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Microsoft Puts C# and the CLI Under "Community Promise"

Posted by timothy on from the if-it's-a-trap-please-clarify dept.

FishWithAHammer writes "Peter Galli of Microsoft posted a blog entry on Port25 today, regarding the explicit placement of C# and the Common Language Infrastructure (the ECMA standard that underpins .NET) under their Community Promise: 'It is important to note that, under the Community Promise, anyone can freely implement these specifications with their technology, code, and solutions. You do not need to sign a license agreement, or otherwise communicate to Microsoft how you will implement the specifications. ... Under the Community Promise, Microsoft provides assurance that it will not assert its Necessary Claims against anyone who makes, uses, sells, offers for sale, imports, or distributes any Covered Implementation under any type of development or distribution model, including open-source licensing models such as the LGPL or GPL.'" Adds reader anshulajain: "Understandably, Miguel De Icaza is jumping with joy."

2 of 465 comments (clear)

  1. This makes no real difference! by bogaboga · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Here's why:

    There is no mention of other components the extend .NET!

    From the document...

    "...We introduce instructions newdata, lddata, stdata, castdata, isdata and
    switchdata to create and manipulate classunion values..." (emphasis mine).

    In fact, this announcement is not much different compared to the one 7 years ago!

    Watch out folks. Microsoft's classic Embrace, Extend, Extinguish paradigm is very possible here.

  2. Re:Is C# / Mono + libraries really *that* good? by hoggy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've used both for serious commercial development and I personally prefer C# to Java. If it means anything, I consider myself pretty impartial, as Java and C# are just two of the dozen or so languages I've worked in and I consider neither to be the most interesting.

    C# and Java are only really similar in the way that you would expect two garbage-collected, object-oriented, C-derived languages to be similar. People who say C# is 95% the same as Java are missing the point: it's the small differences that make one language nicer to use as a developer.

    Your mileage may vary. You should give both a go and make up your own mind.