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Microsoft To Open Source .NET and Take It Cross-Platform

An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft today announced plans to open source .NET, the company's software framework that primarily runs on Windows, and release it on GitHub. Furthermore, Microsoft also unveiled plans to take .NET cross-platform by targeting both Mac OS X and Linux. In the next release, Microsoft plans to open source the entire .NET server stack, from ASP.NET 5 down to the Common Language Runtime and Base Class Libraries. The company will let developers build .NET cloud applications on multiple platforms; it is promising future support of the .NET Core server runtime and framework for Mac and Linux. Microsoft is also making Visual Studio free for small teams.

525 comments

  1. Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by iggymanz · · Score: 4, Funny

    Too little too late, Billy Bob Gates

    1. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 4, Funny

      They're taking it Mono a Mono.

      With nasty patent clauses, no doubt.

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    2. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Billy Bob Gates

      It's good to know Slashdot's irrational hatred is still firmly entrenched in the '90s.

    3. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Yeah, they're just quaking their boots for the 3% Apple market and 0.8% Linux share.

    4. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Billy Bob Gates

      It's good to know Slashdot's irrational hatred is still firmly entrenched in the '90s.

      Hah, it never ends.

      Because it's all on BOOOOSH!!!!

    5. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by iggymanz · · Score: 2

      This is not about the desktop space alone, but rather an architectural one spanning all tiers of server to mobile (and Linux has massive share on those particular endpoints).

    6. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by pmontra · · Score: 1

      Maybe not too little, but yes, it's too late. They should have embraced and estinguished the other platforms when they had a virtual monopoly on both the desktop and the server. In the late 90s it was common to write Java web applications and make them run on Windows NT 3.51 and 4.0. Enterprises were comfortable with Windows and were wary of Linux (unproven technology). It took over in the 2000s.

      About being it too little: are they going to port Visual Studio to OS X and Linux?

    7. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So, uhh... What's Bill Gates got to do with this?

    8. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's good to know Slashdot's irrational hatred is still firmly entrenched in the '90s.

      Irrational? In what way?

    9. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Too little too late, Billy Bob Gates

      Agreed. This should have been done a decade or more ago. Well, at least with open source it will now get the bug fixes and improvements its desparately needed for a decade.

    10. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      it is one of the things that makes slashdot, slashdot...

    11. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

      Another development stack and application ecosystem is nice, and if it's licensed under a proper open source license, then I'm all for it. I can't say I'd be in any rush to develop in it, and that may be the real problem here, that Microsoft is about seven or eight years too late.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    12. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Indeed, what they're trying to do is establish themselves as the de-facto way of writing applications on all platforms. Once they're there, they can withdrawl support for other platforms, and bam... 100% market share.

    13. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by duckintheface · · Score: 1

      Balmer once called Linux a cancer that was eating the world's software. Sounds like M$ now has a terminal case. That's what it sounds like, but I'm sure they are lying.

      --
      "He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
    14. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Barlo_Mung_42 · · Score: 1

      You're stuck in the past.

      Bill is too busy saving lives to care about what you think of him. MS is still making money hand over fist and doing an impressive job adjusting to the changing landscape it finds itself on. They are clearly not going the way of Sun any time soon.

    15. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Billy Bob Gates

      It's good to know Slashdot's irrational hatred is still firmly entrenched in the '90s.

      Hah, it never ends.

      Because it's all on BOOOOSH!!!!

      LMAO...There was only Bush 1.0 in 1990-1992. And he did absolutely nothing with regard to computing and policy.

      If only the Microsoft hatred here at /. was irrational. Most of us that dislike Microsoft do so because we got tired of dealing with the constantly moving goal posts for competency, the ridiculous lock-ins to proprietary software stacks, and the even more ridiculous costs of everything they made. So, if by fact based dislike for an entire segment of the technology sector, then yes, that would be irrational.

    16. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by tehcyder · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It's good to know Slashdot's irrational hatred is still firmly entrenched in the '90s.

      Irrational? In what way?

      Presumably because Bill Gates is no longer the CEO, so saying "yah boo sucks to Bill Gates" is about as meaningful as saying "Microsoft limits filenames to a ridiculous 8.3 format"

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
    17. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, at least with open source it will now get the bug fixes and improvements its desparately needed for a decade.

      Humorist.

    18. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Irrational hatred is just the start. If we don't see a lengthy exposition on how this is somehow part of an evil conspiracy - also involving the NSA, of course - then I'll be sorely disappointed. Presumably, it will involve a nefarious plot by Gates and NSA to embrace, extend, and extinguish Mono. Only Richard Stallman himself will be able to save us from yet another evil attempt to enslave us via software. We can only hope that RMS has been producing enough toe jam to sustain himself lately.

    19. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by __keronin · · Score: 1

      As professional linux user , yes I confirm, too late. but with fuckload of money microsoft have . nothing is problem for them if them wants truly make good move.

    20. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Probably, but at least patents expire decades before copyrights do.

    21. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yeah, they're just quaking their boots for the 3% Apple market and 0.8% Linux share.

      Actually, yes, they are. The Mac OS X market is growing on the desktop and the Linux server market has been kicking ass for some time now. Microsoft is losing developers for Windows and they have recently gone through some pretty massive layoffs in the last five years, more than 23,000 employees. They are losing ground in the console wars with the Xbox One, and are struggling to keep their Nokia purchase from tanking. Add to that the abysmal Windows 8 reception and the Surface fiasco that is just starting to show some rays of hope for that device and you have a tech company on a significant downward slide. Also note how most of the older employees are cashing out and going on to other projects. Signs that the ship is going down!

      If they're not collectively quaking in their boots, they ought to be!

    22. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Delicious+Pun · · Score: 0

      They're taking it Mono a Mono.

      Ha!

    23. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by ArcadeMan · · Score: 4, Insightful

      AFAIK both Bill Gates and Steve Balmer don't control Microsoft anymore.

      This is a new Microsoft with a new CEO, so we should at least give them the benefit of the doubt.

    24. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Eravnrekaree · · Score: 0

      You imply that .NET is not used widely and that something like Qt is. .NET is pretty widely used in companies, much more than Qt is. Yes, it is due to brand recognition, marketing and due to companies buying support contracts from Microsoft. Its also due to the labor pipeline, more people are trained for .NET due to Microsofts certification programs and marketing of learning materials to colleges which encourages colleges to teach it. Microsoft is good at marketing and knows to get uptake you need to market to the labor supply and as well to businesses and this means creating off the shelf materials and support systems which makes your product look like a safe, well documented, well supported solution with a large company behind it that won't leave you hanging and require all sorts of unexpected expenses. Microsoft knows you have to get into the colleges where the CS grads are coming from and that by CS grads being exposed to .NET in college they will carry that over into their jobs and as well companies know there is a large supply of .NET labor when they buy into the platform.

      This is where open source fails, they have not been able, Red Hat for instance, been able to penetrate the colleges to create a supply of labor for their stuff as well as Microsoft has. They have not created the certification programs that businesses like and which creates confidence in there being a labor supply that is fairly consistent.

    25. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by oh_my_080980980 · · Score: 1

      RedHat is an operating system. .NET is a programming architecture. You need to look at the programming languages people learn.

    26. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by meustrus · · Score: 1

      Once software is open source, the open source version can never be closed again. If Microsoft made .Net 4.5 open source and closed the source again in .Net 5, 4.5 would still be completely open because open source licenses would permit existing licensees to redistribute the software under their own license terms. That's assuming they use a real open source license, of course, but if they try to manufacture a revokable open source license then the EFF's lawyers will know, it will be another story on Slashdot, and they will gain absolutely nothing.

      But then I suppose that "supported" is different from "legally available". But any open source project can pull support, and most don't have great support to begin with, so it's a moot point.

      --
      I sometimes ask revealing, often ignorant-seeming questions. Maybe they're harder to answer than you think.
    27. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by ColdWetDog · · Score: 1

      And somehow, just somehow, they're making one hell of lot more money that all the ACs multiplied together. Something like half of Apple's profits but about the same as Boeing's - so they have a goal to reach (can't let anyone get bigger than you are, it's just not right). But that ship ain't sinking for a bit yet.

      Hold on to your Personal Floatation Device and maybe buy some stock.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    28. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I doubt Visual Studio gets ported, that would be a major undertaking even if it's written more and more in C# these days. Pity, while I'd still prefer Codewarrior, I'd gladly pay for VS on Mac to ditch the abomination that is XCode.

    29. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Richard_at_work · · Score: 1

      They are integrating major parts of the development process into other, existing editors rather than porting VS (which would be a huuuuuuuge job) - for example, serious effort is being put into adding debugging and intellisense into SubLime Edit for .Net stuff.

    30. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You need to look at the programming languages people learn.

      You may not like it, but C# is in very wide and very heavy "enterprise" use... Move along, fan boy.

    31. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bill is too busy trying to reforge public opinion of himself so he can go down in history books as a "good guy" to care about what you think of him.

      FTFY

    32. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by ljw1004 · · Score: 5, Informative

      They're taking it Mono a Mono. With nasty patent clauses, no doubt.

      :) Microsoft's patent clauses are spelled out here https://github.com/dotnet/core...

      I guess these are the key paragraphs:

      Microsoft Corporation and its affiliates (“Microsoft”) promise not to assert any .NET Patents against you for making, using, selling, offering for sale, importing, or distributing Covered Code, as part of either a .NET Runtime or as part of any application designed to run on a .NET Runtime.

      If you file, maintain, or voluntarily participate in any claim in a lawsuit alleging direct or contributory patent infringement by any Covered Code, or inducement of patent infringement by any Covered Code, then your rights under this promise will automatically terminate.

      Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, but I am on Microsoft's VB/C# language team

    33. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by iggymanz · · Score: 1

      My statement has nothing to do with how widely something is used, rather the motive for ploy of finally jumping on open source bandwagon.

    34. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      P.S. Update your numbers, they are about ten years old:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems

    35. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by xonen · · Score: 4, Informative

      You are twisting his words. Ballmer was not talking about Linux, but about the GPL and it's 'viral' nature.

      And to their defense, MS has released more open-source software and libraries in the past. Also they actually contribute to the Linux kernel.

      There's plenty left to dislike MS for without twisting the truth.

      --
      A glitch a day keeps the bugs away.
    36. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by pooh666 · · Score: 2, Informative

      "What the fuck is Qt?", my boss says. He is right. Great news re .Net. Good luck to all of those unable to see the benifit of this. Our companies will eat your companies for peanuts, not because of .Net, but because your tech opinons are so clouded with emotion.

    37. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Per the code repository for it at https://github.com/Microsoft/dotnet:

      ".NET open source projects typically use either the MIT or Apache 2 licenses for code. Some projects license documentation and other forms of content under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. See specific projects to understand the license used."

      Sounds pretty open to me.

    38. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by RavenLrD20k · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Don't think I'm defending Microsoft here because I am old enough to remember Microsoft at its worst and still have the deep seated hatred of Gates and Balmer era MS. Hell, anti-trust BS aside I still hate them for what they did to my MechWarrior franchise alone! However, under the new leadership that seems to be taking the company towards an era of Glasnost and Perestroika, the hatred is given pause as I wait for the next dick move that may never come. At the very least, Microsoft has moved into a position that is no more or less "evil" than Google (yes, do no evil no longer applies here) or Apple. Given this, I wonder how many people here truly rationally hate MS anymore as opposed to hatred through nostalgia (like me) or hatred through "it's the way we do things around here" syndrome. As a developer that uses MS products and support in his profession, and develops Linux, Android, and Arduino apps as a hobby, I still prefer the current open source way of doing things over the MS way... but as far as the hatred? It cannot be said yet that Microsoft is the same company it was in the Balmer days. They at least *look* like they're moving towards a path that looks similar to the one Sun Microsystems was beating through.

    39. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by break19 · · Score: 2

      You mean like Linux keeps moving the goal posts for interoperability with other Unix operating systems? Requiring the rest of them to adopt linuxisms just to use things like X?

    40. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      With Snowden's revelations about Microsoft and their OWN INTERNAL DOCUMENTS ON EEE, I can hardly tell you're being sarcastic. Especially considering how much FSF has done recently for our freedoms and privacy.

      All of what you said can be true. Conspiracies exist too, they're not actual fallacies and can totally be rationally expected.

      Or are you one of those people paid to spread misinformation and trying to make the people forget.

      That won't fucking do because the "nerds, weirdos, freetards and tinfoils" WERE RIGHT BEYOND ALL IMAGINATION.

    41. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by jeffmeden · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Yeah, they're just quaking their boots for the 3% Apple market and 0.8% Linux share.

      The point is right there in the second paragraph of the article: "The company will let developers build .NET cloud applications on multiple platforms; it is promising future support of the .NET Core server runtime and framework for Mac and Linux"

      The cloud market is dominated by Linux and linux-like systems, no one is doing Windows in the cloud except Microsoft Azure and that hasn't been going very well for them (hard to make money selling yourself OS licenses). So, get the stack into the cloud and maybe just maybe companies doing hybrid cloud deployments or are otherwise cloud-averse due to the lack of Windows presence can now get their feet wet. If they stick with .net, they will no doubt be still buying Windows licenses and MSDN subscriptions for a while. Without this bridge, companies just make the jump completely away from Microsoft.

    42. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by the_B0fh · · Score: 1

      Are tablets and smartphones considered computers?

    43. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I kinda see them heading in the direction RIM did, and I think they see that too and are trying to avoid it.

      They still have their solid core business, they still have their market share, but it is being eroded away slowly. The various lockin that keeps Windows on the desktop of just about every office computer is loosening. If they just hang tight forever, eventually it will erode away completely, the year of the Linux desktop will actually come, and they'll be screwed.

      They seem to be flailing right now, trying to get into everything hoping something will stick.

    44. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by squiggleslash · · Score: 1

      It's not too little. It's too late to prevent a full scale migration from Java, as the latter is too deeply entrenched within the enterprise (plus I doubt Android is going to go there soon), but it does change the dynamic.

      .NET hasn't had support from the FOSS communities in large part because it's only first class on Windows, because the core system wasn't fully open source, and because, well, Microsoft.

      Other than "Microsoft" (and .NET's rival is no longer nice cuddly Sun, but Oracle, so there's that...), none of that is true any more. And it's an extremely capable, versatile, system that is arguably one of the best things ever to come out of Microsoft.

      Meanwhile, Java doesn't seem to have the momentum it once had, we're slowly seeing improvements but there's a sense I have (and maybe I'm wrong) that 99% of the new features promised for Java (x+1) are there to solve issues in Java (x). I frequently see amazing stuff in C# that frequently makes you wonder why we're still avoiding it for scripting languages.

      This is good. It builds trust. It creates a two way dynamic between the FOSS and .NET communities that previously was awkward and revolved entirely around people obsessive about Microsoft's technology choices.

      I'm very glad they did it.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    45. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by duckintheface · · Score: 1

      Same shareholder attitudes?

      --
      "He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
    46. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      I go around saying "Microsoft limits filenames to a ridiculous 8.sqrt(3) format."

      Does that make my hatred irrational?

    47. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Probably, but at least patents expire decades before copyrights do.

      Copyright expires? Ha! Maybe on paper it does but with never-ending retroactive copyright term extensions, not in practice. Nothing has entered the public domain due to copyright expiration in my lifetime and probably never will. I'm reminded of that quote describing it as "perpetual copyright on the installment plan."

    48. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by SJHillman · · Score: 1

      "There's plenty left to dislike MS for without twisting the truth."

      How many more generations until we forget about Microsoft Bob? How many!?

    49. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by SJHillman · · Score: 1

      I'm pretty sure he cemented himself as a "good guy" in history books twenty or thirty billion donated dollars ago.

    50. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Do you know anything about business administration?

    51. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anrego · · Score: 1, Interesting

      I'll agree that I haven't seen very much Qt out in industry, but I haven't seen much .NET either. Java seems to be the big thing locally.

      Linux is actually fairly present in local universities as well, and a fair number of places look for at least basic Linux skills when hiring for entry level positions.

    52. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Whatever his motives, he's doing more to help humanity than you, so STFU.

    53. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thanks, well done. Except...

      What about toe jam? You failed to mention that toe jam is not only nutritious and delicious, but surviving on a diet of one's own toe jam is the only possible way to free oneself from a society shackled by Gates and NSA. At least until a day in the very near future when a vibrant Bitcoin ecosystem makes it possible for us to trade toe jam meals with each other, while preserving our Freedom to do so anonymously.

    54. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by jbolden · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Digia doesn't have the money to keep Qt up where it was. Cocoa is 100% entirely Apple. GTK never really worked all that well outside Linux. Java applications are well out of favor and Oracle isn't throwing much money at it. .NET is the most widely used widget set in the world, it faces no meaningful competition. Why wouldn't it be the cross platform standard almost instantly?

    55. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ...until a day in the very near future when a vibrant Bitcoin ecosystem makes it possible for us to trade toe jam meals with each other, while preserving our Freedom to do so anonymously

      "Not that there's anything wrong with that / No, of course not."

    56. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by HuguesT · · Score: 1

      The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.

    57. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You're confusing incompetence on the part of Linux, for malevolence born of greed on the part of Microsoft.

    58. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by luis_a_espinal · · Score: 1

      AFAIK both Bill Gates and Steve Balmer don't control Microsoft anymore.

      This is a new Microsoft with a new CEO, so we should at least give them the benefit of the doubt.

      You are asking too much from the emo-hordes that inhabit the /. realms.

    59. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by lgw · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I've spent years using both Java and C# professionally. C# wins hands down. For many years before Sun's demise the languages would leapfrog one another in functionality, but Java stopped keeping up a couple years before Sun went down. Java 8 is about where C# was 5 years ago now. It's night and day.

      The real question for MS is: what about phones? MS has partnered to get mobile cross-platform C# working with Mono, but it's not free if you want VS integration. Being able to write and test on the PC and then run on any phone or tablet (well, at least modern ones) is a big deal.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    60. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by weiserfireman · · Score: 4, Informative

      The early Sherlock Holmes Novels, and the Character of Sherlock Holmes entered Public Domain in the past year

      It does happen, we just don't notice most of the time. I noticed this time because the Arthur Conan Doyle Family filed a big lawsuit to try to keep it under copyright and lost.

    61. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by kthreadd · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Sounds reasonable. I don't think they are legally bound to keep that promise, but that they spell it out like that is a good thing. An interesting question that comes to mind is if the promise also covers modified code, it looks like the definition of covered code only covers code published by Microsoft. But still, better than nothing.

    62. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Xenx · · Score: 1

      You can claim his motives are whatever, but the reality is it doesn't matter why he is doing it. He is helping people with his money. It's better than him just hording it all.

    63. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by weiserfireman · · Score: 1

      One of the early developers of Excel, retired recently and bought a large farm near my home town.

