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Microsoft .Net Libraries Not Acting "Open Source"
figleaf writes "Three years ago, with much fanfare, Microsoft announced it would make some of the .Net libraries open source using the Microsoft Reference License. Since then Microsoft has reneged on its promise. The reference code site is dead, the blog hasn't been updated in a year and a half, and no one from Microsoft responds to questions on the forum."
As most people who have tried to write a blog can testify, it is hard to maintain a procedure by force; the reason why so many new blogs are abandoned. If the culture at Microsoft is anti open-source, it will take a constant effort to continue this type of project. The power was obviously not there.
Same old, same old. Some things will never change.
I am still glad to hear about this specific topic although, just for my personal information.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
... why?
I bet they expected the OS community to have mirrored the reference code sites, start their own blogs, and master the libraries and dole out advice, if they really wanted the .NET Libraries to be Open Source.
Not defending Microsoft, it's not exactly cool, but like you said, what were they expecting?
The reference code site is dead, the blog hasn't been updated in a year and a half, and no one from Microsoft responds to questions on the forum.
How is this different from the majority of "real" FOSS projects on SourceForge?
I know it's fun to bash Microsoft and all, but the source site here is not, in fact, dead. The other points in TFS might be valid, but I have doubts as to the poster's credibility. I believe this "figleaf" character may just be trying to score some free karma or jollies or something by inciting the standard "M$ sux" response.
<Complete your profile by adding a signature!>
...what, just NOW?
Yup, bait and switch. "We're all warm and fluffy with open source, we're a safe alternative to java, honest, look." *sigh*
Our diversity is our strength
No, it's not an open source license. You get to see the source code, but you have no rights beyond that. Preparing derivative works is not allowed.
I believe source code access functionality is now integrated into Visual Studio, so it is not surprising that the web site is not updated anymore.
The scary part here is that I'm sure plenty of people here are surprised. I wasn't ready to trust Microsoft, and I'm sure many others here weren't either, but an astonishing number of people -including some people in very high places, and yes, Mr. de Icaza, I am looking at you- were. Enough that there were flamewars any time anything remotely .NET-related or Mono-related came up.
Hopefully, we'll be able to get on with our lives now. This has happened before, and will probably happen again, and the community always survives. Some very interesting tools will either die or need to be ported, but that's always how it goes.
How many projects out there become the hot new thing for a week or so, then the primary person working on the project changes jobs / gets married / joins a commune and eventually people start saying "Well, I found this open source project that sounds right, but it looks like it's been dead since 2007."
fencepost
just a little off
If you need the source for .NET now, your best bet is .NET Reflector Free Edition (http://www.red-gate.com/products/reflector/)
That's the reference implementation, which is under a read-but-don't-touch-license. .NET itself is an open specification you can read whenever you want, and they recently made a legally binding promise not to sue anyone for using an alternate implementation (like Mono).
You mean like Mono? The submission is (intentionally or out of ignorance) trying to confuse the read-but-don't-touch "open source" reference implementation that no one uses, their legally binding promise not to sue anyone using open source implementations, and the stuff they have licensed under the OSI-approved MS-PL license.
I believe source code access functionality is now integrated into Visual Studio, so it is not surprising that the web site is not updated anymore.
You're right. It's integrated on VS2008.
Tools -> Options -> Debugging -> Check "Enable .NET framework stepping".
Wait a while while VS2008 download the debugging symbols and you're done.
English is not my first language. Corrections and suggestions are welcome.
First of all, there is the question of intellectual property. I don't see why Microsoft (or Apple, for that matter) should do *anything* to help open source. How many millions of dollars has the open source community stolen from Microsoft over the years through the violation of their patents? Microsoft has found literally hundreds of examples of Linux violating their patents, and not a SINGLE Linux developer has come forward to apologize and offer recompense. Instead, Microsoft has been forced to seek out companies that are using Linux to get them to acknowledge the wrongs that the open source Linux people have committed against Microsoft.
Secondly, there is the question of quality. Open Source has largely FAILED to produce any software that is notably good. Linux is a terrible desktop OS, and marginal as a server. The GIMP pales in comparison to Photoshop. Open source codecs like ogg theora and vorbis are absolute garbage next to their closed source counterparts, etc. Microsoft really is perfectly justified in keeping as far away from the sinkhole of quality that open source represents.
Large parts of .NET, namely those that are using in the .NET Micro framework, have been released under the Apache license.
Just like most open source projects!
::ducks::
As SomeJoel has pointed ... the sources are there. Even wpf for the 3.5sp1 stuff (fairly new stuff) ... At least try with something more difficult to verify.
No, it's not an open source license. You get to see the source code, but you have no rights beyond that. Preparing derivative works is not allowed.
Which means that looking at it "contaminates" the developers with knowledge of proprietary code.
