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Microsoft Open Sources .NET Micro Framework

Posted by timothy on from the what's-your-angle-college-boy dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Back in July, Microsoft announced it was making .NET available under its Community Promise, which in theory allowed free software developers to use the technology without fear of patent lawsuits. Not surprisingly, many free software geeks were unconvinced by the promise (after all, what's a promise compared to an actual open licence?), but now Microsoft has taken things to the next level by releasing the .NET Micro Framework under the Apache 2.0 licence. Yes, you read that correctly: a sizeable chunk of .NET is about to go open source."

29 of 320 comments (clear)

  1. My first question would be... by Q-Hack! · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Just what is Microsoft's angle? Surely they are gaining some advantage here.

    --
    Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
    1. Re:My first question would be... by CannonballHead · · Score: 5, Insightful

      More people using .NET would be a gain, wouldn't it?

    2. Re:My first question would be... by badboy_tw2002 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Haven't people been yelling about for years how you can make money with open source? Maybe someone at MS believed them. Despite the general feeling that MS is "out to get you", a company is made up of people, and is not a big bad menace who does evil for evils sake. MS as a corporate entity has exactly one goal (the same as any other company) - make money for its investors. If they can make more money with open source then why is it a surprise they would pursue that avenue?

    3. Re:My first question would be... by Lord+Pillage · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The ability to sell support services.

      --
      try { Signature mysig = new CleverAttempt(); } catch(NonCleverSignatureException e) { postanyway(); }
    4. Re:My first question would be... by CannonballHead · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'm not a .NET developer... but I seem to remember having to run .NET applications with the .NET framework on my local machine?

      I'm not sure how much Microsoft gains by keeping .NET closed-source. Perhaps that's a good question, too: why not open source it. I don't think you have to pay anything to do .NET development, do you? So may as well get any free improvements from the open source community. ;)

    5. Re:My first question would be... by NervousNerd · · Score: 4, Informative

      Not quite. Visual Studio Express is free for commercial usage.

    6. Re:My first question would be... by ChatHuant · · Score: 3, Informative

      .NET micro is mostly for embedded devices running WinCE.

      Nope, you're wrong. You're thinking of the .Net Compact Framework. Basically there are three .NET implementations available from MS (ignoring Rotor for the time being). The Windows one (known as "the .Net Framework") is the largest, with lots of libraries and capabilities. The Compact Framework targets Win CE level devices (fewer resources, lower capabilities), and takes about 12 Mbytes. The .NET Micro Framework targets even smaller devices; it has a subset of the .NET classes, and can fit in 300 kBytes or less. The .NET Micro Framework doesn't need an OS to run (but it can run on an OS). That's the thing that was running in the (now defunct) SPOT watches and MSN Direct traffic dongles. Those were tiny devices which couldn't have run Win CE.

    7. Re:My first question would be... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      No, it's slightly different crap now.

    8. Re:My first question would be... by omar.sahal · · Score: 4, Informative

      a company is made up of people

      and it is also a company, a hierarchal organization were those lower down have to do what those higher up tell them to do. Those higher up have a pattern of behavior that justifies many of the fears on Slashdot. Groklaw is full of evidence, much of which was gained through court systems from around the world.
      So to quote Wikipedia

      The base technologies submitted to the ECMA, and therefore also the Unix/GNOME-specific parts, may be non-problematic. The concerns primarily relate to technologies developed by Microsoft on top of the .NET Framework, such as ASP.NET, ADO.NET and Windows Forms (see Non standardized namespaces)

      So whats changed

    9. Re:My first question would be... by elashish14 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Not only that, maybe MS believes that they can use this route to make better software too. If the OSS community can respond and show MS how much there is to benefit from opening one of their projects, maybe they'll be more responsive with other projects too.

      The OSS community should see this as an opportunity to give something back to MS for good reason. They would be less likely to stab the OSS community in the back with patent suits and the like if we can engender a true, two-way relationship. Maybe with some dialogue, we can start moving toward working in harmony instead of against each other.

      --
      I have left slashdot and am now on Soylent News. FUCK YOU DICE.
    10. Re:My first question would be... by Xabraxas · · Score: 3, Informative

      I have nothing against mono, I just can't afford to work in what amounts to a 4 year old version of the framework.