    64. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by richlv · · Score: 1

      The answer, my friend, is bobbing in the wind.

      there, fixed that for you

      --
      Rich
    65. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, he is not really giving his money away. He's essentially loaning money out so they will spend it on his "investements"--and he gets it right back again. He's making money off of his charity. More than he's spending.

    66. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They should just fork X then. Did I do it right? Thats how all problems with the way a program is designed in the Opensource world are resolved.

    67. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I prefer to be a bit "emo" about Microsoft to being the eternally abused wife type, "this time he he'll stop, he promised".

    68. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But the reason I left was because he was picked for his race. That never works-out. It certainly hasn't helped the companies that hired me for my race. When a company cares more about political correctness than they do about making good products, then the company will almost always die. I don't think there's any way bto save Microsoft at this point. Instead of giving them a second chance because of their CEO, it is proof they're no longer trying.

    69. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by mooingyak · · Score: 1

      I don't think they are legally bound to keep that promise

      My layman's legal understanding is that it is to some degree binding. They can withdraw it at any point, but anyone who acted on that promise can't then be held liable for having done so. IANAL, etc, consult one of your own if you really need to know.

      --
      William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
    70. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Also they actually contribute to the Linux kernel."

      Oh, you mean the added support for Linux under Hyper-V? Self-serving at best.

    71. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > they actually contribute to the Linux kernel.

      They _did_ 'contribute', past tense, a couple of years ago, for a short time. It was driver code that helped Linux run on Micosoft's Hyper-V virtualization hypervisor. In other words it was to help sell Windows server and Hyper-V to run Linux VMs. It was not a contribution to help Linux.

      It is you that is "twisting the truth".

    72. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by TheRaven64 · · Score: 3

      How about because they're not open sourcing any of the client side bits?

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    73. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by guruevi · · Score: 1

      It was written in the 19th century, we're in the 21st, does any of his family even claim to remember who he was? Because I sure as hell don't know anyone who lived at the turn of the last century.

      --
      Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
    74. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by iluvcapra · · Score: 1

      I'm not a lawyer, but...

      Microsoft Corporation and its affiliates (“Microsoft”) promise not to assert any .NET Patents against you for making, using, selling, offering for sale, importing, or distributing Covered Code, as part of either a .NET Runtime or as part of any application designed to run on a .NET Runtime.

      Because this language does not create an exchange, it probably does not form a legally binding agreement or covenant -- even if it did, this promise is certainly revocable at any time. Though, if Microsoft did refrain from "asserting patents" against developers for some amount of time, it would probably create an estoppel.

      --
      Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
    75. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by benjymouse · · Score: 4, Informative

      I don't think they are legally bound to keep that promise

      They are: Promissory estoppel. It is like a one-sided contract - i.e. one that you do not have to sign for it to be legally binding for Microsoft.

      --
      Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*
    76. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >> Why wouldn't it be the cross platform standard almost instantly?
      depends on the support and the quality of the ports

    77. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Richard_at_work · · Score: 1

      Actually it is free if you want VS integration - Ximarin announced today they were making their Starter offering, which is free, better and also making it integrate with VS like their higher paid offerings.

    78. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by LWATCDR · · Score: 1

      "However, under the new leadership that seems to be taking the company towards an era of Glasnost and Perestroika"
      There will always be Putin it not today then tomorrow.

      --
      See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
    79. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Richard_at_work · · Score: 1

      I take it you missed the large Windows offering on AWS then...?

    80. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by gbjbaanb · · Score: 1, Insightful

      *another* development stack... pity's sake, don;t we have enough already?

      Now its just another thing that will pollute our systems - no longer will you install some shitty little app and find it pulls in all the Gnome libraries, now it'll pull in a heap of .NET ones and probably Gnome libs too!

      The reason Microsoft likes it is possibly because of the sentiments in this article

      Think of the history of data access strategies to come out of Microsoft. ODBC, RDO, DAO, ADO, OLEDB, now ADO.NET - All New! Are these technological imperatives? The result of an incompetent design group that needs to reinvent data access every goddamn year? (That's probably it, actually.) But the end result is just cover fire. The competition has no choice but to spend all their time porting and keeping up, time that they can't spend writing new features.

      Yeah, so now Linux people - you too can spend all your time rewriting in the latest cool new development stack, while Microsoft gets on with building whatever it was you used to build.

      Add to that "developer mindshare" and we might just give up on anything decent, having to put up with crap like ASP.NET MVC Razor 5 with EF6.1 frameworks.. and if you don't know all that blackbox magic, forget trying to get a job.

      There's a lot of people who will code in .NET because it purports to be easy, and they will use Visual Studio sooner rather than later, and then they'll find writing for Windows first is the norm, just for development.. and eventually they'll think why bother actually doing the little porting work.

      so I'm not convinced its a good thing overall, even if it is good for me as I know that shit already.

    81. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What are you, some kind of idiot? They switch the CEO and all a sudden the company has a completely different corporate culture?

      GM sure changed itself around after the bankruptcy! Now they only build their cars with hugs and kisses... and faulty ignition switches.

    82. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No kidding. An open sourced .NET should get praise rather than grumpy old complaining. Some spend years complaining and then when a company takes a step in the right direction they deride it. Sure it is a decade overdue, but they did it.

    83. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by geminidomino · · Score: 1

      Hell, if nothing else, it means I can start writing .NET stuff for Linux, without dicking around with Mono, only to find out two weeks in that the piece I need isn't actually in Mono...

      So hey, I'll keep watching for the poison pill, but between that and free VS? I'll give 'em a cookie this time.

    84. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This kind of jealously is extremely pathetic.

    85. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The only reason why there's no hate for MS so much anymore, is because people stopped comparing it to Apple long ago. It's not even competing. They still make giant screwups, it's just that people expect them to. Security hole found? Patch gets released months later. Open source/Apple with same issues get patches in days and the headlines last for months.

    86. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by FreelanceWizard · · Score: 1

      While I'm not a lawyer, I would assume that Microsoft would have to keep that promise by the principles of equitable and promissory estoppel. Reliance upon the promise (which has been around for several years now) is reasonable, and so Microsoft attempting to revoke it and sue would immediately cause damage to those who did so. I think an extremely strong argument could be made in court that the promise more or less permanently estops Microsoft from patent actions regarding the .NET Framework.

      --
      The Freelance Wizard
    87. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Ravaldy · · Score: 1

      You can never be too late as long as the market is still there. You just need an innovation that puts you back in the spotlight (something MS has done very few times in it's history).

    88. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by morgauxo · · Score: 1

      " I sure as hell don't know anyone who lived at the turn of the last century."

      She is gone now of course but I remember my Great Grandmother who was born in 1901 quite well. My mother and her mother and siblings are still alive. They remember her even better and knew her at a more active part of her life than I did.

    89. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Barlo_Mung_42 · · Score: 1

      Started to reply but then I realized you posted AC so you don't deserve a good response.

    90. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      When a corp, has lied repeatedly, paid huge fines for that, they certainly do not deserve any benefit of the doubt. (Ditto govs.)

      In fact, just the reverse.

      You would only give MS the benefit of the doubt if you believed the entire lying corporate culture had been changed to one of honest. Do you believe that?

    91. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That small percentage is extremely important because a large number of them are high end developers that have a larger impact on the future of tech. Here in Silicon Valley nobody uses anything from Microsoft. I can go months without seeing a single Microsoft product and I go to developer conferences in the bay area regularly. The same trend is visible in the elite CS schools across the country.

      Microsoft knows that the status quo isn't going to work out well for them in the long run and they're trying to do something about it. Good for them.

    92. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by VGPowerlord · · Score: 1

      Of course, the Starter edition also limits how large the app can be and didn't allow you to use the cross-platform GUI layer. Did they mention anything about that in the new version?

      And no, I'm not joking about that: Xamarin Pricing has the details... see the "Unlimited App Size" and "Xamarin.Forms" sections.

      --
      GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
    93. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by jsrjsr · · Score: 1

      Because I sure as hell don't know anyone who lived at the turn of the last century.

      I do. My grandfather.

      Oh, and GET OFF MY LAWN!

    94. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I disagree with Coder111's response about Microsoft being less evil. They are... less... evil. I do agree with Coder111 that they are still evil.

      They tried to own the concept of "operating system", and they did... 97% installation of Win9x on desktops. Amazing success, and evil practices to do so.
      Since then, they've tried to own the server marketplace with the "Server" flavors of Windows, and IIS, and so forth. They've had some success with that, though not as much as they've wanted.

      Now, they have decided to embark on two journeys, one of which is clearly more ambitious than the concept of "operating system". One of those journeys is cloud computing; move everything onto the cloud. The other, though, is scarier. The other journey they have embarked on is to own the "user experience".

      With the "operating system", they controlled technology. By owning the "user experience" concept, they control life. All aspects of life. Moving their from technology to the entire economy wasn't ambitious enough for them. They had to pursue life.

      Vista hurt Windows's popularity and Office 2007's ribbon hurt people's love for Office. After that, Microsoft proved their dedication to their journey, which is the pursuit of owning the concept of "user experience", by forcing Windows 8 onto people. With Windows 8.1, they confirmed their desire to push Microsoft's interface instead of the ones that people liked so much. With Xbox One, Microsoft tried to force some changes, although revolt was so significant after an E3 that Microsoft backed down on many of their most outrageous ideas (especially the "always connected online" requirement), at least temporarily. Forcing Kinect into initial purchases may have hurt adoption rates, but it helps Microsoft to feel like they have more control. That Xbox One is going to have an interface designed by Microsoft, and so will the desktop computer. If Microsoft has its way, the mobile phones will be sporting an interface that Microsoft decides on.

      One thing that makes this different than Windows 98's time is that Microsoft has some competitors who are proving themselves formidable. Apple has made lots of money by selling a polished experience. Google seeks to be involved in the home (hence the purchase of NEST, getting data from home thermostats). I just read an article about how Amazon has a device called the Echo that has speech recognition. This device is similar to "Google Now"/"OK Google" (ask questions and get answers), but the author was describing how Amazon's real goal is to enable zero-click ordering by having a speech recognition device in the home. Cisco wishes to own "the Internet of things" the way they currently dominate high-end networking. All of these companies are seeking to control technology beyond just computers, and infiltrate our homes or mobile technology that we take with us. Google's even well known for also having concrete plans that are in motion and related to the experience of driving cars.

      In the late 1990's and early 2000's, venture capitalists poured tons of money into tech companies that might be critical parts of people's online experience. When those investments in the "dot com boom" didn't pan out, the investors were left with nothing, and this caused economic problems that became known as the "dot com bubble" popping. Now successful major companies are dabbling with unproven solutions, many of which might not have the returns they desire. However, each failed investment turns into a learning opportunity, and the major companies can afford some lost investments, and so these costs are affordable for those who are providing the money, which are the giant companies with tons of revenue coming from other sources.

      Trying to own all of life is certainly evil, and Microsoft has demonstration its participation in this with Windows 8. Then Microsoft proved its commitment to pursuing their goal, by having Windows 8.1 rei

    95. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by MachineShedFred · · Score: 1

      Now look at the market numbers for IIS .NET development, versus Java / Python / PHP on Apache.

      Understand yet?

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
    96. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      -- This is where open source fails, they have not been able, [...] been able to penetrate the colleges to create a supply of labor for their stuff as well as Microsoft has.

      College was a while back for me....but I knew people using Linux back in college...in 1993.

      If you AREN'T using Linux in college in 2014...you're insane. For $0, you get and entire suite of development tools including compilers, databases, etc.

      That, and everyone admits Git has won source code control. I do interviews and I look for a github account on the resume.

      Enjoy.

    97. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by VGPowerlord · · Score: 1

      While they didn't say anything about porting VS to Linux/OSX, apparently they made the Windows VS Standard edition free today. They're calling it Visual Studio Community 2013 and it's based on Visual Studio 2013 Update 4 (which was also released today).

      Of course, it's still missing the features you get in the Enterprise, Test Manager, and Ultimate editions. Heck, I don't even see support for TFS mentioned, although it does support Git...

      --
      GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
    98. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      By chance, I found an open browser tab that let me stumble on Amazon Echo article. So there's the article I referenced in the parent post. I also stumbled upon an article that Microsoft has code in every HD-DVD player. It made me think about Microsoft getting paid royalties for Android devices. So, yeah, Microsoft is still evil. In some ways, less so. But definitely evil.

    99. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by ArcadeMan · · Score: 1

      Giving them the benefit of the doubt doesn't mean we should trust them either, but we should back down our "Microsoft is always bad" mindset a little bit.

      I'm over 40, I've lived through everything Microsoft did and I'm not going to forget their past either.

    100. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Now its just another thing that will pollute our systems - no longer will you install some shitty little app and find it pulls in all the Gnome libraries, now it'll pull in a heap of .NET ones and probably Gnome libs too!

      And systemd.

    101. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by davester666 · · Score: 1

      I hate getting mono.

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
    102. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ballmer should be ok with this then, since they it looks like they went with mit or apache license, not the nasty, 'viral' gpl.

    103. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Richard_at_work · · Score: 1

      Of course it has limits, they dont have to give everything away for free.

    104. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by jbolden · · Score: 1

      That's true. Though they are already cross platform and supposedly getting more so. But you do have a good point. Open source server doesn't mean nearly as much if the client is closed and the client is the main advantage.

    105. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Yes, how about instead of twisting his words, we just quote his words?

      "Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches." - Steve Ballmer

    106. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by TemporalBeing · · Score: 1

      Digia doesn't have the money to keep Qt up where it was.

      Digia certainly is doing a very good job with Qt; as are their other major rivals - ICS and KDAB; all of which are involved in shaping Qt in addition to members from KDE and other open source groups. It's also used by some pretty hefty vendors for some pretty hefty work loads (e.g AutoDesk and AutoCAD).

      Cocoa is 100% entirely Apple.

      True.

      GTK never really worked all that well outside Linux.

      You could have fooled me. There are quite a few open source applications that use Gtk and work very well on Windows, f.e Pidgin.

      Java applications are well out of favor and Oracle isn't throwing much money at it.

      Well, Java was always never very cross-platform in the GUI....yeah they did it but performance was always out the window. And with all the recent major vulnerabilities it isn't any surprise that Oracle is no longer throwing money at it like they (and Sun) use to.

      .NET is the most widely used widget set in the world, it faces no meaningful competition.

      Actually you're wrong there. It's probably Qt, JavaME, or another toolkit that works well with embedded devices. In fact, on numbers alone the Android toolkit already has more out there than Microsoft even did, and that's not even getting into the more true embedded electronics where SDKs like Qt and JavaME have had a lot longer history and work on things from small electronics to refridgerators to Desktops computers. You'd be surprised where you find toolkit usage.

      If you're only thinking of the PC world - Mac/Linux/Windows - then yes, you're right, .NET probably has a bigger following. But the toolkit world does not limit itself to just Desktops or even Desktop-like GUIs, and there are many many different toolkits out there meeting different markets, some markets (e.g. appliances) make the PC market look like nothing.

      Why wouldn't it be the cross platform standard almost instantly?

      B/c Microsoft has never been good at Cross-platform anything. Everything they've done has been very focused on their own products and platforms to the exclusion of all others.

      Now don't get me wrong - it's great that Microsoft is doing this, and it will put Mono and GnuDotNet out to pasture for good if they live up to what they said. It's certainly a good thing that they are doing this; but it'll still be a big surprise if it works as well and as completely on any other platform as it does on Windows - it likely won't.

      --
      Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
    107. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by PRMan · · Score: 1

      The biggest QT project I'm aware of is the official Bitcoin wallet. Having heard about it for a long time (since it fit on a floppy) that's a pretty quiet track record.

      --
      Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
    108. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by lgw · · Score: 1

      Which is why MS needs to buy them and give everything away for free. MS has cash, but doesn't have anyone developing mobile apps on their stack - they need to fix that.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    109. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Who has reason to hate them? Anyone who has to live through the misery of dealing with patching enterprise Windows systems every month because all Microsoft products remain riddled with vulnerabilities. Same for Adobe and Java.

      UNIX/Linux systems have bugs as well, but they are far less frequently "remote root" exploits.

    110. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No. You cannot write your own runtime, if I read this correctly.

    111. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by MachineShedFred · · Score: 1

      Yeah, what a shithead he is for deciding not to be the richest guy in the graveyard. How dare he leverage those billions of dollars to try to do some good in the world, instead of doing a Scrooge McDuck backstroke in a swimming pool filled with money.

      Guess what: the thousands of people that don't die from malaria over the next few years don't give a damn what his motivations are.

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
    112. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by CBravo · · Score: 1

      The poison pill: You need their runtime which can only be used by their rules.

      --
      nosig today
    113. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The Java ride is ending though, because of all the legacy Java 6 stuff that Oracle is attempting to cast off with great abandon without fixing compatibility with Java 7. If you have to recode it for a new platform, why stick with a shithead company that wants to screw you at every turn?

    114. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anrego · · Score: 1

      I don't know if it's necessarily irrational.

      Microsoft did some very shady things in its past. They may not seem like the threat they used to be, if anything they have become the new IBM, but I think the old Microsoft which left a trail of corpses as it tore through the computer industry and scared the living shit out of everyone back in the day is still laying dormant.

      I think it is still reasonable to view any apparently positive thing they do with a great deal of suspicion.

    115. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Legitimately curious, what does C# bring to the table now that makes it better than Java.

      The way I always viewed it:

      - C# had visual studio and as you were almost certainly developing on windows, it had the advantages of working with an environment geared specifically towards that relatively static environment.
      - Java had a shit tonne of very mature and well documented libraries (some open source, some proprietary and expensive as balls) and a really powerful tool stack around it (all sorts of analyzers, dependency managers, build/CI systems, etc).

      Both languages has their nifty unique features, but none where what I would call a game changer.

    116. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by DuckDodgers · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Even if Microsoft were 100% ethical today, they now have the reputation, the established position, and the financial resources to keep open source and proprietary competitors out of their desktop market due to the dirty tricks they pulled fifteen to thirty years ago. I won't ever forgive the company for that. To use a metaphor, if General Motors monopolizes the US car market by bombing all of the headquarters of the other automakers, even if GM takes the profits of its monopoly and uses it to create the best cars ever built I still wouldn't buy one. If Linux, or BeOS, or OS/2, or some other player had been able to establish a foothold in the US consumer PC market in the 1990s the competition between them and Microsoft would have made the world technology market look dramatically different than it does today.

      But further, Microsoft still stifles innovation by wielding its patent portfolio offensively against other companies. Microsoft has more profits than Google, and Google - which is plenty evil in some other ways - only uses its patents defensively. Microsoft has also waged FUD campaigns against competitors as recently as earlier this year (Scroogled).

      You can put a tuxedo on a gangster, but he's still just a crook.

    117. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Zalbik · · Score: 1

      Ahhh....so basically:

      - creating a new UI and standardizing it across platforms is evil. Riiigggghhhht.

      - listening to your customers and reworking disliked features (XBox One / Windows 9) is evil

      - Creating UX = Owning all of life.