If this article were about the the code itself, rather than the lack of support on Microsoft's end, I'd hang an "itsatrap" tag on it.
IMHO we're better off if the site DOES go away.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
No, it's not an open source license. You get to see the source code, but you have no rights beyond that.
I once knew a girl like that.
No news in a year and a half, no source code, forum questions unanswered... sounds like the typical sourceforge project to me!
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
So it seems like people here think tha MS wanted or at least promised .NET to become Open Source? How completely wrong. MS never said that and never wanted it. They just released the code so .NET devs could debug it. They still can debug it through Visual Studio integration. Microsoft never wanted to contribute .NET source to the community and to allow forks and I believe that I speak to the majority of the .NET developers when I say that I don't want anyone but Microsoft messing with .NET's code let alone creating forks.
" ... and everyone believed Microsoft at its word ..."
Well, no one should have believed Microsoft at its word. Or Excel. Or powerpoint.
I wonder what the exact percentage of largest software company in the world hosting an open source project to young, naive programmer thinking he can help by throwing up a sourgeforge page is? Comparing MS doing an open source project to most open source projects hardly seems fair.
To put it another way, if you compare MS to say Apache, Red Hat, Novell or Gnome then MS looks pretty bad at open source. Which, on the surface at least, is surprising because they do a much better job of hosting their MSDN content which is similar in scope to hosting a large open source project.
But it's actually not so surprising considering MS's schizophrenic attitude towards open source in general.
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
"We're all warm and fluffy with open source, we're a safe alternative to java, honest, look."
.Net projects successfully, so I'm hardpressed to defend Java. We hired expensive, proven guns, too. We didn't half-ass it.
I was getting your point until you hit Java. After watching the litany of trainwrecks that is the expensive java experiment in our company, Microsoft IS a safe alternative. In fact, I'd rather replace all our "successful because they delivered" java projects with a group of elderly asians with abacuses... aba... abacii? That'd be a warm and fluffy alternative to Java.
In other areas of the company they've been delivering
But they are doing that? The /. article was just written by an idiot who didn't check his shit and wrote bunch of bullshit without any reference.
asp.net MVC 2.0 sourcecode, dated 11 march 2010 http://aspnet.codeplex.com/releases/view/41742
freshly updated MS blogs regarding asp.net http://weblogs.asp.net/
forums regarding most MS technologies seems pretty much alive also http://forums.asp.net/
etc...
seems to me everything is very much alive, unlike some other open source projects...
Three years ago, the FOSS movement looked like one of the biggest potential threats against Microsoft. This move was designed to mitigate that threat, so it was worth investing energy in it. The idea was to dilute the concept of FOSS in the mind of the public, thereby weakening the FOSS "brand" as a competitor.
Today, it is appears that Apple and Google are far bigger threats to Microsoft than FOSS ever will be. So Microsoft will not be investing significant energy in trying to dilute the concept of FOSS anymore.
It works only if the reference code site is alive.
The site was dead for a week. I check it a few hours ago when debugging is Visual Studio.
Microsoft seems to have restarted the site when this story hit Slashdot!
This is wrong on so many counts, I don't even know where to begin here...
First of all, this:
Three years ago, with much fanfare, Microsoft announced it would make some of the .Net libraries open source using the Microsoft Reference License
There has never been an announcement that .NET framework libraries will become Open Source. Indeed, the very name of the license - "reference license" - indicates that it's not Open Source! The source is available for reference, so that developers can see what's going on, debug it, etc. It cannot be modified or redistributed.
And nowhere in the original announcement, or in any other documentation for the feature, has it been claimed that this somehow constitutes Open Source. Microsoft releases some of its projects under OSI-approved OSS licenses, and labels those OSS, so it is aware of the difference. There is no desire to confuse anyone about the nature of OSS, which is precisely why the term "open source" is not used here, and other terms, such as "shared source" or "reference source", are used instead.
Since then Microsoft has reneged on its promise.
Source code for .NET 3.5 was made available under MRL, and it still remains available. Source code for .NET 4 RTM isn't there yet (but one for .NET 4 RC is).
So, what promise was reneged on?
The reference code site is dead
It's not dead, it just takes time to update it with a new code release. It has .NET 4 RC bits, and that RC came out on February 10 this year - that's a far cry from "dead". Yes, it doesn't have .NET 4 RTM yet - but that has been released on April 12, less than a month ago. Give it time.
No, it's not an open source project where you see the live trunk directly. It was never meant to or claimed to be that, either. If you expected that, then you either misunderstood the original announcement (in which case I hope this clears it up), or you're just trolling...
Oh, it's a kdawson story. Nevermind.
For the same reason that people who voted for a party that then did not hold a single promise, but did the worst things possible, will get voted again by the very same people, as soon as “the other party” is in power, and the lie-machine of pre-election promises has started again.
99.999% of all people are fucking stupid cattle!
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.