      Bogus. Mono is very current with .NET and has even beaten MS to the punch on some features. The major missing features compared to .NET are the MS specific libraries and proper current Silverlight support. So unless you're developing Silverlight apps or Windows specific software (which would obviate the choice to use Mono anyway) I doubt you have even tried Mono.

      --
      Time makes more converts than reason
    11. Re:My first question would be... by Rycross · · Score: 5, Insightful

      VS(.NET)

      Visual Studio 2008 Express is free.

      Windows

      Yes, unless you use Mono.

      SourceSafe, Windows Server, Sybase SQL

      No, no, and no. You have no idea what you're talking about.

    12. Re:My first question would be... by rliden · · Score: 3, Informative

      There is Sharp Develop[www.icsharpcode.net]. An open source IDE for .NET. It supports C#, VB, Boo, and F#.

      --
      Don't think of it as a flame, more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage.
    13. Re:My first question would be... by HeronBlademaster · · Score: 4, Informative

      You don't need SourceSafe at all to do any sort of .NET development. Subversion, git, CVS, etc. all work fine for .NET development.

      SourceSafe would be better off forgotten entirely.

    14. Re:My first question would be... by dissy · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Perhaps that's a good question, too: why not open source it.

      I can give one example.

      Where I work, our ERP software is primarily coded in .NET, and needs 3.5.

      It is the only reason to stick with Windows on each and every workstation there.
      Every so often I check up on the status of Wine and .NET, only to see 2.x is only partially supported with no plans on supporting 3.

      If this lets me run our ERP client under Linux, be it Wine or Mono or whatever wrapper is needed, that will be a good number of workstation licenses that will fall out of the upgrade cycle.

      It will also let us deploy more ERP dedicated terminals on slightly older hardware that XP doesn't treat too well, and 2k is too painful to run on (Plus we only have so many licenses for 2k that aren't OEM)

      This could very well lead to a measured loss of sales. I am sure I am not the only one in that type of situation, even if it is not very common.

      Still, I am not complaining!

    15. Re:My first question would be... by EvanED · · Score: 3, Informative

      Lots of people have corrected you, but I'm going to correct you in a different manner: not only is SourceSafe not required, but MS has basically been trying to phase it out in favor of Team Foundation Server (part of VS Enterprise I think) for a while now.

      MS knows SourceSafe is crap; it's one of the few products that no one dogfoods internally.

  2. I think I'm ill by cptnapalm · · Score: 4, Funny

    I must have the swine flu. Maybe I'm having a psychotic episode. Did I wind up in a holodeck? Or the Twilight Zone? It must be one of these things because I keep having these senseless hallucinations where MicroSoft acts like a decent company.

    1. Re:I think I'm ill by CannonballHead · · Score: 5, Funny

      I think you might have Mono.

  3. Marketshare in Mobile Market by Ohio+Calvinist · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Microsoft knows that mobile development is booming right now and their best chance to get into the market is on very accessible powerful development tools rather than the Windows OS which is quickly losing market share. If Microsoft can have mobile developers coding in .NET, having them be familiar with Windows development is trival (since the Framework obstruficates most of the OS API.)

    If the Framework gets ported to non-MS platforms, having those developers develop on Visual Studio, on Windows, in Windows eco-systems is additional trivial.

    I am absolutely certain that iPhone development is causing iPhone developers to learn and be comfortable with XCode on Mac machines while at the same time creating more skilled Objective-C coders that will be more proficent in writing normal OS X applications.

    --
    Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.
  4. OMG it is Meta EEE! by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 5, Funny

    Not satisfied with killing software competitors by the Embrace, Extend and Extinguish methodology, now they are doing it to licenses. Pretty soon Apache license will be incompatible with everything non Microsoft, inlcuding Apache Web Server. Run, Run away when you still can!

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  5. There is a problem by Groo+Wanderer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I was initially impressed by the MS 'open' pledges, until I talked to several coder friends. Their take, paraphrased, was that it was window dressing with a lot of traps. Basically, they 'opened' the wrapper, just like they did with their Office formats.