      Is there a magazine I can subscribe to in order to hear more of your views?

    118. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by bondsbw · · Score: 1

      Actually they are doubling the allowed app size in the starter edition:

      We are also doubling the size limit on apps that can be created with Xamarin Starter Edition, so that you can build even more capable apps for free.

      --
      All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
    119. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Self-serving at best.

      Like almost all Linux patches are.

    120. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by CBravo · · Score: 1

      There are enough arguments against that conclusion. Just think of all the lost opportunities for businesses and wasting dollars on crap software, with previous MS business methods.To describe this differently: The MS way, is a dead end and you need extra effort to get on the highway again.

      --
      nosig today
    121. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      People will start making open source 'client bits' - if by that, you mean and IDE. So far, there has not been a need for it on a large scale. There are light versions of the MS IDE and others. You are not aware of it since you do not use it.

      This should be interesting. .NET framework makes dev extremely fast, has most tools native - use Entity Framework versus Hibernate or others and EF wins every single time and does not take hours to setup your project and more hours just to add or modify objects.

      I prefer Linux as a server platform - hands down it is the best. Now, being able to build real .NET applications (not the limited mono code which is always 2-3 years behind), and its a serious alternative to Java. Java can already run on all platforms, time for .Net.

    122. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by DuckDodgers · · Score: 2

      C# > Java
      Scala ? C#
      Kotlin ? C#
      Groovy ? C#
      Clojure ? C#

      NuGet ? Maven
      NuGet ? Gradle
      NuGet ? Leiningen
      ( NuGet > SBT because _ > SBT )

      It's safe to say C# trumps Java. But even with .NET as open source under the excellent MIT license, I'm not sure .NET trumps the JVM and the JVM ecosystem.

    123. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Right, and let each person here reveal how they donate their time or money. Not many. Maybe 1%. Thaat 1% keeps popping up?

    124. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Please familiarize yourself with the principle of promissory estoppel.

      In essence, if Microsoft makes a promise like that, and then attempts to renege on that promise, the impacted parties would have legal standing to demand a court order requiring Microsoft to abide by that promise. In other words - they could file a motion to dismiss all of Microsoft's lawsuits against them on the basis that they reasonably relied on Microsoft's promise, and Microsoft's refusal to honor it produces an inequitable scenario for the impacted parties.

    125. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I used to be disgusted know I try to be amused as M$ slowly sinks into oblivion.

    126. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 1

      The problem is MS doesn't have a fucking clue what the customer wants.

      They are so out of touch with reality that they are sad but funny.

      i.e.
      * Xbox One < -- yeah, let's copy Apple' iPad marketing department. Let's fuck over every one talking about the Xbox by creating confusion. "I have an Xbox one." "The new one or the old?" *facepalm*

      * Microsoft's "Fuck You to multiple IE versions." It is completely idiotic that normally you are only allowed to install one version of iE. Gee, I need to test my browser code against _multiple_ browser versions. Why am I forced to use SandBoxie ??

      * Let's shove the new metrosexual UI down people's throat never mind that company's IT dept. will have to suck up the wasted man hours of teaching people a new UI.

      * Let's ignore power users. We _finally_ have virtual desktops in Windows. We've had this for ~20 years in Linux, and 7 years in OSX.

      * Let's shove the new ribbon UI down people's throat instead of presenting BOTH the menu bar AND the ribbon, like on OSX.

      * Apple is now giving their OS away for FREE! Yet MS continues to charge $100 / OEM copy. If MS would just sell Windows XP and Windows 7 digital .ISOs + Serial Key for $20 people then might wouldn't mind the stupid "Microsoft Tax."

      * MS has a long history of forced artificial obsolescence by requiring the latest Windows to run the latest DirectX.
      Want to run Direct 9, fuck you Windows 2000. Want to run Direct X 10, fuck you Windows XP. Want to run DirectX 12, fuck you Windows 7.

      * PowerShell is a classic NIH. Can you run programs that start with a number yet?! LOL.

      How is that WebGL support working out for you IE ? Gee, _now_ you are starting to support _open_ standard ?! Who knew!

      How many Billions did you dump into Bing?

      How is that ROI working out for you on Skype (8.5 Billion), and Mojang (for Minecraft) (2.5 Billion) ?

      If MS actually _respected_ its customers, and didn't do dumb shit maybe we wouldn't hate them so much.

    127. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anrego · · Score: 2

      To me the strength of Java has always been the tool stack and libraries around it.

      Most languages usually have something available with regards to dependency management, continuous integration, static analysis, code quality, unit testing/test coverage, etc. Java just seems to have multiple well supported and very polished versions of all that.

      And one thing Java seems to have as an exclusive is a consistent coding convention. Yes people sometimes deviate from it, but the vast majority of Java code you'll see follows the same conventions. It seems like a trivial thing, but it makes a huge difference when working with 3rd party code and tools. Working on a c++ project that involved more then three 3rd party libraries and the code will be a complete mess (and writing adapters for everything is kinda impractical).

    128. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by slapout · · Score: 1

      Add least MS security updates don't try to install Ask toolbar (Java) or McAfee (Adobe).

      --
      Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
    129. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 1

      Not all the bits that are promised to be open sourced have been open sourced yet. If you look at the GitHub repo, it's kinda bare right now. Wait and see what actually ends up there.

    130. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by grriffin · · Score: 1

      Visual Studio Community Edition is new, free, and supports Extensions including Xamarin. They demoed code running on all three major mobile platforms at once today.

    131. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Kabukiwookie · · Score: 1

      If a dog that's bitten me in the past is adopted by a new owner, I am still not likely to pet it any time in the future.

      --
      The mountains of madness have many little plateaus of sanity - Terry Pratchett.
    132. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The good news for Mac and Linux users is that they will have access to the large number of .NET applications that exist.

    133. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by praxis · · Score: 1

      Depends on what you mean by large. Amazon does offer a wide variety of EC2 machines running Windows but I am unsure how large of a pie Windows EC2 instances take away from the non-Windows EC2 instances.

    134. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You mean your browser?

    135. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by rtb61 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Easy peasy, M$ can just manufacture an off balance sheet company and sell the patents to them and that company can then sue the crap out of you. So the M$ promises are empty unless the patents are specified, otherwise the future 'owner' can argue which patents are or are not covered, seeing that shite like rounded corners can killed a product under corrupt US Patent law, the risk still seems grossly excessive.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    136. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Another development stack and application ecosystem is nice, and if it's licensed under a proper open source license, then I'm all for it. I can't say I'd be in any rush to develop in it, and that may be the real problem here, that Microsoft is about seven or eight years too late.

      Considering the not insignificant number of jobs advertisements requiring Microsoft .Net experience this should at least allow programmers of the GNU/Linux OS to develop software utilising Microsoft .Net libraries. A number of forensic software companies built their software products atop Microsoft .Net for example, yet a lot of F/LOSS programmers refuse - rightly so until now perhaps - to touch anything related to Microsoft Corporation.

    137. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by lgw · · Score: 1

      In C#:

      myVehicles.where(v => v.IsCar).select(v => v.LegRoom).sort().foreach(display);

      In Java 7 (which most of us are still using), that becomes:

      List<Integer> temp = new ArrayList<>();
      for (Vehicle v : myVehicles) {
          if (v.isCar()) {
              temp.add(v.getLegRoom());
          }
      }
      Collections.sort(temp);
      for (Integer legroom : temp) {
          display(legroom);
      }

      All that boilerplate just to express 1 line of code. Java 8 adds lambda, but there's still a bunch of boilerplate associated with it - despite getting to see how C# did it first, they chose a ballflingly verbose syntax for it all.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    138. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In business, if you're not going up you're going down... I challenge anyone griping about companies to get off your soap-box and explain how you could run a company perfectly without having a few low points... Hint: you can't.

      So, as a consumer you have a few effective (though slow) options to chose from like voting with your wallet or electing proper government...

      Complaining futilely on the web, which for better or worse was made more accessible in part by the very companies you all gripe about... seems more than a bit shortsighted...

    139. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I doubt Visual Studio gets ported, that would be a major undertaking even if it's written more and more in C# these days. Pity, while I'd still prefer Codewarrior, I'd gladly pay for VS on Mac to ditch the abomination that is XCode.

      Meanwhile, I still prefer vi/vim and the command-line when developing software on Debian GNU/Linux.

    140. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Quite true, but just because I keep piling more sandbags around the bunker doesn't mean I'm paranoid.

    141. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, that's not it at all.

      If Microsoft was hellbent on destroying someone, they would do something like this. The average developer is not going to step on Microsoft's toes. If anyone was due to be sued it would be the developers of Unity.

      Allowing .NET stuff to run without all the Mono-Linux trash (Not saying Mono is trash, just how trashy the implementation is. The only implementation that works on all platforms right now is Unity) is a good thing.

    142. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by davydagger · · Score: 1
      Microsoft doesn't sell to end users, and doesn't.

      Microsoft knows exactly what corporate purchasing managers want, and buy and large they are the only people who really buy microsoft products with any enthusiasm. Its "what they always used", its a "conservative choice", and "no one ever got fired for buying microsoft products", so its a safe bet, that even if your MS product performs at all, you won't loose your job, because its socially acceptable to buy microsoft, and even if it fails, and you eventually go with someone else, its not your fault.

      If you work for a large corporation, which has no real risk of going out of business for a decision like that, and your not the CEO, or owner, and don't give a shit if the company looses money overall, then the descision to buy microsoft is good.

      End users, when given another choice, never chose microsoft, with the exception of the xbox, and that looses money.

    143. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by davydagger · · Score: 1
      sure, but we are having the concept that we should simply forgive them entirely shoved down our throats.

      I wonder who is pushing that?

      Its not like microsoft ever had paid goons show up and heckle/harrass.

    144. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by geminidomino · · Score: 1

      That depends on what those rules turn out to be. Thus the "watch and see" part of my approach.

    145. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by davydagger · · Score: 1
      how is he "saving lives"?

      He's not a scientist, he never discovered a vaccine

      He's not a lab technician, he never synthesized any vaccines, or fixed the machines that do the work.

      He's not a forklift operator, loading vaccines into or off of airplanes, nor the pilot who flies them, not a crew on a boat to do the same.

      He's not a doctor, he doesn't administer vaccines, or travel to third world countries

      He's not a nurse assisting the doctor and administering vaccines

      heck he's not even a travel or logistics person doing the cordination

      How is he saving lives, this gotta be good. Most likely you are going to name things other people have done, and ignore the work of public and government operations doing far more, on a far larger scale. He is saving no one. He is simply pressing buttons and moving money around bank accounts while other people save the world.

    146. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by davydagger · · Score: 1
      Dick Cheny gave most of his money away too, I guess he's a real good guy now all of a sudden?

      at least by your standards.

    147. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      42 then. Or was that the roads?

    148. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by gewalker · · Score: 1

      Exposing yourself to mono is fun.

      Coming down with mono, not so fun.

    149. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by gewalker · · Score: 1

      You people with you unreasoning hatred of Bob. I personally have benefited from Bob. Was is a meeting with some MS guys sponsoring a segment. The room was overcrowded and getting too hot fast. The MS guys has brought along some freebie copies of Bob and volunteered the use of Bob to prop the doors open to help cool the room.

      There was much applause. Problem with Bob was that it was frequently misused. Made a perfectly good doorstop.

    150. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by ilsaloving · · Score: 1

      They should have gotten help from Disney. Then they would have been able to extend copyright until our sun goes supernova.

    151. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Medication time again?

    152. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by ilsaloving · · Score: 1

      That's because Windows and Office are still their big cash cows.

      Want to use a PC? You use Windows. Want to write documents and spreadsheets? You use Office. They have a massive monopoly on those two things, and right now they are coasting on inertia. If people don't like Windows 8, what do they do? A few switch to Apple. Fewer still switch to Linux. The vast majority just stick to Windows 7. In other words, Microsoft still makes money even if they fuck up royally.

      But as soon as you step outside that core, look what happens. Practically every single venture they have attempted, has flopped on it's face. XBox had a good run, but Microsoft did an excellent job of torpedoing that with the XBox One. Remember Zune? How many BILLIONS have they lost on surface now?

      The *only* thing that is keeping Microsoft afloat right now is that core Windows/Office property, because it's not worth the effort to switch away from it. But for anything new, people are generally avoiding Microsoft like Typhoid Mary. As they should, given the number of entities (and I'm talking Partners, OEMs, and even international standards bodies) that Microsoft has screwed over, only a fool would trust Microsoft to so much as squeeze their raging blackheads.

    153. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by rtb61 · · Score: 1

      What exactly does the creation of off balance sheet companies, to divest public reaction from the corporation initiating the action have to do with Free Open Source Software. Any company that takes potentially business bankrupting risks with the non-binding promises of a public company that can readily change ownership and in turn management principles, are just fooling themselves. My comment is about the actions M$ "has taken" with regard to the patent and the global corporate wide environment of patent corruption. Quite simply it is not worth the risk because the patent protections M$ has offered are not strong or enduring enough to last the life of patents, especially considering current corporate efforts to extend patent life well beyond the existing period. The rounded corners example in fact has nothing at all to do with M$ but is an example of how patents can be used to shut down businesses whilst the matter is sorted out in the long travail through the courts which pushes many defending companies into bankruptcy before they can successfully defend themselves. To anybody with business sense and a real understanding of public companies and not some M$ zealot it makes sense that patent protections are rock solid and readily defend able at the level of the lowest court and not require years whilst you product is productively dead. You company bias seems to refute any modern business sense.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    154. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by pixelpusher220 · · Score: 1

      It actually doesn't happen much at all. Anything in the public domain today is there solely because it was created before Disney and other empires started buying laws that suit their interests.

      The laws retroactively apply to most creations so even stuff created 'not that recently' continues to reside under copyright lock and key LONG after it would have originally reverted to public domain status.

      --
      People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people :-D
    155. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by ilsaloving · · Score: 1

      Bullshit.

      You don't just wipe away a conniving corporate culture by replacing the CEO and adding a little more lipstick.

      Microsoft has spent the last several *decades* screwing people, companies, and industries over, and they have yet to show they have changed. Just look at what happened to Nokia.

      They have a well established history of offering people a carrot, and then sticking them in the back when they turn around.

      Microsoft lost everyone's trust a long time ago, and it is THEIR responsibility to show that they've changed, and everyone else is under ZERO obligation to give them any benefit of the doubt whatsoever. They want to show they've changed? They have to demonstrate it, not just once, but repeatedly and consistently. If they do that for, oh, a few years, without falling back to their old ways, then maybe we can BEGIN to trust them again. Maybe.

    156. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by ilsaloving · · Score: 2

      They didn't open source all of .NET. The only open sourced the bits that are critical for .NET being viable for cloud computing, which is an utterly self-serving decision that smacks of desperation.

      If Microsoft really wants to raise eyebrows, they should open source the ENTIRE stack, including all the APIs necessary to write desktop applications.

      So far all they've been doing is playing a game of "Gee, maybe if we open up this one particular little tidbit, that'd be enough for people to bite and give our stuff a try." and hope that nobody is paying attention to the man behind the curtain.

      When your abusive SO repeatedly offers you their hand, only to punch you in the nose when you take it, how long does it take before you stop putting any faith into their protestations about "having changed", etc?

    157. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Barlo_Mung_42 · · Score: 1

      Such a vacuous comment it's hard to know what to say. None of the people you listed can work for free all the time. So just writing checks would mean he gets a lot of the credit because he's making it happen. But the cool thing about Gates is that he's not just writing checks. He's very hands on and has a lot of influence to direct action throughout the world. Yes, those other people deserve a lot of credit too but making sure billions of dollars are spent effectively is harder than it sounds and he will go down in history as someone who did a lot more good than bad with his time on earth.

    158. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anrego · · Score: 1

      I gotta say, the C# version kinda reminds me of perl.

      The Java version is annoyingly verbose, but I honestly think I prefer it (except I'd probably rename temp to something sane). Also google collections provides a lot of utilities to eliminate a lot of this kinda boilerplate (you could probably do something very similar to the C# example with iterables).

    159. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Barlo_Mung_42 · · Score: 1

      Source? Who did he give it too? More importantly, how involved was he? For Gates it's now his main focus in life and by the end of his life he will have spent a lot more time saving lives than doing whatever it is you hate him for. Your hate has clearly clouded your judgment.

    160. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by ArcadeMan · · Score: 1

      Give them the benefit of the doubt when they talk positively about open-sourcing one of their product? Don't be a fool and read the licenses carefully.

      Forgive them for their past actions? Never.

    161. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by aybiss · · Score: 1

      Have they fixed the fundamental flaws in Windows or Office that have made everyone's life a PITA for 20 years? If I happen to be pressing 'Y' just as a dialog pops up asking if I want to format C, what will happen in Windows 10? Can I open two Excel spreadsheets at once without having to Google how yet? Can I open two spreadsheets that have the same name but are in different directories yet? Can Word be used for a numbered list without causing psychosis yet?

      At least you could argue that Windows and Office now cost far closer to what they're worth I guess.

      We have no sympathy for them because they have made numerous decisions like those and have never acknowledged let alone given any explanation as to why they felt they should arse-rape the whole huamn race like that.

      --
      It's OK Bender, there's no such thing as 2.
    162. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Christopher_G_Lewis · · Score: 1

      I go around saying "Microsoft limits filenames to a ridiculous 8.sqrt(3) format."

      Does that make my hatred irrational?

      It would if it were sqrt( -3)

    163. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anrego · · Score: 1

      If this all sounds familiar, it's because the blackberry guys already went down this road.

      They were smartphones for business. If you needed a smartphone for business, it was almost always going to be a blackberry. They sat on those laurels for years until all of a sudden those competitors that had been slowly nibbling away at their market share started taking bigger and bigger bites. Enough people said "fuck it, I want to use my android/iphone for work and ditch this blackberry shit" and they suddenly found themselves fighting for their life.

      Microsoft has the desktop PC (especially at the office) and they have word processing, but mac and Linux are nibbling away at the desktop, and a lot of people are moving to other tools for word processing and spreadsheets. If they just sit their for the next 10 years saying "meh, we've still got all the workstation and office market share", I honestly think they'll be in the same situation RIM is in right now (passport aside, they are still kinda boned).

      Google and Apple have been doing it right. It would take an awful lot to kill either right now because they've got substantial things going on in lots of diverse industries.

    164. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They use standard FSF-approved licences: MIT and Apache.

    165. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by JDG1980 · · Score: 1

      I'll agree that I haven't seen very much Qt out in industry, but I haven't seen much .NET either.

      Maybe you haven't been looking very hard? The job listings I see are about 40% .NET and 40% Java. Nothing else comes close.

    166. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, they don't have to. They've already installed windows. That's bad enough.

    167. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wrong! Both Gates and Ballmer are on the MS board. They still control MS or I should say Gates still controls MS as Ballmer has always been a "Yes" man for Bill.

