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Confirmed: Microsoft Says It Will Open Source VB 6
msmoriarty writes "Microsoft told a group of MVPs today at Tech-Ed that it plans to take Visual Basic 6 open source and will release the source code on CodePlex. A source at the event said that Microsoft is planning to release only the VB6 language on codeplex – not Visual Studio or related tools." Update: 05/20 02:24 GMT by T : Alas, too good to be true. msmoriarty writes with an apologetic retraction: "We got it wrong — Microsoft denied and went back to our source and they pulled confirmation. Our apologies."
Er, because at least one person will find this useful? Open-sourcing a previously closed product can only be a good thing for the community and FOSS, regardless of whether it's Microsoft or whether you personally believe it's useful. It's honestly something that Microsoft needs to be doing more often.
This would have been nice a decade or so ago when they dumped VB6, resulting in lots of panicked and expensive migrations over to .NET. Many companies had made huge investments in VB6 and felt totally betrayed (I worked for one of them). They were hoping for a new improved version of VB6 to be released (some new features here and there) and instead they got something massively different.
If VB6 had been some kind of open standard back then, another company would have come along and basically said "Don't panic everyone, your huge investments in VB6 are safe. We are releasing OpenVB Studio and will continue to improve the language.". That would have been a disaster for Microsoft of course.
Seriously? News articles where tweets are being used as a primary source?
That's it, I'm giving up on Slashdot. It's jumped the shark.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.