    The problem, as it was explained to me, is that if you want to do anything useful, you have to call a bunch of things that are not opened, will not be opened, and MS can still sue your *ss off for using. One person asked how useful it is to 'open' the hypothetical call, Play_video_with_MS_proprietary_closed_codec? I mean, you can copy the functionality, but your software is only cross-platform to the extent that MS proprietary and closed codecs and other things are 'open'.

    This is nothing more than a stealth PR attempt, they will use it to say, "We opened everything up, and see, Linux still sux0rz because it can't play movies, sound, DRM, or anything else useful. We opened everything up, but the Linux model is broken, and their lazy codes won't do the right thing. If you want real XYZ, you need Windows".

    It is nothing more than opening the most useless bits, and using it as a PR hammer. Yay progress?

                      -Charlie

    1. Re:There is a problem by RAMMS+EIN · · Score: 3, Interesting

      ``This is nothing more than a stealth PR attempt, they will use it to say, "We opened everything up, and see ..."''

      Or maybe it's just fear of more lawsuits from the EU.

      However, the result is that .NET Micro Framework is now open source. That's a Good Thing.

      --
      Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
  6. Yeah, sure by Shadowhawk · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Wake me up when they open source the main .NET framework. They put this out there because no one is using it.

    --
    My mind works like lightning. One brilliant flash and it is gone.
    1. Re:Yeah, sure by ChatHuant · · Score: 3, Interesting

      This. The Micro Framework is for resource-constrained embedded devices... which are just about the last place you'd want to run bytecode anyway, as far as I can see. We've got tons of embedded stuff where I work, but I fail to see how controllers for mechanical bits and pieces are going to benefit from having the CLR, object classes, GUIs, etc. made available to them.

       
      I think they're targetting the same area as some embedded Java implementations, like MicroJava. You're getting a nice programming environment (you can use Visual Studio to write C# software for your embedded app), you're getting automatic memory management and it'll offer a migration path for people familiar with larger platforms. While it's not going to be as efficient as hand-tightened C and/or assembly code, it should allow faster development for embedded applications.

      Yes, I know they're hoping to scoop the mobile market, but which part of it - the non-smartphone (dumbphone) market?

      Not sure they're interested only (or even mainly) in the mobile market; the .NET MF can run on much lower performance processors than the ones used in phones, even feature phones (i.e., not smartphones). From what I've seen most phones use ARM 9 level CPUs, or even ARM + DSP combos, like the TI's OMAP (please feel free to correct me, phones aren't an area I have much interest in). That's overkill for the .NET MF which can happily run on ARM7 level CPUs.

  7. As Admiral Ackbar warned by h4rr4r · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's A Trap!

  8. Re:Mono? by LWATCDR · · Score: 4, Informative

    Nope this framework is for mobile devices and the 360.
    Microsoft is really dieing in the mobile space right now. WinMo 6.5 Still doesn't have native support capacitive touch screens and the Mobile world is on fire with Android and of course the iPhone.
    HTC, LG, and Samsung are all developing or have released Android phones.
    Palm and Motorola are now dropping WinMo and going with WebOS and Android.
    This is one space where Microsoft is at best an also ran and really is dropping in the race for mind share.

    --
    See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
  9. Why not give them some cred for trying? by drdrgivemethenews · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You don't train a misbehaving dog to be well-mannered by whacking it one every time it wags its tail.

  10. Re:Open Sourcing Platform Lock-In Is Meaningless by RAMMS+EIN · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Making it open source allows you to use it, distribute it, and modify it. Even if nobody ports it to your favorite platform, it's still a win for the users. No longer do you have to depend on Microsoft for bugfixes. No longer do you have to hope that, one day, they will implement the feature you're waiting for. Microsoft is no longer the only party allowed to improve the platform or tailor it to your needs. Once it's open source, everyone is allowed to do so.

    So while you are right that making the software open source doesn't magically make it portable, it is far from meaningless.

    --
    Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
  11. Re:Mono? by talcite · · Score: 3, Informative

    You completely forgot the current leader in phone OSes, Symbian. It doesn't get many press releases, but it's got more market share than the iphone, Android, WinMo, AND Blackberry combined. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone#Operating_systems