    168. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      An open sourced .NET should get praise rather than grumpy old complaining.

      "open sourced .NET" is good for .NET and for MS. IMHO they have been shooting themselves in the foot by keeping .net locked into Windows up until now. There is nothing to praise them for so far for anyone but .NET developers who willingly already locked themselves into it.

      Some spend years complaining and then when a company takes a step in the right direction they deride it. Sure it is a decade overdue, but they did it.

      They still collect $5 per set on Android patent trolling, make great progress at locking out bootloaders, lock out competitors from government contracts, and make their data formats purposely incompartible with standards. Don't see any steps in the right direction where it matters. This particular one is going to make THEM more money, why would we care about it?

    169. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by DocHoncho · · Score: 1

      Wouldn't that make it imaginary? Subtle difference, when talking about rationality in the psychological sense.

      --
      Celebrity worship is a poor substitute for Deity worship and costs more to boot.
    170. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Guspaz · · Score: 2

      They're opensourcing the entire server stack... which happens to contain nearly the entirety of the client-side stack. You'll miss Windows.Forms and WPF, sure, but Windows.Forms already has opensource implementations courtesy of Mono (which I would imagine should run on Microsoft's implementation of .NET), and WPF never really took off, leaving Windows.Forms still more popular. The reason that Mono never implemented WPF was apparently due to lack of interest and resources... Well, Microsoft may have just removed the necessity for Mono to do work on anything *but* the client-side bits, so those resources may now be available.

      That said, I believe that there is far more software out there written using server-side .NET than client-side.

    171. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Guspaz · · Score: 1

      Microsoft is opensourcing the vast majority of the .NET framework, but if they're focusing on the server-side stuff, there may be some client-side bits that aren't, such as Windows.Forms. So Mono might not so much go away as it could end up just focusing on the bits that Microsoft hasn't opensourced.

    172. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Guspaz · · Score: 1

      The C# version is using Linq. Which, as a C# developer, I've never really been able to wrap my head around. Now, that might be due to lack of trying, in that I've never really been forced to deal with Linq in a manner where I couldn't just work around it, and I've never put any serious effort into training on it, but an awful lot of it seems to be of the non-obvious-way-to-do-things variety. The entire X => X.Something syntax seems confusing and illogical to me. Where does the type of X come from? Where are the properties coming from? What's with the X => bit? If "IsCar" is a property of the members of the myVehicles array, why can't I do something like "myVehicles.where(IsCar).select(LegRoom).sort().foreach(display)?

      Perhaps my aversion to Linq is because my exposure to it has been having very complex use of it randomly thrown at me in large projects without having learned it first, and then having to make changes in that Linq code without having been given the time to properly understand it in the first place.

    173. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Guspaz · · Score: 1

      Yet another development stack? Some of us have been using it for more than a decade. When .NET was released, most of today's popular Linux distros (Ubuntu, Gentoo, Fedora, CentOS, Arch, OpenSUSE, or any of the popular mobile Linux distros like Android or ChromeOS) didn't even exist. I realize that many of those distros are forks of previous distros, but the point is that .NET isn't exactly the new kid on the block.

    174. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      One thing I miss when coding in C# instead of Java: a consistent directory structure. It's somewhat verbose, but if you know the package name, you know where to find a class.

      Of course, you could follow the same naming convention in C#, but people don't, and Visual Studio doesn't encourage it.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    175. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yep, but Microsoft has enough cash reserve to drag the case endlessly. Long enough to let other parties run out of money and go bankrupted, or not longer been relevant because they are so much behind in development that they lost all advantages..

      It would not be the first time (and certainly not the last time) an company just wins because of "deep pockets"..

      So - yes, they can try, but will always lose - one way of the other...

    176. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Even when the next sentence in the "promise" stipulates:

      No rights except those expressly stated in this promise are granted, waived, or received by Microsoft, whether by implication, exhaustion, estoppel, or otherwise.

      ?

    177. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hello Sherlock Holmes "Adult-Adventure" Novels!! :D

    178. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by gbjbaanb · · Score: 1

      it is on Linux and Mac.... (and we don't really count Mono as not being quite the same thing)

    179. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by TemporalBeing · · Score: 1

      Microsoft is opensourcing the vast majority of the .NET framework, but if they're focusing on the server-side stuff, there may be some client-side bits that aren't, such as Windows.Forms. So Mono might not so much go away as it could end up just focusing on the bits that Microsoft hasn't opensourced.

      Not really...just means that someone might come up with a toolkit that does those parts, like a "Gtk For .Net" kind of thing, which is essentially what Mono would become since it is closely Gtk related; but others may offer other toolkits. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it does break the ability to truly develop .Net based applications on one platform and run them on many platforms.

      --
      Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
    180. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by lgw · · Score: 1

      You have to grok lambda. It's as much a CS fundamental as pointers and recursion. The type of x is deduced (I think you can specify it explicitly, but once you get the hang of the syntax the clutter actually makes it harder to read). Just think "foreach(var x in ...) { whatever(x);}".

      The "x =>" is just declaring the name of the variable. You can use any function, not just properties. "where(x => x.Color == Red)" or "select(x => x/2)" or whatever.

      I read the code as "for elements of myVehicles that are cars, take the legrooms, sort them, and display them." Once the notation sinks in, you get fluency and don't have to mentally translate each bit - at least until people start nesting and currying them.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    181. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by godefroi · · Score: 1

      It's not using Linq. It's using a set of extension methods and lambda expressions. Linq is a whole other DSL ("from x in myVehicles...") that I rarely see used.

      Lambda expressions are simply syntactic sugar for anonymous methods.

      It's distressing to me that you claim to be a C# developer and can't "wrap your head around" lambdas, which you also confuse with Linq. Hopefully you have an MSDN subscription and can take advantage of some of the new free PluralSight training, because you clearly need it. I wouldn't hire you.

      --
      Karma: Poor (Mostly affected by lame karma-joke sigs)
    182. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Optali · · Score: 1

      The Night of the Living Dead :)

      Copyright status

      Night of the Living Dead entered the public domain because the original theatrical distributor, the Walter Reade Organization, neglected to place a copyright indication on the prints. In 1968, United States copyright law required a proper notice for a work to maintain a copyright.[120] Image Ten displayed such a notice on the title frames of the film beneath the original title, Night of the Flesh Eaters. The distributor removed the statement when it changed the title.[3][121]

      Wikipedia: Night of the Living Dead

      --
      -- 29A the number of the Beast
    183. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Optali · · Score: 1

      That explains all these crappy movies and series :P

      --
      -- 29A the number of the Beast
    184. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by lsatenstein · · Score: 1

      Don't think I'm defending Microsoft here because I am old enough to remember Microsoft at its worst and still have the deep seated hatred of Gates and Balmer era MS. Hell, anti-trust BS aside I still hate them for what they did to my MechWarrior franchise alone! However, under the new leadership that seems to be taking the company towards an era of Glasnost and Perestroika, the hatred is given pause as I wait for the next dick move that may never come. At the very least, Microsoft has moved into a position that is no more or less "evil" than Google (yes, do no evil no longer applies here) or Apple. Given this, I wonder how many people here truly rationally hate MS anymore as opposed to hatred through nostalgia (like me) or hatred through "it's the way we do things around here" syndrome. As a developer that uses MS products and support in his profession, and develops Linux, Android, and Arduino apps as a hobby, I still prefer the current open source way of doing things over the MS way... but as far as the hatred? It cannot be said yet that Microsoft is the same company it was in the Balmer days. They at least *look* like they're moving towards a path that looks similar to the one Sun Microsystems was beating through.

      Are they looking to Linux as the long term (down the road) bailout?

      --
      Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
    185. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by iggymanz · · Score: 1

      Not true, open source is only possible by laws regarding copyright. Those can be changed by law or by courts at least.

    186. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      Whereas your boss's tech opinions are so clouded with ignorance. Is it any better to be unaware of a possibility than to reject a possibility for emotional reasons?

      At some point, unless something changes, your company is likely to find itself falling behind others for no obvious reason. It may take a long time, but with blindness like that it'll happen.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    187. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Xamarin has stated interest in working out an even more hobby/open-source friendly version of their VS integration to support the new Visual Studio Community Edition.

    188. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In the .NET ecosystem, F# provides many of the benefits of languages like Scala and Clojure. Languages like Nemerle, IronPython, IronRuby, and Boo are doing similar things to Kotlin and Groovy. (Boo and Groovy are even sibling projects at Codehaus, perhaps not too surprising.)

      Build tools: MSBuild/XBuild are the most common but there are also ones like NAnt; PSake; Fake
      Scaffolding: Visual Studio; PowerShell-based engines; Yeoman generators (a growing collection of .NET apps are using Yeoman as a scaffolding engine, particularly large portions of ASP.NET 5)

    189. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by lgw · · Score: 1

      To be fair, the lambda expressions were added at the same time and with the same method names as the linq addition. No one sane would call "map" "select" unless it was driven by a DB-facing change. But yeah, a professional developer should grok lambda - I blame the Java schools.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    190. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by DuckDodgers · · Score: 1

      Good points. There's also a Clojure port to .NET.

      I understand NuGet is pretty good, and when I do use Windows I've had good experiences with Chocolatey. But I think my original point still stands - comparing C# to Java alone isn't as useful as comparing all of your options around the JVM versus all of your options around .NET. The two may well be evenly matched, considering the points you brought up.

    191. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No one uses mono. There isn't even one significant app using it.

      This is just another "me too" failure from MS, who continues to not get it.

    192. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Our sun will never go supernova.

      It will become a red giant burning up earth and then shrink into a white dwarf.

      It is not nearly big enough to get the core to iron.

    193. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It seems obvious that this move is to try to help Azure out.

      Many people who use Azure spin up Linux not Windows.

    194. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Easy: stay small and never go public.

      Getting large means you hire sociopaths.

      Going public means that you lose your company in the name of short term profits.

      Lot's of small companies have been consistent winners, without being evil.

      Not one formerly small company has been able to achieve that.

      Once the industrial revolution happened, and large companies were created(something that never really happened before) the evil manifested itself and has never gone away.

    195. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by vilanye · · Score: 1

      Oddly enough, those installers that try to install crapware are windows only. Maybe the Mac installer tries it also.

      It doesn't try it with Linux.

    196. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      People are going to want to contribute even less to mono going forward, and there isn't much of a mono ecosystem to begin with.

      Look at the all work that is going to be obsoleted because of MS.

    197. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      +100 Obvious facts that everyone realizes except MS fanboys

    198. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by michaelpearls · · Score: 1

      Those people have to get paid. They have families and need to eat just like the rest of us. The fact that he chooses to spend his money paying them should give him some credit.

    199. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      New smartphone models are more powerful than many desktops circa 2002

    200. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How about we wait until they do something good?

      I am not expecting it in my lifetime.

      People who get MS the benefit of the doubt deserve all the pain that trusting them causes.

    201. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What the fuck?

      Not a penny gets donated that doesn't help out the companies that Gates owns stock to.

      His "charity" is 100% self-serving and is making him more money. You need to take a close look at what he is doing. Besides, he could give away 98% of his net worth and still be a billionaire. Even if his motives weren't 100% self-serving(you are an idiot if you think otherwise) it is not like he is giving until it hurts.

      Remember his trip to India? What a farce. The purpose of that trip was to get MS entrenched in India from universities to industry and all his "charity" was aimed at doing just that.

      You can't destroy companies, break the law and set computing back decades and wash the stain off with bullshit charity.

      Damn, you are a fucking ass-sucking sycophant.

    202. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Gates has too much damage to wash the stink off.

      He doesn’t give one penny if that "donation" doesn't help his investments.

      Not one cent.

      He is doing nothing but investing, and disguising it as charity so dumb fucks like you let him off the hook.

    203. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by vilanye · · Score: 1
    204. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      LAWL

      What the fuck?

      100% of Gates "charity" goes to companies that he has invested in.

    205. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by davydagger · · Score: 1

      Those people have to get paid.

      yeah, and they also did all the work.

      They have families and need to eat just like the rest of us.

      yeah they do, whats your point?

      Or mabey I guess thats capitalist, logic, if you actually do the work, its not really doing the work. But paying people to do the work is actually doing work. Thats what capitalists mean when they say the "poor are lazy", its not that they don't actually do work, its that they don't pay anyone else to do work.

      The fact that he chooses to spend his money paying them should give him some credit.

      You mean he did none of the work, right?

    206. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by davydagger · · Score: 1

      Such a vacuous comment it's hard to know what to say.

      Translation: My greater world views are not up for debate, or you can't comprehend the most basic critique that allows someone to aqquire large piles of cash on the backs of other people who did most of the real work, and then buy your reputation back, again, not by doing work, but by simply spending other people's earnings.

      None of the people you listed can work for free all the time

      never suggesting they would. After all its what they do for a living. I was curious why Gates gets all the credit, and the people who actually did all the real work do not. Reason: They get paid. Its nice to think that private philanthropers can save the world, but thats an an-cap daydream. Truth is, in both time and resources spent, No private program compares to publicly run programs.

      So just writing checks would mean he gets a lot of the credit because he's making it happen.

      What about the sole reason he has a large pile of money is because he got it in a system that swindles it from the people who did the hard work to make the products in the first place. Compare with public efforts, Gates still takes far more off the top personally than publicly lead efforts. Even after accounting for corruption. Then we get to the obnoxious issue, in which people who do the work, and perhaps even the shadow managers and organizers don't get the credit for things they work with. The only way we measure "doing work" is "investing capital". Hence why we think the poor are lazy. They don't invest capital. Perfoming labor is not considered "real work" in our current system.

      Yes, those other people deserve a lot of credit too but making sure billions of dollars are spent effectively is harder than it sounds and he will go down in history as someone who did a lot more good than bad with his time on earth.

      It depends in who's history books. The scope of his or any other private effort pales in comparison to much larger public assistance programs, and government efforts.

    207. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What exactly would be the point of open sourcing the .Net Windows API wrappers ?, The code behind them is windows specific and the class and method signatures have never been protected by copyright.

    208. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Gates would have to donate well over 9 figures before he comes close to matching the cost of the damage that MS has caused.

  2. promised this 12 years ago by peter303 · · Score: 1

    Our company would have used it as a platform then.

    1. Re:promised this 12 years ago by swilver · · Score: 1

      That wouldn't have fooled me even then.

  3. Too little, too late by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    We already have Mono!

    1. Re:Too little, too late by i+kan+reed · · Score: 5, Funny

      Oh no, two versions of an open source technology. Thank god Linux still only has that one distribution.

      Really, though, I can see no downsides to this change.

    2. Re:Too little, too late by TheRealMindChild · · Score: 2

      Yeah, without one of the most important parts... WinForms

      --

      "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
    3. Re:Too little, too late by bangular · · Score: 1

      You have a good point. Saying you're "open sourcing .net" can mean a lot of things. Mono is actually useful today. An open source .net that's missing a huge number of libraries and Windows specific features is useless. Might as well just stick with Mono at that point.

    4. Re:Too little, too late by Trepidity · · Score: 2

      Mono is impressive, but doesn't have the development resources to really compete with the CLR or JVM for a lot of workloads. The garbage collector in particular is not as good. That's one reason you see languages that want to build on top of an open-source VM, like Clojure or Scala, targeting the JVM rather than Mono.

    5. Re:Too little, too late by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I wonder if they'll just acquire/absorb Xamarin?

    6. Re:Too little, too late by NotInHere · · Score: 1

      Yeah, and Microsoft won't release it either. Or does the "server stack" include WinForms?

    7. Re:Too little, too late by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Mono isn't used by serious people and .net wont be installed on most linux dists

    8. Re:Too little, too late by Richard_at_work · · Score: 1

      Mono is actually very incomplete, and I'm not talking about the major components that people usually bring up like WinForms - its missing a lot of the lesser used method overloads in various places, so if your code uses one then you are SOL. You are encouraged to treat it as a bug and submit a report, but its still an issue when you have deadlines approaching.

    9. Re:Too little, too late by mister_playboy · · Score: 1

      .NET seems to be common for game modding/editing programs, actually.

      I can play Borderlands 2 on Linux natively, but I have to use a VM to run the Gibbed save editor which is a .NET 4.0 program.

      --
      Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law ::: Love is the law, love under will
    10. Re:Too little, too late by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Maybe they can port WPF to OpenGL.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    11. Re:Too little, too late by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You have a good point. Saying you're "open sourcing .net" can mean a lot of things. Mono is actually useful today. An open source .net that's missing a huge number of libraries and Windows specific features is useless. Might as well just stick with Mono at that point.

      Microsoft is closely working with Miguel de Icaza from Xamarin/Mono in order to create a shared code base that can become a cross-platform implementation of .NET Core. More information in Microsoft .NET blog.

    12. Re:Too little, too late by Cley+Faye · · Score: 1

      As per tradition, I didn't RTFA, but Microsoft have a nasty history with opensource and licensing. It's so bad, that some developer take care of not *seeing* any MS source to avoid future litigation... I would be very careful with the condition attached to using .Net.

    13. Re:Too little, too late by PRMan · · Score: 1

      Mono already has a very good version of WinForms. Just compile it in.

      --
      Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
    14. Re:Too little, too late by AqD · · Score: 1

      WinForm is stone-aged junk, even worse than GTK, QT and Swing. Even M$ doesn't use it anymore as all recent products ranging from Visual Studio to Office migrated to WPF.

      Mono needs WPF, its renderer, template engine and data-binding mechanism which don't have direct alternative on the open-source side (JavaFX has only partial functionality and quite immature, lacks even dialog until next version). However, It probably wouldn't mean anything to M$, since all benefits WPF provides are exclusive to the developers, not the users.

    15. Re:Too little, too late by davydagger · · Score: 1

      we'll see what happens. I can't see this being bad. If nothing else, it will help mono and wine development.

    16. Re:Too little, too late by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This stuff is being released under MIT and Apache licences. You're never going to be satisfied.

    17. Re:Too little, too late by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There are two versions of Linux: GNU and SCO. ...and maybe emacs.

    18. Re:Too little, too late by neokushan · · Score: 1

      They've addressed the "why aren't you opening up all components?" part by saying this is just the start and that they'll be releasing more when they're in a better state for other platforms.

      Sure, this could be an empty promise but just a few years ago people wouldn't have ever considered that Microsoft would open source any major .net components, let alone the core and with full Linux/OSX support.

      Considering that Winforms is very dependant on the underlying Win32 components of windows, it does stand to reason that it'll be one of the hardest things to port over to other platforms so just this once, we can probably give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt.

      --
      +1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
    19. Re:Too little, too late by vilanye · · Score: 1

      Pipelight + wine + change UA string for netflix.com = runs netflix in Linux flawlessly.

  4. Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I fear the geeks even if they bring presents.

