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Microsoft .Net Libraries Not Acting "Open Source"

Posted by kdawson on from the promises-broken-or-forgotten dept.

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."

23 of 246 comments (clear)

  1. This should have been seen from the start by yakatz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:This should have been seen from the start by jgagnon · · Score: 5, Funny

      Well... I didn't know it wasn't happening... :p

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    2. Re:This should have been seen from the start by man_of_mr_e · · Score: 5, Informative

      First, Microsoft did not promise anything open source. They promised a read-only shared source version under the reference license. They delivered that, and are still delivering it, though as of yet no .net 4.0 libraries.. but that's only a couple of weeks old.

      The reason the site hasn't been maintained was the the functionality was moved into visual studio for automatic download. It's just a part of the tools now.

      Basically, the entire story is wrong.

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  2. How is this different? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

    1. Re:How is this different? by Americano · · Score: 5, Funny

      At the Microsoft site, nobody responds to your questions.

      At the SourceForge site, someone responds to your questions with, "You have the code, figure it out yourself, asshole."

      Worlds of difference, you see.

    2. Re:How is this different? by sunking2 · · Score: 5, Funny

      I agree. Sounds to me like they've fully embraced the Open Source mindset. They probably have to get rid of 75% of their documentation though.

    3. Re:How is this different? by Monkeedude1212 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They made it open source so that they didn't have to support it.

      Then when they stopped supporting it, the open source community went Huh?

    4. Re:How is this different? by Coren22 · · Score: 4, Funny

      No no no, that should be Biiiing!

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    5. Re:How is this different? by mikael_j · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Or they'll upload a javadoc/pydoc dump of their uncommented and undocumented code as well, which is about as useful as simply being told to figure it out yourself.

      Another possibility is of course that the maintainer comes up with some fairly lame excuse for not working on the project ("my dog had puppies a year ago and I've been completely dedicated to playing with them...") complete with promises of getting the project up to date ("...but I've been looking at some of the patches that have been submitted and there's gonna be a big update any day now.") which means most people will hold off on forking the project.

      Then there's the "it's in CVS" projects, you know them, those projects that are required by a whole host of apps yet they haven't had a proper release since 2006, and before that the last release was in 2003, but hey, you can just grab the extremely active development branch from CVS/SVN/Git!

      The last one has a close relative, the "1.x is featureless and out of date (but still gets security patches) and 2.x has been in alpha for three years now" projects. Just like the "it's in CVS" projects the bulk of interesting code for these tends to be in source control or in the 2.x.y.z.alpha23.tar.bz2 releases, and if you dare use the dev/alpha branch and find a problem with it and file a bug report you'd better be prepared to be chastised for not also submitting a patch...

      And last but not least there are the "closed" projects which rarely accept patches from "outsiders", they have a dedicated group of developers who will tell you to write your own patch and submit it when there's a bug that's been around for over a year with all reports closed as "WILLNOTFIX" or "NOTABUG", and when you do it will be rejected only to have one of the "regular" developers submit an almost identical patch a few days or weeks later (yes, this has happened to me a couple of times, can you feel the bitterness?).

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  3. Summary Misleading by SomeJoel · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

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    1. Re:Summary Misleading by RobDude · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Maybe I'm missing the point but I'm *glad* there is only one version of the .Net Framework 4.0

      If the source was truly open, I'm sure someone, somewhere, would make something awesome, that I'd want to use, but it would require me using the forked (or whatever they call it) home-brew version that may or may not introduce instability into my application.

      And when I took my problem online and said, 'WTF! I'm just doing System.Console.Writeline()' why doesn't this work!' it would lead to all sorts of confusion.

      But yeah, I'm probably missing the point as my understanding of OpenSource is limited. I just don't see why you'd ever want to a modified version of the .Net Framework.

    2. Re:Summary Misleading by Utopia · · Score: 4, Informative

      They fixed it as soon as this story was posted. Tricky Microsoft!
      Look at the forums. It was dead for more than a week.

  4. Re:Forking by Florian+Weimer · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  5. Misleading by Vahokif · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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).

  6. Re:Of course by Vahokif · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  7. Big chunks released under Apache license by harlows_monkeys · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Large parts of .NET, namely those that are using in the .NET Micro framework, have been released under the Apache license.

  8. So.... by shadowrat · · Score: 4, Funny

    Just like most open source projects!

    ::ducks::

  9. Re:Acting very much like many open source projects by ircmaxell · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There's a huge difference. If you wanted to make a modification to an abandoned project, you could just fork it. Here, you can't. So you're tied to requesting the modification from MS... It's a similar theme to many OS projects, but it's not a similar situation...

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  10. Which means looking at it contaminates developers. by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

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  11. Re:Forking by value_added · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.

  12. They are acting open source. by larry+bagina · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No news in a year and a half, no source code, forum questions unanswered... sounds like the typical sourceforge project to me!

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  13. Re:... and everyone believed Microsoft at its word by Hooya · · Score: 4, Funny

    " ... and everyone believed Microsoft at its word ..."

    Well, no one should have believed Microsoft at its word. Or Excel. Or powerpoint.

  14. It's because FOSS is no longer the biggest fear by ygslash · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.