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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."

17 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 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. ;)

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

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

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

      No, it's slightly different crap now.

    6. 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

    7. 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.
    8. 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.

    9. 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.

  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

  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.
  7. 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.