  5. Sounds like what Sun did by ErichTheRed · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is actually a pretty smart idea, but it sounds like what Sun did with Java and parts of Solaris. .NET was designed to be a Windows-only application platform, requiring Windows clients for fat applications and at least Windows servers for web applications. Now Microsoft is seeing Windows become less relevant, but they do want people to be using their software stack regardless of platform.

    Same thing with Visual Studio being made free...kind of like XCode being free for MacOS, and the open source IDEs being free. It's a bold move because now the .NET ecosystem needs to stand on its own, and I guarantee they're going to try to tie this in with Azure somehow (like making you run the free VS in Azure VMs you pay for or something...)

    One scary thing from my side of the house (systems engineering/integration) is the number of new security flaws and the sheer volume of patches that are going to be released once .NET gets more scrutiny. A good thing, yes, but patching .NET is already a pain in the butt.

    1. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by UnknowingFool · · Score: 1

      Open sourcing the server code is just the first step. The compilers for Linux and OS X run on multiple platforms not just x86. Until that happens many companies are probably not going to look at .NET seriously to run on their non x86 servers.

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
    2. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

      Yes, I'm not looking forward to my apt-get dist-upgrade taking twenty minutes for five patches.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    3. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Re: scrutiny. I'm really wondering if MS has thought deeply enough about this. The codebase has been sitting behind a proprietary wall for so long that it's been completely insulated from the real world of code quality. When management asked the developers about this issue surely they all said, yeah, it's great and competes with anything else out there. But those developers haven't peeked outside their fortified proprietary walls to see that the real world expects quality code on par with the BSD kernel. There's no way Microsoft is anywhere near that.

      There is going to be a tidal wave of security and bug reports, most likely a tsunami we've never seen before. This will be a huge wakeup call to most of the (locked-in) MS shops around around the world. When they see just how bad proprietary software is behind the iron curtain, it's going to be interesting to see how they respond during contract renegotiation time.

      I wish MS the best but the best thing they could is keep the gimp hidden behind the gloryhole and never let him see the light of day.

    4. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by baka_toroi · · Score: 1

      Is the new free version still worthless?

    5. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Aptitude dude!

    6. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by MyLongNickName · · Score: 2

      No it isn't worthless. Most small shops could probably get by with using it exclusively.

      --
      See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
    7. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by Carewolf · · Score: 1

      Aptitude dude!

      Not for upgrades.. I don't have 48 hours to let it resolve conflicts and dependencies apt-get can resolve in 48 milliseconds. Especially not when it does a worse job.

    8. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by Morpeth · · Score: 4, Informative

      "Visual Studio still costs over four thousand dollars"

      WTF are you talking about? That's not even close to true. VS Pro is about $500-600.

      The 4k you're talking about is if you buy the entire MSDN suite of MS tools (which will have VS in it), but that includes everything under the sun pretty much made by MS, that's 4k, sure, but you're grossly misinforming, or just trolling, when you say VS costs 4k.

      --

      'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
    9. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Maybe Microsoft will open source their compiler platform.

      Oh wait, they did. It's called Roslyn.

    10. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by c · · Score: 2

      This is actually a pretty smart idea, but it sounds like what Sun did with Java and parts of Solaris.

      ... which then got acquired by Oracle, thus providing a graphic illustration how a large corporation can open source something and then promptly proceed to fuck it up.

      --
      Log in or piss off.
    11. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Congrats AC, that post is simply brilliant on so many levels. Bravo!

    12. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They've already open sourced major projects before and the code quality is fairly good.
      Remember that Microsoft releases some of the most popular hacking targets in the world.

    13. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, but you're expecting any of these pricks to have even read the techcrunch article, let alone MS's actual statement. Same with all this wittering about Mono. Mono are going to be involved, for fuck's sake, and it seems very likely that it will form the initial basis of .NET on the *nix platforms.

    14. Re: Sounds like what Sun did by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I expect they have run their own tools Stylecop and fxcop over the code base.

    15. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by RobinH · · Score: 1

      AFAIK, there was no $500 option after VS2010 Pro. That was the last version you could buy without having to buy a mandatory MSDN subscription, so the base price was up around $1200 after that.

      --
      "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
    16. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by gtall · · Score: 1

      So you are saying they want to do to the Mac and Linux ecosystem what they did to the MS ecosystem. Hmmm...no, I'll pass.

    17. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by ThePyro · · Score: 5, Informative

      VS2013 Professional is currently available in the Microsoft Store for $499. No MSDN subscription required as far as I can tell.

    18. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Mind to explain what is worthless in the free version?

      I've been using the free version for Windows projects since 6 years ago, and never missed anything from the paid version.
      Note that I'm worked (and work) with several other IDEs, for other languages and OSes.

    19. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by firewrought · · Score: 1

      The codebase has been sitting behind a proprietary wall for so long that it's been completely insulated from the real world of code quality

      The wall's not that high: Reflector and ILSpy have been around for a long time, and non-obfuscated .NET code decompiles pretty cleanly.

      The real world expects quality code on par with the BSD kernel.

      (1) Most all production code is crappy, especially application code. (2) Systems/kernel code is generally high-quality because it has to be. (3) From what I've seen, the .NET API's are pretty decent... both on the outside (with excellent usablity*) and on the inside (with mostly straightforward code**). (4) I haven't seen the .NET run-time code, but Microsoft undoubtedly invested some of their best systems developers in designing the CLR. I'd be surprised if it stank bad enough to drive folks to Java.

      * Excepting the huge learning curve with some API's, like WCF and WPF. ** An exception would be the configuration system, which is painful in many ways.

      --
      -1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
    20. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by jones_supa · · Score: 1

      Here are the actual prices from MS catalogue as of today.

      Visual Studio 2013 Community is intended for small teams and is $0. Even the free version is actually very feature-rich.
      Visual Studio 2013 Professional is $499.
      Visual Studio 2013 Ultimate, the edition for big software houses, comes with MSDN subscription and a pony, and costs $13,299.

    21. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 1

      You seem to think that realeasing something as Open Source magically causes it to run well on all platforms. It takes work to port the code to different platforms and a commitment to mainaining and reression testing the stack on all those platforms. You need to provide motive to do all that, which is never going to happen. The people who are qualified to develop on and for Linux won't touch it with a ten foot pole.

      --
      Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
    22. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The people who are qualified to develop on and for Linux won't touch it with a ten foot pole.

      Why is that? I'm a Linux guy and am excited to dig into the source. Kudos for Microsoft for open sourcing more and more technologies.

    23. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Most of the .NET platform source is available as "reference source code."
      You have been able to access the source for years. It has not been completely hidden from developers. I doubt the code quality is that bad, but from what I've seen making it cross platform will be challenging.

    24. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      Same thing with Visual Studio being made free...kind of like XCode being free for MacOS, and the open source IDEs being free. It's a bold move because now the .NET ecosystem needs to stand on its own, and I guarantee they're going to try to tie this in with Azure somehow (like making you run the free VS in Azure VMs you pay for or something...)

      Yeah, that's how I'm interpreting this too.....an attempt to lure more people into Azure.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    25. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by UnknowingFool · · Score: 1

      Well for starters, licensing. Bear in mind, one of the main reasons Apple developed LLVM and Clang over gcc was GPLv3. Apple and many companies prefer BSD type licensing.

      The other is performance/optimization and resources. It takes expertise and effort to optimize software. If that version is not going to be used by many, many devs don't feel the need to do this. For example, even though many developers code for OS X and iOS, gcc development with Objective C lagged behind C++. And Objective-C is used on multiple platforms. Now imagine the same situation for C# except even fewer users and more specialization. Add to this anyone coding for Windows can use C++ or C. The impetus on the compiler side isn't there. Extend that to the rest of the framework.

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
    26. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      Visual Studio Ultimate costs $13,000. It doesn't include the entire MSDN suite of MS tools, although it does include the ability to re-wind your code and run it again. Really slow stepping through your code when that is on.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    27. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm not sure .NET was designed to be windows-only. The architecture screams of the idea there would be multi-platform runtimes. I think somewhere between design and release that was changed by company philosophy.

    28. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by gbjbaanb · · Score: 1

      I think you need to read the awesome Chriss Brumme's blogs.

      Have a look at SafeHandle - garbage collection is so fantastic in .NET that they had to create a reference counted smart pointer class.

      Read the "I wouldn't do it like that again" about putting AppDomains into SQLServer and IIS. Oh dear, that was bad... quote: "Frankly, we gave the host and the application a lot of rope to hang themselves. In retrospect, we screwed up."

      The blogs are brilliant, don't knock them - but it shows how complex the whole thing is, as he is a techie guy who will say all the things that are imperfect in a way that a marketing guy would not even understand.

      As for WCF, WPF, WWF, APS.NET MVC.. my biggest issue with these is not the complexity (though turn on full tracing in WCF and be amazed at how a webservice framework can have so many frigging layers of code to pass a message to app code) but the 'black box; of them. They are all "you do this and this and it works", seemingly by magic. You can trace calls through in the debugger.. and suddenly it will vanish into a section of "it just does its own thing here" magic. Its fine if you're a programmer who is taught to just copy and paste the required code in.. which is I suppose the target audience. Don't think, just follow the rules.

    29. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Still sounds very expensive compared to my $0 JDK coupled with my $0 Selection of high quality IDEs (NetBeans, Eclipse, etc).

      I like to back that to $0 database solutions (MySQL, PostGresql, etc.) deployed on $0 software stacks (JRE, Tomcat, Jetty, JBoss, Wildfly, etc) packaged in my $0 formats (WAR, EAR, JAR, etc) preferably running on my $0 operating system (Linux).

      Now you could argue that I might save in some manner by paying more for one of these components; but, I find that I learn at approximately the same rate for all components. So, while I might save money in comparing a $1200 VisualStudio license against the time it takes to learn NetBeans, I won't save a dime when comparing a $1200 VisualStudio License and the time learning how to use VisualStudio against the time it takes to learn NetBeans.

      Besides, I have already learned NetBeans.

      While you are filling out purchase order forms, and awaiting their approval, I'm already coding (having downloaded the latest software stack and installed it).

    30. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You mean that for $499, I don't even get UML diagrams! There must be starving children in Redmond to thing about!

      UML is not a fine wine or a vintage short-run production sports car. Nobody should have to pony over another $12,800 for class diagrams.

    31. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      AFAIK this is how I would FTFY: there was no $500 option beforeVS2012 Pro. VS2010 was the first version you could buy without having to buy a mandatory MSDN subscription, so the base price was up around $1200 after that, until the next version, VS2012.

    32. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by MachineShedFred · · Score: 1

      Do you really think they would dump this to Github without having a guy or two give it the once-over?

      Really?

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
    33. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by Zalbik · · Score: 1

      UML is not a fine wine or a vintage short-run production sports car.

      Exactly. A vintage sports car or a fine wine are useful.

      But if you really need UML, there are numerous plug-ins you can purchase for VS Pro that provide UML diagrams.

    34. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by VGPowerlord · · Score: 1

      Visual Studio Ultimate costs $13,000. It doesn't include the entire MSDN suite of MS tools, although it does include the ability to re-wind your code and run it again. Really slow stepping through your code when that is on.

      The full product name is "Visual Studio Ultimate with MSDN" and the Ultimate MSDN subscription covers every product on MSDN. I would say "every product Microsoft makes" but sometime in the last few years they pulled all Windows versions older than XP (except 3.1 for some reason), then when XP's support expiration date came up they removed that as well.

      Visual Studio Professional is currently the only Visual Studio 2013 version you can buy without an MSDN license: $499 without MSDN; $1,199 with MSDN Professional, which is missing a lot of MS's products.

      --
      GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
    35. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by CaseCrash · · Score: 1

      VS2013 Pro is also available for free to students (as is SQL server and a bunch of other MS tools).

      You just need a ".edu" email address and sign up at DreamSpark

      --
      No, that link you posted to a web comic we've all seen a hundred times is not "obligatory."
    36. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      Except that Sun had plans for a decent idea, with cross platform capability and safety as a primary design goal from the start, even if it didn't meet all those goals. .NET on the other had as its primary design goal to kill Java. That's not a foundation you really want to be building on top of.

    37. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 1

      All Microsoft compilers have been able to target ARM for a while now - VC++ produces ARM binaries, and .NET has an ARM JIT. There's no reason why those can't be ported, as well.

    38. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 1

      Roslyn is a pure managed codebase. It will transparently run on any platform that can run managed code, e.g. Mono on ARM - it doesn't take any particular commitment, and even if not "officially supported", it would just work in practice.

    39. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Right up until the point where management tells you that you can't use open source software because their lawyers said it's bad.

    40. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by terjeber · · Score: 1

      Oh, you're talking about the worthless lite version they give away for free

      Does it hurt to be this ignorant?

    41. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      BULLSHIT. I have been in teams using VS for over a decade, you have ALWAYS been able to buy it separately, It usually made more sense to purchase MSDN though as you get all the included server software etc for use with dev environments.

    42. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by Ash-Fox · · Score: 1

      Apple and many companies prefer BSD type licensing.

      SUSE and many companies prefer GPL type licensing.

      --
      Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
    43. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The suite has come down on price a lot. Local microsoftstore sells it for 5,595 EUR. Not long ago I remember seeing an offering from the local resellers of slightly over 17 000 EUR for a version of the Ultimate suite.

    44. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by ssyladin · · Score: 1

      Visual Studio Express has been free to download and to use to develop products with for nearly a decade. That series is a fully usable IDE for developing .NET applications. Yes, the Standard, Professional, etc. line added more features like extensions and ALM integration, but they were definitely market features.

      This is just the next step in the race to the bottom. Microsoft intends to make money via the Azure path, but it'll be through ease-of-use or ease-of-transition to use Azure features in Visual Studio for the whole world of .Net developers out there. I very very very much doubt they'd do it via the explicit extortion scheme you're talking about.

    45. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Two blog postings from over 10 years ago. They're still talking about the limits of the 32-bit address space and problems with finalization in version one dot fucking zero. WTF was I supposed to learn from reading that?

    46. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      .NET started right after MS lost their lawsuit with Sun, the one that forced them to remove their non-standard Java runtime from windows. It was always intended to be a better version of Java and absolutely was designed to be cross platform. And it is a much better version of Java. The comparison isn't really fair or accurate though, because there are so many architectural differences. For example Java was always intended to be interpreted, with JIT as an afterthought, whereas .NET is never interpreted; it's always JITed or compiled (with NGen.)

      I have nothing but the deepest respect for the original designers of Java, but .NET had the benefit of hindsight and no legacy codebases from the 90s to deal with, and the result is a much better design.

    47. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have never seen the problem. As long as you keep using it, it should be fine. Assuming you're upgrading the system more frequently than once a Debian release...

    48. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Visual Studio Ultimate with MSDN is a staggering GBP 11,235.00 (nearly 18 thousand USD) and Visual Studio Premium with MSDN goes for GBP 5,169.33. I think these prices are insane.

    49. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by krups+gusto · · Score: 0

      I despise oracle as much as the next guy. But they really haven't done a bad job with java. Incremental improvements yes. But not bad improvements. And their databases are quite nice if you have money to waste.

      It's just everything else they do other than java and databases that is horrible.

    50. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by UnknowingFool · · Score: 1

      Yes but they have to actually port them. Then companies might look at .NET to run on HP Unix, AIX, etc.

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
    51. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      $ sudo debdelta-upgrade ; sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

    52. Re:Sounds like what Sun did by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 1

      The Roslyn compiler is already architecture-agnostic, being pure managed code. The tricky part is JIT, that's probably 100% native and has quite a few Windows-isms.

  6. oh shit... gaunlet by funkymonkjay · · Score: 1

    has been slapped. let the battle commence!

    I can hear the sigh of relief from all those c# houses.

    1. Re:oh shit... gaunlet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why would there be sighs of relief? It's already the language with most jobs open for it and most rapidly increasing pay.

      This isn't going to change anything for the average C# developer, they'll be raking it in either way.

  7. RIP Java! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

    Better languages, library, and environment than Java and, unlike Java, actively maintained and expanded? Sign me up!

    Oracle can kiss most of the money the spent on Sun Microsystems goodbye and I, for one, won't be shedding any tears for Larry Ellison.

    1. Re: RIP Java! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Better libraries? .net collections are a joke compared to java's collections framework.

    2. Re:RIP Java! by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 1

      Anybody know anything about what's going to happen with the C# compiler?

    3. Re:RIP Java! by UnknowingFool · · Score: 1

      Pfft. I don't see going to a language less supported would be a panacea to your Java problems. From what I can tell "cross platform" to MS seems to be x86 only. MS has to develop the compilers for other platforms which is not an easy thing.

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
    4. Re:RIP Java! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Better languages, library, and environment than Java and, unlike Java, actively maintained and expanded? Sign me up!

      Oracle can kiss most of the money the spent on Sun Microsystems goodbye and I, for one, won't be shedding any tears for Larry Ellison.

      While I think you have a point, Java is pretty entrenched where it is, i.e., the middle tier and mobile. Like Microsoft shops, Java shops aren't particularly anxious to switch horses in mid-stream. Cost is just too high.

      Personally, I don' t think Microsoft had to go to the extreme of open sourcing .NET. Had they acknowledge Mono as a first class member of the .NET family, they would have crushed Java. They treated Mono as a stepping stone to .NET, that is, get people who can't use .NET (because of platform) hooked on Mono and then they'll naturally move to .NET to get the full blown platform. The general view, whether true or not, was that Mono was lacking.

      This can mean two things: 1) Microsoft is admitting their arrogance in requiring everyone to use Windows in order to benefit from .NET; 2)Microsoft has given up on .NET and sees no use for .NET/Java like languages. After all, Apps for Windows 8 are supposed to be developed in JavaScript, right?

    5. Re:RIP Java! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The C# compiler coming in 2015 (Roslyn) is written in C# and Open Source...

    6. Re:RIP Java! by Richard_at_work · · Score: 1

      What about it? The next gen one has already been much talked about (Roslyn) and you can already get access to it.

    7. Re: RIP Java! by meustrus · · Score: 0

      Execution-time knowledge of the generic type used in the collection is good enough reason to use C#. If you really want the features from Java, you can always port them as anything that might be superior is user-space code, even if it's part of the standard library.

      --
      I sometimes ask revealing, often ignorant-seeming questions. Maybe they're harder to answer than you think.
    8. Re: RIP Java! by Racemaniac · · Score: 2

      Can you explain? what part of the .net collections would be lacking?
      If you see comparisons between .net and java, it's usually that the past 10 years .net has evolved and java sometimes catches up a tiny bit.
      I always thought that java collections were weaker since in .net even an array is also still a collection, they have collections for just about anything you need, and with LINQ you've got an incredibly powerful way of manipulating/creating/accessing collections.

    9. Re:RIP Java! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's not that easy. First, java has a lot more advanced garbage collector when compared to e.g. c#. And second and more important thing is that MS had always troubles to attract developers to use their stacks.

    10. Re:RIP Java! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Mono supports ARM (Android, iOS) so it isn't out of the realm of possibility that someone would add support for additional processors architectures.

    11. Re:RIP Java! by UnknowingFool · · Score: 1

      Mono is a framework. It is not an IDE. Xamarin is the IDE you have to use. On top of that the compiler has to be cross platform. Xamarin for iOS for example uses both the Mono and the LLVM engines; however, only newer features (Arm v7) are supported by LLVM not Mono. Who maintains LLVM for iOS: Apple and others. MS has to invest time and resources to make .NET truly cross platform by working on the compiler. This is not a small undertaking.

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
    12. Re:RIP Java! by MightyMartian · · Score: 2

      Do you seriously believe .NET ever really had a chance of crushing Java? By the time .NET really came online, Java was already heavily embedded in the enterprise. This guarantees that Java will be a development platform of significant entrenchment for years, probably decades to come.

      People seem to believe that because Java has retreated to some degree from the desktop that it is a failed platform. But its penetration in many enterprise and financial organizations is huge, and I can't imagine that changing any time in the near future. Maybe in the long run, sure, but then again, the long run for banks, insurance companies and the like is half a century; look at all the COBOL code out there.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    13. Re: RIP Java! by benjymouse · · Score: 1

      Can you explain?

      I'm not the GP and I'm a self-proclaimed C# fan, but: The Java collections seems to have been more well thought out from the beginning with abstract types (interfaces) for different types of collections, such as bag, list, set, stack, queue, vector etc and then concrete implementations with separate characteristics, such as hashed, sorted etc. .NET is catching up, especialy in the 4.x versions, but Java (IIRC) still has proper priority queues that has no equivalent in .NET.

      If you see comparisons between .net and java, it's usually that the past 10 years .net has evolved and java sometimes catches up a tiny bit.

      Agreed.

      I always thought that java collections were weaker since in .net even an array is also still a collection, they have collections for just about anything you need, and with LINQ you've got an incredibly powerful way of manipulating/creating/accessing collections.

      I always found the Java collections a bit stronger conceptually. For instance, it really bothered me that there was no hashed set (there is now), and I had to play tricks with HashTable by using the same value for key and value to mimic a set. It was particularly annoying as I went from C++ to Java to C#. Java seemed to have lifted the collections from STL where they seemed to have been very well designed. C# collections always stroke me as having been "thrown in there". Thankfully they have improved a lot since then.

      and with LINQ you've got an incredibly powerful way of manipulating/creating/accessing collections.

      LINQ cannot be overestimated. Large parts of code is actually manipulating collections, and LINQ is just awesome. Also the fact that C#/.NET generic collections were always properly reified, unlike Javas fake generics (type erasure) which causes all kinds of strange corner cases and problems. C# generic collections allow primitive types to be used for type parameters, and always without performance loss due to runtime downcasting like in Java.

      --
      Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*
    14. Re:RIP Java! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Like the ARM compiler they have?

    15. Re:RIP Java! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Do you seriously believe .NET ever really had a chance of crushing Java? By the time .NET really came online, Java was already heavily embedded in the enterprise. This guarantees that Java will be a development platform of significant entrenchment for years, probably decades to come.

      People seem to believe that because Java has retreated to some degree from the desktop that it is a failed platform. But its penetration in many enterprise and financial organizations is huge, and I can't imagine that changing any time in the near future. Maybe in the long run, sure, but then again, the long run for banks, insurance companies and the like is half a century; look at all the COBOL code out there.

      Yeah, but the recent security issues with Java (especially since Oracle took over) have been making financial institutions especially jittery/jumpy. Entrenchment is one thing, but if your entrenchment means you're losing money/customers/customer data, you lose customer confidence. And when that customer is a large business that decides to pull its investments from your bank in favor of one perceived to be more secure, that is a very Big Deal(TM). I've personally seen one larger bank shut down or suspend /all/ operations (online included) for an entire day to execute a full changeover for a web interface at one point as a result of said perceived insecurity.

    16. Re:RIP Java! by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

      The cost for major enterprise operations to move from Java would be monumental. A web interface is one thing, changing your underlying transaction management system would be a huge undertaking and cost an enormous amount of money. It would probably be cheaper to pay Oracle to fix the security bugs.

      Java isn't going anywhere.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    17. Re:RIP Java! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, I hate to split hairs. But technically MS doesn't have to make any new compiler. They have to COMPILE their runtime INTERPRETER. Which is not a difficult thing, when you have the source code. The interpreter is undoubtedly written in some C/C++ mixture.

    18. Re:RIP Java! by gregmac · · Score: 1

      Yes: Roslyn. Open sourced back in April. Currently in development for C# 6.

      The Roslyn page on MSDN has links to nuget packages and their git repo.

      --
      Speak before you think
    19. Re: RIP Java! by VGPowerlord · · Score: 1

      C# generic collections allow primitive types to be used for type parameters, and always without performance loss due to runtime downcasting like in Java.

      C#'s primitive types actually aren't. They're really structs with overloads for math operators. For example, int is a System.Int32.

      No, the benefit C# has here is that it only has one number representation.

      Java's int is a real primitive... but as you noticed, Java's Collections don't work on primitives. So, Java has to convert it to the equivalent object.

      Since Java doesn't let you do operation overloads on types, you have to convert it back to a primitive before you can most things with it.

      Also, objects tend to be heavier than structs.

      --
      GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
    20. Re: RIP Java! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      C#'s primitive types actually aren't. They're really structs with overloads for math operators.

      That's only what they feel like. The CLR does an excellent job of hiding it's internal details and making everything feel as if it is a part of a single cohesive type system. But at the IL level the primitive types are there. int32 is a proper IL data type, as is int64 and native int. The addition operator appears as if it is a static method, but it maps down to the IL opcode add or add.ovf. This is turn maps directly to the appropriate native opcodes. When you initialize two ints and add them there isn't a single object allocation and there isn't a single method invocation.

      Now, when you expand outside of the native types and into custom structs like System.Decimal then yes, the operators are method calls. But since they are proper structs there are no object allocations.

      As someone who works with both .NET and Java I have to say that I find this strict barrier between the types in Java frustrating. Even with autoboxing you have to jump through numerous hoops to get primitives to play well with everything else, and autoboxing makes it easy to miss potential NullPointerExceptions.

    21. Re: RIP Java! by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 1

      C#'s primitive types actually aren't. They're really structs with overloads for math operators.

      This is both true and false. Struct Int32 is magically mapped to int and vice versa, but go look at the definition of that struct inside the framework. Notice the field of type "int" inside? If they were truly one and the same, this would've been infinitely recursive, but it's not.

      In practice, CLR distinguishes between primitives and structs, but allows you to treat one as the other transparently. And C# obscures it even further by always treating Int32 as alias for int, basically.

      Anyway, all this is not particularly relevant to what GP said. The point is that in C#, you can have collections of value types, be they primitives or structs. In Java, the only value types are primitives, and generics don't work with them at all. And, of course, heap-allocated boxed wrappers in Java are much more heavyweight then C# structs, which can live on the stack or even in a register.

    22. Re:RIP Java! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The cost for major enterprise operations to move from Java would be monumental. A web interface is one thing, changing your underlying transaction management system would be a huge undertaking and cost an enormous amount of money. It would probably be cheaper to pay Oracle to fix the security bugs.

      Java isn't going anywhere.

      Cost to replace would be monumental. Losing the financial accounts of several fortune-500 companies because of the utilization of an insecure platform would be worse.

    23. Re:RIP Java! by UnknowingFool · · Score: 1

      [sarcasm]Yes, their ARM compiler will do wonders for someone to run server code on their PowerPC.[/sarcasm]

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
    24. Re: RIP Java! by terjeber · · Score: 1

      Clueless nonsense.

    25. Re:RIP Java! by Ash-Fox · · Score: 1

      Losing the financial accounts of several fortune-500 companies because of the utilization of an insecure platform would be worse.

      I can tell you've never worked with those companies.

      --
      Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
    26. Re: RIP Java! by terjeber · · Score: 1

      autoboxing makes it easy to miss potential NullPointerExceptions

      Also, autoboxing in Java was a horrible idea from the start. For a start, a Java boolean and a Java Boolean are "interchangeable" in code, but not in real life. Some frameworks (for example) can get you into serious trouble here when trying to assign a null to a boolean primitive type.

    27. Re:RIP Java! by terjeber · · Score: 1

      MS already has compilers for other platforms. ARM for one.

    28. Re:RIP Java! by disambiguated · · Score: 1

      There is no interpreter -- .NET code is never interpreted. The output of the C# compiler is CIL (Common Intermediate Language), which is akin to the output of the front end of the LLVM compilers (called IR "Intermediate Representation"). (note: .NET is older than LLVM)

      In both .NET and LLVM, the intermediate language is not suitable for interpretation. It is always translated into native machine instructions before execution. In .NET that can either be at runtime (JITed) or install time (NGENed).

      I'm simplifying of course. They don't need to write an interpreter, they need to write a back-end and port the runtime components.

      Also, I don't think there's much if any C/C++ left in it, it's C# all the way down.

    29. Re:RIP Java! by terjeber · · Score: 1

      From what I can tell "cross platform" to MS seems to be x86 only

      Your name is fitting. Your statement is based on an ignorance that is not only deep, but stems from a retarded mind. Most people know that Microsoft has a mobile platform (that isn't doing too well, to put it mildly) and there isn't really an x86 platform for mobile phones as of now (not really, it's even less successful than Microsoft's mobile OS). So, assuming MS does only x86 requires you turn off your brains first.

      Also, instead of just opining nonsense, why not just check out the information provided. You can use Visual Studio 2015 to build native C++ apps for Android. In fact, even the preview of VS 2015 blows the doors, roof and walls off any other development environment for Android out there. For C++ or Cordova apps (not for Java apps to my knowledge).

    30. Re:RIP Java! by terjeber · · Score: 1

      they need to write a back-end and port the runtime components

      Given that they have had ARM in Windows Phones for a few years already, I think we can assume they already did. Also, if you read the info provided, VS 2015 can be used for writing C++ apps for Android devices. so I think they are well covered already.

    31. Re:RIP Java! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, MS would have to develop runtimes for other hardware platforms... that's kind of the point in having an intermediate bytecode language.

  8. What license? by CAPSLOCK2000 · · Score: 2

    I've got only one question: What license will they use?

    1. Re:What license? by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 0, Troll

      The usual Microsoft license: Bend Over And Like It.

    2. Re:What license? by Barlo_Mung_42 · · Score: 5, Informative

      The MIT license. Are you certain that was your only question?

    3. Re:What license? by ArcadeMan · · Score: 1

      Ah yes, the BOALI license.

    4. Re:What license? by ArcadeMan · · Score: 1

      License: .NET open source projects typically use either the MIT or Apache 2 licenses for code. Some projects license documentation and other forms of content under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. See specific projects to understand the license used.

    5. Re:What license? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1
    6. Re:What license? by DataPath · · Score: 3, Informative

      While the .NET Core is under the MIT license, Roslyn appears to be under the Apache 2.0 license.

      I can see the reasoning behind the different choices - I'm just saying is all.

      --
      Inconceivable!
    7. Re:What license? by Whatanut · · Score: 1

      I like how that rolls off the tongue. And it's fitting. BOA as in the constrictor and LI as in it's a lie... It works!

      --

      yvan eht nioj
    8. Re:What license? by WWJohnBrowningDo · · Score: 1

      The only major difference between MIT and Apache 2.0 is that the latter contains an explicit patent grant. I assume this is what you're referring to?

      Are you saying Microsoft plans to pull a SCO in the future?

    9. Re:What license? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Since this is being done on a computer, it should of course be called the Electronic Bend Over and Like It (EBOLI) license.

      (Turning the final I into an A is an exercise for the student.)

    10. Re:What license? by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 1

      .NET source comes with its own patent promise.

    11. Re:What license? by terjeber · · Score: 1

      So, you are just guessing and then posting retarded nonsense?

  9. It's a trick. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Get an axe.

  10. Perfect Linux Application for .NET by trandles · · Score: 5, Funny

    I really hope systemd is rewritten using .NET!

    1. Re:Perfect Linux Application for .NET by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And so was born the godwin.. erm .. pottering law.

    2. Re:Perfect Linux Application for .NET by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I really hope systemd is rewritten using .NET!

      Don't be stupid - this is obviously not going to happen. .NET will be reimplemented by systemd developers as a service using an incompatible byte-code that also supports elf binaries.

      Just like when systemd decides to rename your network interfaces from eth0 to enwtfx1, the .NET enabled systemd will trawl the filesystem symlinking .so to .dll throughout and helpfully convert all your programs to .NET assemblies.

      So sick of you anti-systemd luddites standing in the way of REAL PROGRESS!

    3. Re:Perfect Linux Application for .NET by eclectro · · Score: 2

      I agree. It's time all the underlings stop fighting their destiny!!

      --
      Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
    4. Re:Perfect Linux Application for .NET by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Rewriting the kernel in Visual Basic on the other hand...

    5. Re:Perfect Linux Application for .NET by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Rewriting the kernel in Visual Basic on the other hand...

      Could this be stage 3 of Lennart's master plan?

    6. Re:Perfect Linux Application for .NET by ArhcAngel · · Score: 1

      What are you talking about? This was Microsoft's plan all along. SystemD is just Microsoft's version of the Registry for Linux. Now that they've gotten it implemented all the little Linux clients can be brought into the AD fold.

      --
      "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
    7. Re:Perfect Linux Application for .NET by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That would eradicate all known memory leaks form the system destruc..systemd! Marvel-lous!

    8. Re:Perfect Linux Application for .NET by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You've got it all wrong... systemd is now going to include .NET

      Captcha: massacre

    9. Re:Perfect Linux Application for .NET by Joey+Vegetables · · Score: 1

      OK, yes, but don't worry. It will be split into 4,212 different assemblies (although each will depend on all of the others). :)

  11. Irony by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The tag line at the bottom of the page is "We are Microsoft. Unix is irrelevant. Openness is futile. Prepare to be assimilated."

  12. Post-Ballmer Microsoft by Ryyuajnin · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I fully expect post-Ballmer Microsoft will continue to surprise all of us.

  13. About fucking time by vikingpower · · Score: 1

    16 years after it became clear that Linux would break through. Well, at least they posted the stuff on GitHub under the MIT license. Let's see if anyone bites.

    --
    Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
  14. saywhatnow? by ihtoit · · Score: 2, Funny

    bit fuckin' early for April Fools isn't it?

    --
    Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
  15. Illegal to distribute a WIP JVM implementation by tepples · · Score: 1

    That's one reason you see languages that want to build on top of an open-source VM, like Clojure or Scala, targeting the JVM rather than Mono.

    One major practical problem with using the JVM is that Oracle has power to use the courts to enforce a strict cathedral model. Because the license of Oracle's Java Language Specification forbids distributing implementations of subsets of the Java platform, any reimplementation of the JVM has to be kept private until it's complete enough to pass all tests.

    1. Re:Illegal to distribute a WIP JVM implementation by devman · · Score: 1

      I believe that is only required if you want to call it a "Java" VM. If you want to call it Java it has to pass the tests, which is a reasonable requirement. The JVM code itself is GPL though, and you can use it for whatever you just can't call it Java.

    2. Re:Illegal to distribute a WIP JVM implementation by tepples · · Score: 1

      I believe that is only required if you want to call it a "Java" VM.

      Android called its VM something different and still got sued by Oracle for distributing a derivative of the Java Language Specification that did not pass tests.

      The JVM code itself is GPL though, and you can use it for whatever you just can't call it Java.

      If an application mixes pure Java code with native code through JNI, such as to be able to access platform capabilities for which Oracle has defined no Java binding, the JVM has to dynamically link to this native code. The Classpath exception to the GPLv2 used by the OpenJDK JVM makes this possible, but with what gotchas?

    3. Re:Illegal to distribute a WIP JVM implementation by devman · · Score: 2

      Android didn't fork Oracle's Java code, they created it from scratch (they borrowed from Harmony which was from scratch, details, details) with the same API. It is a different set of legal issues entirely. If Google had forked OpenJDK instead, they'd be completely in the clear, but Android would have been GPL licensed instead of Apache2 licensed.

    4. Re:Illegal to distribute a WIP JVM implementation by squiggleslash · · Score: 1

      Android called its VM something different and still got sued by Oracle for distributing a derivative of the Java Language Specification that did not pass tests.

      Yes, and Oracle lost that lawsuit...

      (If they'd won I suspect the consequences for Java would have been disastrous anyway, the entire eco-system would have become toxic with any legal ruling that effectively says you can't modify Java in any way and release the results without Oracle's permission. I still remain amazed they took it that far.)

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  16. Any Microsoft alternative to Photoshop? by tepples · · Score: 1

    I wish MS the best but the best thing they could is keep the gimp hidden behind the gloryhole

    Good luck with that. GIMP is already far more capable than Microsoft Paint, and Microsoft's other image editor is overspecialized toward editing photographs, such as red eye correction, color correction, cropping, and rotation. It's not for actually painting. Does Microsoft have anything to compete with Paint Shop Pro, let alone Photoshop? If not, I'll only have to keep using GIMP 2.8.x on my Windows 8.1 box at work.

    1. Re:Any Microsoft alternative to Photoshop? by spongman · · Score: 1

      paint.net doesn't entirely suck.

    2. Re:Any Microsoft alternative to Photoshop? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I wish MS the best but the best thing they could is keep the gimp hidden behind the gloryhole

      Good luck with that. GIMP is already far more capable than Microsoft Paint, and Microsoft's other image editor is overspecialized toward editing photographs, such as red eye correction, color correction, cropping, and rotation. It's not for actually painting. Does Microsoft have anything to compete with Paint Shop Pro, let alone Photoshop? If not, I'll only have to keep using GIMP 2.8.x on my Windows 8.1 box at work.

      I don't think he was talking about software

  17. Die, mono, die! by damn_registrars · · Score: 4, Interesting

    As much as I don't care for Microsoft, if this brings about an end to all the headaches I run in to trying to use mono then I will welcome it. I love all the applications that I need to run that have 30 pages worth of crowd-sourced (and nearly unreadable) documentation for how to run them in wine with mono. It's time to be done with this bullshit and get back to work. I understand the goals of mono and they were admirable but they just never really worked out. Hopefully those guys can help the development of the open-sourced .NET.

    --
    Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
    1. Re:Die, mono, die! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your first mistake was using mono.

      Your second was not switching to something sane long ago.

      This will not save you as they only open sourced most of the server side stuff and none of the client side.

      Trust MS or their little boy Miguel and you deserve all the butt hurt you are getting.

      Moron

  18. Cross platform but work best in MS eco by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Let me guess, It work best in MS eco and not all functions/features are supported in non-MS platform. This is just part of their embrace and extends strategy. Fool me once... etc

    1. Re:Cross platform but work best in MS eco by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because that's where it started?

  19. About time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They should've thought about this 5 years ago, at least. But it's good to see that Shiva, or w/e his name is, is making some changes.

    1. Re:About time by vilanye · · Score: 1

      They probably did.

      MS moves so slowly that it likely took this long to move through the thousands of layers of bureaucracy.

  20. Current Slashquote is ironic by neo-mkrey · · Score: 2

    "We are Microsoft. Unix is irrelevant. Openness is futile. Prepare to be assimilated."

  21. Microsoft is not less evil,more companies are Evil by coder111 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Microsoft still has dominance (monopoly) of desktop OS and office software. They still have incompatible office formats. They still corrupt international standards organizations. They still have the mindset of "Microsoft way or the highway". They still bundle their OS with most computers and vendors that want to sell computers without Windows still get in trouble. They still screw up their mobile phone partners.

    They are still as evil as they used to be. They missed the boat with search/internet services and mobile- so they have a weeker position now. And now we have other evil companies like Apple and Google, and other evil organizations like NSA and GCHQ that affect the internet and computing world. But given emergence of new evils and reduction of power of Microsoft does not make them less evil.

    --Coder

  22. Open, but will it run? by Nkwe · · Score: 2

    In concept making the .NET framework open source sounds cool. But, does making it open source mean that I can make a change to the framework, recompile it, distribute the binary framework along with my dependent application, and expect that someone else can just install my version of the framework and be good? Or does it mean that if I want to distribute a modified framework, I have to go through some sort of code signing process in order to allow it to run on someone else's computer? What would this signing process look like? In addition the assembly loader in .NET makes certain assumptions about version numbers of assemblies. It will be interesting to see how it works when due to multiple development paths, core assembly version numbers are not necessarily sequential / increasing over time.

    1. Re:Open, but will it run? by ljw1004 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      In concept making the .NET framework open source sounds cool. But, does making it open source mean that I can make a change to the framework, recompile it, distribute the binary framework along with my dependent application, and expect that someone else can just install my version of the framework and be good?

      Yes exactly that. Imagine you wanted to change System.Xml.dll. You'd do that, and distribute your modified version of the binary alongside your app. (You won't be installing the binary framework system-wide; you'll only be distributing your updates to it locally).

      disclaimer: I'm on the VB/C# language team.

    2. Re:Open, but will it run? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Excuse my ignorance but is there such a thing as plain ascii conf files in the Microsoft world? Or will the proprietary binary registry be ported/required too for the .NET libs to access app/system settings? How will it adhere 100% to the *nix security conventions? TIA.

    3. Re:Open, but will it run? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's an excellent question but a bit complex to answer. :)

      A Microsoft engineer would probably be happy to talk about the specifics. The dotnet blog is a good starting point.

    4. Re:Open, but will it run? by jones_supa · · Score: 1

      They are stored as XML files. See Application Settings Overview for more information.

    5. Re:Open, but will it run? by benjymouse · · Score: 1

      Excuse my ignorance but is there such a thing as plain ascii conf files in the Microsoft world? Or will the proprietary binary registry be ported/required too for the .NET libs to access app/system settings? How will it adhere 100% to the *nix security conventions? TIA.

      .NET does not rely on the registry, except for some of the COM that will not be ported. In .NET the config files are XML files, e.g. a program called MyStuff.exe will have a config file called MyStuff.exe.config - which must contain XML configuration according to the (extensible) schema. Pretty sweet, actually, if only they would modernize it a bit. I'm hearing that they are doing exactly that - making the config system even more "pluggable".

      Config files for server applications can "inherit" base config files: First, the base config file is applied and then the more specific config file. The specific config file can remove, replace, change or add items from configured collections/items, unless explicitly forbidden by the base file.

      --
      Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*
    6. Re:Open, but will it run? by benjymouse · · Score: 2

      disclaimer: I'm on the VB/C# language team.

      Question: PowerShell is implemented using .NET. Will we see PowerShell on Linux?

      --
      Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*
    7. Re:Open, but will it run? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      but with the new native compile coming out you wouldnt need ot do that, it just includes what you need in your application.

    8. Re:Open, but will it run? by terjeber · · Score: 1

      Seriously, as the saying goes - it's better to sit quietly in the corner having everybody think you are a moron or post some retarded nonsense on the net and remove all doubt. No wonder you have to stay anonymous.

    9. Re:Open, but will it run? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      .NET does not require registry on windows so why would it require it on *nix, it uses xml based config files.

  23. Anyone know? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Does me and my imaginary friend count as a team to get Visual Studio for free?

    1. Re:Anyone know? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yep. The Visual Studio 2013 Community edition can be downloaded and used by anyone.

    2. Re:Anyone know? by terjeber · · Score: 1

      Yes, for now the community edition (2013) and when this is released what amounts to today's Professional edition will be free.

  24. Finally! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is great. MS platform/stack department seems to have moved on. In contrast to some of the commenters that seem to be stuck in the past.

  25. Brutal Load Times by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    .NET applications still need read about 1GB of libraries from the disk (only portions are kept in memory). This is why .NET applications are so brutally slow to load. Will this improve?

    1. Re:Brutal Load Times by ljw1004 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      .NET applications still need read about 1GB of libraries from the disk (only portions are kept in memory). This is why .NET applications are so brutally slow to load. Will this improve?

      .NET Native speeds up startup times considerably. The way it works is it compiles your .NET app into native code, does whole-program optimization, and "shakes out" all the bits of the framework that aren't actually even needed by your code. (.NET Native is still under development, and currently available in preview form for store apps)

      disclaimer: I'm on the .NET team (in particular on the VB/C# language team)

    2. Re:Brutal Load Times by Wootery · · Score: 1

      I thought .NET cached its JIT images. Is this mistaken? If not, what's really new in .NET Native?

    3. Re:Brutal Load Times by ljw1004 · · Score: 2

      I thought .NET cached its JIT images. Is this mistaken? If not, what's really new in .NET Native?

      JIT has to be done very quickly. Therefore it's purely local (method-by-method) rather than cross-method. Also even within a method it only has time to do simple easy optimizations. NGEN is a way to do JIT ahead of time. But it still only uses the same JIT algorithm, i.e. doesn't do heavy-duty optimization.

      Also, .NET Native does build-time generation of interop and serialization code. .NET Native uses the VisualC++ compiler backend, benefitting from its long history of optimizations. All this adds up to massive perf benefits - in some apps, 50% cold startup time improvements, 85% reduction in .NET startup costs.

    4. Re:Brutal Load Times by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 1

      JIT has to be done very quickly. Therefore it's purely local (method-by-method) rather than cross-method.

      That is not entirely accurate - JIT will inline across method boundaries, and even across assembly boundaries, and optimize the result. But, obviously, the time constraints put a limit on what it can do.

    5. Re:Brutal Load Times by Wootery · · Score: 1

      As "shutdown -p now" says, the inlining point is not correct. As I understand it, .Net has been pretty competitive with C++ for performance, depending on the task; substantial optimisation seems not to be an issue. I know that Sun/Oracle Java has done very aggressive inlining, for a very long time. They even push it as part of the advantage of VMs: the compiler can 'see' everything, from your code to, say, the GUI library, and inline things all the way down to the calls to OpenGL (or whatever). This is generally not possible in C/C++.

      Additionally, in 'mixed-mode execution', a JIT compiler can run in the background, and eventually take over from the bytecode interpreter. Using this, JIT compilation is not a start-up delay, and advanced optimisations can be performed. This is how mainstream JVMs have worked for years, but if I understand correctly, .NET never uses interpretation. Extending this, multi-tiered compilation is now emerging in JavaScript engines, where a slow-to-run-but-generates-fast-code JIT compiler is used only if the code generated by a quick-to-run JIT is executed heavily.

      I wasn't aware that .NET Native uses the VC++ backend. Interesting.

    6. Re:Brutal Load Times by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What a shock the ,NET can't do any significant JIT optimizations.

      Well, not really because MS only employs incompetent people who no ethics.

  26. Year of the Linux desktop!!! by AmazinglySmooth · · Score: 2

    I'm sure this will usher in a new era for Linux desktops!

  27. That's good for .NET and C# by msobkow · · Score: 1

    That's a good move for .NET and C#, with Mono being so far behind on the feature list.

    --
    I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
  28. "Server Stack"? by Rob+Riggs · · Score: 2

    Does this mean that the client-side stuff (WPF) will be missing? .NET is a lot less useful if the GUI components are still missing.

    --
    the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
    1. Re:"Server Stack"? by turp182 · · Score: 2

      At this time WPF isn't being ported. They are giving Xamarin a lot of press at the event, that's the current approach to mobile UI development at this time (I've been using Xamarin for over a year at this point for Android development).

      They talked to this a while ago while taking Twitter questions, during the Halftime Show (go down and there's a jump link), it's about 15 minutes long.

      Here's the link.
      http://www.visualstudio.com/co...

      --
      BlameBillCosby.com
    2. Re:"Server Stack"? by ThePyro · · Score: 1

      Sounds like it. The article says that this announcement applies to .NET Core, not the entire .NET framework. The .NET Core does not include WPF or WinForms at this time. Maybe they'll get there eventually...

      The wording is a little confusing, though. They use the term ".NET Core Framework", which I assume refers to something less encompassing than the entire .NET framework, but honestly I can't tell for sure.

    3. Re:"Server Stack"? by Rob+Riggs · · Score: 1

      Sure, but Xamarin doesn't target the Linux desktop for their development tools or desktop/GUI apps. I have a whole bunch of software engineers that would switch to Xamarin if it meant they could do .NET development (including GUI development) on Linux.

      --
      the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
    4. Re:"Server Stack"? by turp182 · · Score: 2

      The current Linux integration is around backend components, with UI being HTML 5 or some web approach. It's a lot easier to embrace the web approach than attempt to write native rich client ports (I'm a huge proponent of rich clients for internal applications).

      And the integration is for the applications, not the development environment (Visual Studio is still Windows only).

      --
      BlameBillCosby.com
    5. Re:"Server Stack"? by PPH · · Score: 1

      Sounds like the plan is to accomodate all the server development being done on Linux anyway. But the desktop still belongs to Microsoft.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
    6. Re:"Server Stack"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I would love to see Visual Studio ported to Linux, and WPF too for that matter. I'm having to learn GDB at work for embedded systems debugging, but it is a long ways from being as nice as Visual Studio. It would be quite nice to have .NET WPF applications that would be portable between Linux and Windows. Of course WPF right now is probably partially written against DirectX, so you'd have to port that or update it so it is against OpenGL, which they will never ever do. Still, from a security prospective I'd almost rather use Windows for dedicated tasks and programs that are not widely distributed due to its ease of development, then maybe keep up to date Linux environments for day to day work. Then again, part of what is keeping Linux somewhat more secure, is that it is less popular. The many variations of Linux also makes it harder to target...

  29. Watch the presentations/accouncements by turp182 · · Score: 1

    All of the presentations can be seen here (it's live through this afternoon and tomorrow as well):
    http://www.visualstudio.com/co...

    --
    BlameBillCosby.com
  30. Bit late by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    My career has moved from Windows to Windows+OSX to "just Linux". In that time C# was one of the most productive languages I used - it's a shame I couldn't take it with me. Open source is awash with washed up APIs that just don't do the job, languages that are dead and forgotten, and framework-a-day toy developments that the hipsters are using...until tomorrow. I'll give Microsoft that one: they build stuff that works out of the box and it worked well for me for a long time.

  31. System.Math by mistaryte · · Score: 0

    public static double Pi { return 3.14; } I knew it...

    1. Re:System.Math by bn-7bc · · Score: 0

      Ok I'm no developer but this srikes me as a bit strange why do you need a function that only ever returns a static hard coded value. Can this be solved by public const PI=3.14; ? Am i missing domething? Or was this a joke, hmm did i here a wooosh...........

  32. About time by jader3rd · · Score: 1

    Well it's about time.

  33. Real cross-platform is HARD by HyperQuantum · · Score: 4, Informative

    To make it cross-platform for real is hard. Lots of programmers don't try to avoid platform-specific and write code such as:

    string fullname = directoryname + "\" + filename;

    ...instead of:

    fullname = Path.Combine(directoryname, filename);

    Another mistake is using explicitly hardcoded paths that only exist in Windows. And another challenge would be case-sensitivity of the filesystem on Linux; this can break programs that were developed and tested on Windows only.

    The framework must provide for platform-independent ways to do things so that it is easier/shorter to do it the right way than using a naive but non-portable approach. Or programmers not really thinking things through will simply keep writing non-portable code anyway. The example above illustrates that; it is way more conventient to combine pathnames with such a non-portable string concatenation than it is with the right approach.

    --
    I am not really here right now.
    1. Re:Real cross-platform is HARD by MightyMartian · · Score: 2

      There are all sorts of Windows-centric issues that I can see being a problem. The reliance on environment variables pointing to home directories, system directories and program data directories could be an issue. I suspect that there will be a considerable amount of .NET software that will never run on any other platform than Windows, even if the byte code executes.

      Mind you, I've seen Java programs that committed similar sins, so it isn't completely a .NET problem, it's just that, as you say, the .NET ecosystem has by and large been almost exclusively been developed on Windows, so don't expect all that .NET software to fire up on your Linux or Mac box.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    2. Re:Real cross-platform is HARD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      To make it cross-platform for real is hard

      Write it in Java.

    3. Re:Real cross-platform is HARD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Java has potentially the very same problems. But they only show in crappy programs. I'm not worried.

    4. Re:Real cross-platform is HARD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I doubt that string fullname = directoryname + "\" + filename; would even compile. How about escaping that slash there :)

    5. Re:Real cross-platform is HARD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      platform compatibility aside, it's bad to use directoryname + "\\" + filename. (corrected your syntax error)
      why? what if directoryname already includes a trailing \ ? like c:\folder\

      now you have c:\folder\\filename.txt

    6. Re:Real cross-platform is HARD by Prien715 · · Score: 1

      The framework must provide for platform-independent ways to do things so that it is easier/shorter to do it the right way than using a naive but non-portable approach.

      You're totally right. Otherwise, it flies in the face of the virtue of laziness. If the easiest way to do something is cross-platform, you'll write all your code to be cross-platform whether the project requires it or not. Requirements, after all, always change;)

      --
      -- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
    7. Re:Real cross-platform is HARD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      To be fair if I was coding something for an OS specific library (which .net was until this point), I would most probably take advantage of all the OS system specific features I could (where it was beneficial to do so).

    8. Re:Real cross-platform is HARD by disambiguated · · Score: 2
      It's nowhere near as hard as you're claiming. Those are bad practices even if you only ever intend to run on Windows. And .NET has had portable ways to do these things since version 1.0, and always encouraged their use.

      The example above illustrates that; it is way more conventient to combine pathnames with such a non-portable string concatenation than it is with the right approach.

      To me the correct, portable code looks easier to read and write. You don't have to check if directoryname already has a trailing seperator, for example. The Path APIs will also handle .. (and ~/ on linux).

      In practice there are only a handful of things you need to know to write portable code in .NET. It was always designed to be cross-platform.

    9. Re:Real cross-platform is HARD by terjeber · · Score: 1

      Platform specific issues are covered in .Net, someone mentioned Path.Combine( one, two, three... ninetynine) as an example. Things like temporary directory locations, home directory locations etc also. Now, you never know if the actual developer uses these, but if they don't, and they test on their target platform, they'll find out quickly.

      The same problem pertains to Java, and most Java developers still develop on Windows.

  34. Re:Microsoft is not less evil,more companies are E by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The first paragraph describes 90% of all organizations. Maybe even 95%.

  35. Dumping by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

    Like the oil companies are doing with prices to stay ahead of the alternatives. But, what the hell, this is a good thing. There aren't too many Linux Tycoons that are going to cry over this.

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  36. Developers by StripedCow · · Score: 2

    Good for them.
    Open sourcing .NET will probably work better than just shouting "developers, developers, developers!!!"

    --
    If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
  37. A Great Step Forward... by ndykman · · Score: 2

    Of course, I saw all the expected arguments, and a lot of "but, Microsoft is the exact same company from 20 years ago, so this must be wrong, evil, etc." Well, companies change. Skepticism is good, but evaluating things as they are is good too.

    The .Net ecosystem is a good environment to program in. They have great languages and frameworks. The Python Tools in VS are actually quite nice (they work fine with CPython). It is disappointing that the IronLanguages project has died off, but maybe this will spark some new interest.

    And one of the main drawbacks to the platform in terms of target platforms is starting to be addressed in a real way.

    It's a pragmatic decision. Microsoft has already benefited from open source projects (ASP .Net MVC, Entity Framework), and this is just an expansion of this. The hardest part will be getting resources to get people to really bang on it on other platforms.

    I bet that internally at Microsoft, lots of people are happy about this, as they really do think they did great work and this gives them greater visibility.

  38. Re:Microsoft is not less evil,more companies are E by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    How is Microsoft anywhere close to being dominant or a monopoly? They make a lot of money but it can be argued that they don't dominate ANY market right now. If you count ALL devices, Windows isn't even close to being the most widely used OS. Office makes them some dough, but that is mostly because of the ineptness of their competition than their own competency. The Office file format is freaking XML, it's not rocket science to move around.

  39. I'm organizing a "Gently-Used Coat" drive for hell by daboochmeister · · Score: 2

    I hear it's gettin' cold down there ...

    --
    "Ahh! I see you're in that indeterminate Schrodinger state where - oh, uh ... never mind." Dave Bucci
  40. Re:Microsoft is not less evil,more companies are E by Ravaldy · · Score: 2, Funny

    I have long ago concluded that on Slashdot success = evil.

  41. "/", not "\" by dltaylor · · Score: 1

    Below the UI, Windows really does understand '/' as a path separator, or, at least, it did when I used to write drivers and services for it.

    1. Re:"/", not "\" by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 1

      It does if you produce the paths to be used by it, but it still returns paths with "\", so if you're parsing a path rather than building one, it's still way too easy to carelessly write platform-specific code.

  42. Re:Microsoft is not less evil,more companies are E by geminidomino · · Score: 1

    If you count ALL devices, Windows isn't even close to being the most widely used OS.

    If you count ALL devices, you're just as clueless as those nitwits who thought tablets were going to make PCs a niche market again.

  43. Computers suitable for work by tepples · · Score: 1

    Are tablets and smartphones considered computers?

    AC #48369023 was probably referring to desktop and laptop computers. True, some people abuse a tablet with a keyboard as a laptop, but you'll probably get similar usage share percentages if you consider computers whose OS includes 1. a GUI with a window management policy allowing multi-window and 2. an approved way to install applications without asking he operating system publisher "mother may I?". This is a useful approximation of computers suitable for "work", which the post-PC FAQ defines as "focused activity".

    1. Re:Computers suitable for work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      2. an approved way to install applications without asking he operating system publisher "mother may I?".

      That's a curious part of your definition. It's almost as if it's done specifically to allow yourself to avoid acknowledging that iOS holds a large share in smartphones and tablets.

      But please, tell us all about how great the small number of Galaxy 5's are, while ignoring the literal metric tons of shitty garbage feature phones running Android, fanboy.

    2. Re:Computers suitable for work by tepples · · Score: 1

      [Lack of a walled garden is] a curious part of your definition. It's almost as if it's done specifically to allow yourself to avoid acknowledging that iOS holds a large share in smartphones and tablets.

      No, it's because I use a laptop for things that an iPad can't do without remote desktop and the cellular data plan it implies. I write and test code for hobby projects while riding the bus to and from work. Doing this on an iPad would cost another $500 per year payable to Verizon Wireless or AT&T so I can VNC to a VPS. Besides, Apple doesn't even have part 1 according to this article. Split-screen multitasking was rumored to be in iOS 8, but it did not appear in the released version.

    3. Re:Computers suitable for work by the_B0fh · · Score: 1

      Therefore all those old MS-DOS machines aren't computers, because they don't have split screen multi tasking, right?

  44. Please.... by MagickalMyst · · Score: 0

    Please keep .NET proprietary and let it quickly become obsolete.

    The open-source community is doing just fine without Micro$oft.

    --
    Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
  45. Multi-window GUI by tepples · · Score: 1

    If you count ALL devices, Windows isn't even close to being the most widely used OS.

    How does the market share fall out if you count all devices with a multi-window GUI? Because of their ingrained assumption of a single maximized application taking up the whole screen, Android and iOS aren't so good for viewing multiple apps at once unless you buy one device for each simultaneous app.

    1. Re:Multi-window GUI by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 1

      How does the market share fall out if you count all devices with a multi-window GUI?

      Does that include Samsung Android devices?

    2. Re:Multi-window GUI by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Does MS still sell that kind of thing? wasn't the whole point of the win8 hate that win8 was terrible at handling multiple windows?

      The mufti window desktop market is beginning to look more and more like the old Unix workstation market and something that's probably going to end up being ~20% of the market if they can keep the prices more reasonable then the old Unix workstations did. Even if MS were able to hold on to a dominant position on this market it would not make their shareholders happy. And i doubt they will ever be able to charge the premium SUN, SGI and HP were able to with their Unix workstations in a world where linux exists.

      So MS needs to either grab a significant part of the mobile and cloud market or follow IBM's lead and aim for a managed decline where you shed revenue faster then profit, and aiming for high margin niche markets, and i dont see MS giving up on being the big Software company so were probably looking at something more like Sun or SGI's trajectory.

  46. Wasn't this announced back in August? by MobyDisk · · Score: 1

    The open-source x-platform server announcement was revealed on Scott Hanselman's blog in August 2014. But oddly, the permalink now points to this new announcement. Is there some conspiracy to pretend this wasn't already announced?

    Google cache of the August announcement

  47. Re:Microsoft is not less evil,more companies are E by Quarters · · Score: 1

    Even if your claim of a desktop OS monopoly was true (it isn't), being a monopoly isn't in itself bad or illegal. Using your monopoly position to quash competition in or entering that space is where things go from good to bad. Microsoft's announcement today of opening .NET, providing VS to small teams gratis, and providing an Android emulator within VS (and standalone) all point to the face that Microsoft isn't attempting to stifle competition on desktop, mobile, or anywhere else. They're doing what they've always done best, providing development tools. They're providing tools you can use to deploy software just about anywhere.

  48. 90% of big corporations ARE evil by coder111 · · Score: 1

    Yes it does. And that's the problem with corporations and capitalism in general.

    Corporation by design is supposed to do one thing and one thing only- earn money for shareholders. All other concerns basically do not exist. Corporations do not have morals, they cannot have morals, and yet they are legal persons. If you were to do a personality profile on corporate behaviour- you'll find they all act as maniac psychopats. Corporations will hapily pollute, externalize costs, screw up communities, bribe & corrupt as long as they can get away with it- and usually they can. If they cannot do it in the West, they'll find some poorer country and do it there.

    While a corporation is small, you could argue that it follows moral standards of the founders. However, as soon as it gets bigger, it inevitably becomes evil. And that is because of the way we reward corporations and define their success. We don't consider a corporation successful because it cleaned something up or improved life, we say a corporation is successful because it earned record profits. Sometimes you can achieve both, but if people can be screwed over to improve profits, that will eventually happen.

    --Coder

    1. Re:90% of big corporations ARE evil by davydagger · · Score: 1

      and if you dare do as much as offer the most base critique of this system, you are a communist, and therefor a terrorist. Its funny how that projection works.

    2. Re: 90% of big corporations ARE evil by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wtf? You might mean socialist, not communist.

    3. Re: 90% of big corporations ARE evil by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I mean both.

  49. Its a start, i suppose. by danknight48 · · Score: 0

    Fair play to MS for opening up a slow, memory hog framework to cross platforms.

    If only they would do the same for DirectX. Yeah, not gonna happen (Market control).

    1. Re:Its a start, i suppose. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Um, you're actually retarded aren't you? .NET is neither slow, nor a memory hog. Like all JIT'd languages it compiles to native on first run so it's as fast as anything else that compiles to native.

    2. Re:Its a start, i suppose. by danknight48 · · Score: 1

      Um, you're actually retarded aren't you? .NET is neither slow, nor a memory hog.

      lol no, not retarded , just 1st hand knowledge. .Net is a bulky framework even if you only use 1% of it. Compile a blank project and check the memory usage.
      Handy if you use most of the frameworks features, yes. But most people dont and theres faster frameworks/api's out there for c++. (FLTK).

      Like all JIT'd languages it compiles to native on first run so it's as fast as anything else that compiles to native.

      You are aware that the language you use in the 1st place has an great impact on the runtime speed of the program? Or, didnt they tell you that in Java classes?

  50. Re:Microsoft is not less evil,more companies are E by CBravo · · Score: 1

    You succeeded in posting, nice job.

    --
    nosig today
  51. What about a graphics toolkit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A good quality implementation of the .NET graphics APIs, maintained properly with concurrent releases on ALL platforms, will be essential. This will be what determines the success or failure of this laudable attempt to move away from Microsoft's past dismal failure to produce portable products that are consistent on all platforms - an approach that just isn't acceptable in the modern world.

  52. Android by emil · · Score: 1

    It's hard to give him the benefit of the doubt when he strangled Nokia's Android handsets.

    That was simply a bad business decision.

    Google's control of Android is very loose, and it would be quite easy to fork it, as Amazon, BN, and even Nokia already demonstrated.

    If Microsoft supported Android, and integrated it into Active Directory as a first-class mobile platform, it would immediately become the standard handset for corporate America.

    Not doing so seems a standard case of NIH hubris.

  53. Re:Microsoft is not less evil,more companies are E by Zalbik · · Score: 1

    I have long ago concluded that on Slashdot success = evil.

    You succeeded in posting, nice job.

    And you succeeded in a snarky reply. Welcome to the Evil League of Evil!

    We meet on Tuesdays.

  54. Re:Microsoft is not less evil,more companies are E by Kjella · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I have long ago concluded that on Slashdot success = evil.

    Because more often than not it's true? Market power corrupts, monopoly power corrupts absolutely. Or maybe you should say it's more of a latent behavior in profit-maximizing companies, they simply lack the means to be a market bully until they're successful. Or you're seeing a company in the early phases of an "entice, entrap, exploit" strategy where they act nice and friendly until they got you locked in good and bleed you dry. You might call it good turned evil, they'll call it return on investment and a success. And a tool is a tool, Google used Mozilla to break the IE monopoly and it might have been good for open source and web standards but they were a pawn in a corporate play. And pawns get sacrificed when the goal is in sight, they're not your friends for life.

    Of course there are companies that really do stick to making good products and services that the customers like and are happy and willing to pay for, but most sooner or later turn to the dark side. Particularly if they see a downturn in business and is facing cut bonuses and lost jobs, very few businesses go nobly down the drain. And almost anything can be excused with "it's a free market and we're only charging what the market is willing to bear", or at least that's what you say out loud even if you know they had absolutely no real choice in the matter. Particularly in business to business there's absolutely no hesitation or shame in grabbing as much of the other company's money as you can.

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  55. Admiral Akbar sez by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    It's A TRAP !!!

  56. Re:Microsoft is not less evil,more companies are E by blind+biker · · Score: 2

    Wait a second: GP listed reasons why Microsoft was and still is a sociopathic entity, and your one and only counterargument is "I have long ago concluded that on Slashdot success = evil"? Looks like you arrived to the end of your brain, and it was a very short journey indeed.

    --
    "The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
  57. Re:Microsoft is not less evil,more companies are E by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I bet you still believe Linux on the Desktop will become mainstream.

  58. Re:Microsoft is not less evil,more companies are E by Kevin+Fishburne · · Score: 1

    I have long ago concluded that on Slashdot success = evil.

    It's not success itself, but what was done to achieve it.

    --
    Buy your next Linux PC at eightvirtues.com
  59. Re:Microsoft is not less evil,more companies are E by labnet · · Score: 1

    It describes Supercapitalism. Look it up on amazon and read the first review which summarises the concept well. Companies exists to provide the best value both shareholders and customers which deflates real wages. They play by the rules governments set, so it is up to governments to legislate the social outcomes they expect.

    --
    46137
  60. Appeal by tepples · · Score: 1

    Oracle lost that lawsuit

    Oracle won on appeal, and it'll have to go back to the District Court to weigh the fair use factors

  61. Desktop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So does this in any way translate into writing cross platform desktop apps?

  62. Motivation by Livius · · Score: 1

    This can only mean that Mono is about to catch up.

  63. How many apps opt into multi-window? by tepples · · Score: 1

    I guess it depends on how many popular apps have been tested with Samsung's multi-window feature. Because of requirements in Google's Android CDD, apps need to explicitly opt into multi-window. In practice, has this become widespread?

    1. Re:How many apps opt into multi-window? by DocHoncho · · Score: 1

      Not even a little bit. Considering that the multi window thing is only available on TouchWiz, developers have little incentive to bother with supporting a feature which only a fraction of the Android users have, of which only a tiny fraction even use.

      The UI for the multi window setup is typical Samsung, I.e., complete, and utter garbage. The whole thing is just another pound of bloat shoveled into the TouchWiz stock ROM; another nice sounding, but ultimately pointless feature, created mainly to have one more check box in the Samsung/Apple dick waving contest.

      --
      Celebrity worship is a poor substitute for Deity worship and costs more to boot.
    2. Re: How many apps opt into multi-window? by pruss · · Score: 1

      The Wanam Xposed module lets you set any app to work as a window. Somehow I never actually end up using the multiwindow facility on my phone, though.

  64. Visual Studio "Community" edition by cbhacking · · Score: 1

    Microsoft also just (today) announced a new edition of VS 2013, called "Community", that is free (like the old Express editions) but is "full-featured" and supports both extensions and multiple languages. In fact, it comes with support for building iOS and Android apps built in, which kind of astonished me.

    As far as I can tell, the only difference between Community and Professional, aside from the present of a purchase price, is that Comm is "for non-enterprise application development". I'm not sure where something crosses the line into being an "enterprise", but I think it's quite fair to say you can write and publish mobile apps (including iOS or Android mobile apps) with this as a hobby or independent developer.

    http://www.visualstudio.com/en...

    --
    There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
  65. Minecraft migration anyone? by SolarAxix · · Score: 1

    Just putting it out there...

    Who thinks that one of their marquee project will be migrating Minecraft (client and/or server) from Java to .NET? Until a multi-platform version of .NET comes out, they would be limiting themselves to migrate it to only one platform (I am not including Mono in this case).

    (It might also help to motivate kids to have some exposure to .NET, but the bigger story would be all those systems running the "New" version of M$craft).

  66. Re:Microsoft is not less evil,more companies are E by davydagger · · Score: 1

    Even if your claim of a desktop OS monopoly was true

    Microsoft has 90% of the market desktop share. It got this position through law suits, and insider dealing to keep other OS's off PCs. It even threatened legal action to anyone who shipped a computer capable of running windows without windows.(to include other OSs)

    being a monopoly isn't in itself bad

    being a monopoly is terrible, because people do not have a choice in using a product. A company can sell products without fear of people choosing a competing product, because there are none. prices go up, quality goes down. Company has no incentive to listen to what the people want. I mean isn't that the argument that people have against communism in the first place? your not a commie are you?

    illegal

    Well that really depends. Monopolies can be illegal. Wikipedia: US anti-trust laws

    Microsoft's announcement today of opening .NET, providing VS to small teams gratis, and providing an Android emulator within VS (and standalone) all point to the face that Microsoft isn't attempting to stifle competition on desktop, mobile, or anywhere else.

    its a very new reversal of policy. Consider this, 20 years ago, microsoft tried labeling Free Open Souce Software developers as terrorists and have the barred entry to the country, calling them all communists. They went as far to try and use the state security aparatus against the competition. I welcome the news of .NET openess greatly, and hopefully microsoft can reverse course, but history does not simply go away.

  67. Re:Microsoft is not less evil,more companies are E by davydagger · · Score: 1

    I think plain old "capitalism" itself fits the description. The only time that capitalism ever appeared to work at all is with massive government intervention, and regulation. Even then regulation and government causes new problems. Capitalism doesn't work because its capitalism.

  68. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Or just maybe you should blame say X if they made the Linux dependencies non optional (if it's even true).

  69. Re:Microsoft is not less evil,more companies are E by ClickOnThis · · Score: 1

    Mod parent up. I was going to post the same thing.

    --
    If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
  70. Problems with MS patent licence by ciaran2014 · · Score: 1

    And the problems with MS's patent licence for this new .NET code are spelled out here:

    http://endsoftpatents.org/2014...

    Basically, you're safe if you just use MS's version, but as soon as you modify the code you've probably lost those protections, and if you think of re-using the code in another project then you've definitely lost your protections. That means MS can sue you.

    --
    Help build the anti-software-patent wiki
  71. I Call FUD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is an interesting post in that it allows M$ to say we're open sourcing and supporting Mac and Linux...

    There's no Mac or Linux release here, or details on how and when it'll be implemented, except in the future. (In the coming months). I've heard this before from M$ and will only believe that it's happening when we see the details. (Which history has shown will disappoint)

    I think this is an effort to hold onto developers who are sick of being seen as a profit centre for M$

  72. Awesome by JDG1980 · · Score: 2

    This is very good news. ASP.NET is a great web development platform, far superior to the atrocious hack that is PHP. The only reason so far why PHP has predominated is licensing costs: until now, you needed a Windows Server to do ASP.NET properly (or else resort to unsupported hacks like Mono), whereas PHP is free. Now that the playing field is about to become more level, hopefully it will be the beginning of the end for PHP.

    1. Re:Awesome by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why, in 2014, would you consider PHP the primary competitor for web development?

  73. Cite for "Linux is a Cancer" by Whiney+Mac+Fanboy · · Score: 4, Informative

    You are twisting his words. Ballmer was not talking about Linux, but about the GPL and it's 'viral' nature.

    No. You are totally incorrect. Here's the quote, from it source in the Chicago Sun-Times (via the internet archive):

    Q: Do you view Linux and the open-source movement as a threat to Microsoft?

    A: Yeah. It's good competition. It will force us to be innovative. It will force us to justify the prices and value that we deliver. And that's only healthy. The only thing we have a problem with is when the government funds open-source work. Government funding should be for work that is available to everybody. Open source is not available to commercial companies. The way the license is written, if you use any open-source software, you have to make the rest of your software open source. If the government wants to put something in the public domain, it should. Linux is not in the public domain. Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches. That's the way that the license works.

    --
    There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
    1. Re:Cite for "Linux is a Cancer" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's obvious to me he is talking about GPL and not Linux itself.

    2. Re:Cite for "Linux is a Cancer" by Whiney+Mac+Fanboy · · Score: 1

      It's obvious to me he is talking about GPL and not Linux itself.

      Its obvious to me that he is deliberately conflating GPL & Linux to scare companies. That's the way MS operates.

      --
      There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
  74. anybody else? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...not touching it, even with a ten foot pole?

  75. go suck an egg .NET! by keneng · · Score: 2

    Don't trust Microsoft. Never trust Microsoft! Always remember their strategy: Embrace, extend, extinguish!. They are attempting the first step EMBRACE by slipping their tools into Linux like a Trojan horse virus. DON'T USE THIS .NET TROJAN. Get it out of Debian free and place it back in nonfree where it belongs.

  76. Beware: MS no-sue promise can turn on you by jbn-o · · Score: 1

    Mono developer Miguel de Icaza has pledged to continue to add Microsoft's code to Mono saying "Like we did in the past with .NET code that Microsoft open sourced, and like we did with Roslyn, we are going to be integrating this code into Mono and Xamarin's products".

    But is that wise? To your point, the Free Software Foundation's reaction to Microsoft's similar 2009 action point to exactly how changing ownership of patents render Microsoft's Patent Promise not to sue useless. This very promise could become the basis for a patent trap. In 2009 Microsoft's promise not to sue was called a "Community Promise" but today's .NET promise not to sue is risky in the same way—it's not (as the FSF rightly puts it) "an irrevocable patent license for all of its patents that Mono actually exercises" and neither is the MIT license Microsoft chose to release their code under.

    Looking back at that essay from 2009, we see the FSF warn us (emphasis mine):

    The Community Promise does not give you any rights to exercise the patented claims. It only says that Microsoft will not sue you over claims in patents that it owns or controls. If Microsoft sells one of those patents, there's nothing stopping the buyer from suing everyone who uses the software.

    Falling into this trap will directly adversely affect your ability to run, share, and modify covered software. The FSF points to a practical way out as well:

    The Solution: A Comprehensive Patent License

    If Microsoft genuinely wants to reassure free software users that it does not intend to sue them for using Mono, it should grant the public an irrevocable patent license for all of its patents that Mono actually exercises. That would neatly avoid all of the existing problems with the Community Promise: it's broad enough in scope that we don't have to figure out what's covered by the specification or strictly necessary to implement it. And it would still be in force even if Microsoft sold the patents.

    This isn't an unreasonable request, either. GPLv3 requires distributors to provide a similar license when they convey modified versions of covered software, and plenty of companies large and small have had no problem doing that. Certainly one with Microsoft's resources should be able to manage this, too. If they're unsure how to go about it, they should get in touch with us; we'd be happy to work with them to make sure it's satisfactory.

    Until that happens, free software developers still should not write software that depends on Mono. C# implementations can still be attacked by Microsoft's patents: the Community Promise is designed to give the company several outs if it wants them. We don't want to see developers' hard work lost to the community if we lose the ability to use Mono, and until we eliminate software patents altogether, using another language is the best way to prevent that from happening.

    I find it no accident that the built-to-be-business-friendly "open source" language is all over this announcement including the aforementioned blog post from a prominent endorser, while the wise warnings of falling into a patent trap come from the FSF who consistently looks out for all computer user's software freedoms—software freedom being the very thing that "open source" was designed never to bring to mind (see source 1, source 2 for the history and rationale on this point).

    1. