjust? No. Patents on software, just like patents on anything else, exist to encourage innovation. Without the promise of a monopoly-- temporary though it will be-- there would be no incentive to innovate. Of course, the average Slashdot poster would respond that innovation will come from hobbyists and other creators of open-source software, who believe themselves to be acting philanthropically. The average Slashdot poster hasn't the foggiest idea how the world actually works, and has no respect whatsoever for the power of the profit motive.

And unconstitutional? Please refer to Article I, section 8: "The Congress shall have Power... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." All patents are fundamentally constitutional, as long as they are granted for a limited time.

Certainly a very reasonable license, although...

[linuxghoul]

The license seems refreshingly simple and short, esp. for microsoft. They do seem serious abt trying to make CLI a common standard...

the only "funny" part of the license is "you may not distribute modifications of the Software under terms that purport to require the Software or derivative works to be sublicensed to others", a very straight, and extremely amusing ("purport"??) attack on the GPL. M$ maynot be a lot of good things, but they certainly ARE FOCUSSED! ;)

also, can someone please explain to me the impliations of

1. "You may use any information in intangible form that you remember after accessing the Software. However, this right does not grant you a license to any of Microsoft's copyrights or patents for anything you might create using such information".: does it mean i can use techniques learnt from this code in my own code, as long as i dont copy the code verbatim (i understand abaout patent violation, am confused abt the copyright part)
2. "That if you sue anyone over patents that you think may apply to the Software or anyone's use of the Software, your license to the Software ends automatically.": What does this really mean? what are the practical implications? why do they need to have it in there?

Can someone please enlighten me?

LinuxGhoul

Re:CLI

[bellings]

No. Timothy is a moron, and doesn't really understand what the download is. You can't download the source to the .NET framework. You can download the source to a Common Language Infrastructure implementation.

The Microsoft .NET Framework includes an optomized implementation of the Common Language Infrastructure. But, the .NET Framework also includes a huge .NET class library, including the Windows Forms classes, the ASP.NET classes, the ADO.NET classes, WebService classes, and a host of others. Most "useful" .NET programs are going to use some of the .NET classes.

The .NET framework includes more than this, but the classes are the important part for portability.

Basically, think of CLI as essentially just a compiler and a small standard library. To build a complete application, you're still probably going to use a lot of additional libraries. Microsoft hasn't gone insane, and they still understand that their Operating System is valuable. They haven't started distributing kernel32.dll for free yet, and they aren't going to be distributing the .NET class libraries for free, either.

I should point out, though, that C# and the CLI are pretty damned cool all by themselves. They're rocking sweet technology, and there's no reason a good portable class library couldn't be put on top of them, like Sun has done with their Java implementation.

However, I sort of wonder if MicroSoft hasn't pissed off too many of the big players in the world -- I don't expect Oracle or IBM or Netscape to pick up the CLI and run with it, incorporating it in all of their new products, like they did with Sun's JVM. Ooops, did I say Netscape? Nevermind.

Re:Certainly a very reasonable license, although..

[spongman]

it's not so much an attack on the GPL, it's just saying tht you can't relicense derivatives under something like the GPL. In much the same way as you can't relicense derivatives of GPL work under any other license.

I feel dirty.

[subuni]

I feel dirty. I started by downloading a tarball from Microsoft, and after extracting the tarball, I ran a shell script that built a Microsoft product from source. I then invoked a Microsoft compiler from a UNIX shell, am greeted with a Microsoft copyright message, and get an .exe file as output. And then I ran the .exe file on a UNIX based Mac.

Something about that experience felt really... dirty.

And for the unofficial 'benchmarks' on my G4/800 (because printing out "Hello World!" is a valid benchmark :) ):

# time clix hello.exe
Hello World!
1.240u 0.460s 0:03.28 51.8% 0+0k 0+9io 0pf+0w
# time java hello
Hello World!
0.200u 0.190s 0:01.72 22.6% 0+0k 2+14io 0pf+0w
# time perl hello.pl
Hello World!
0.000u 0.000s 0:00.02 0.0% 0+0k 0+0io 0pf+0w
# time ./hello
Hello World!
0.000u 0.000s 0:00.01 0.0% 0+0k 0+0io 0pf+0w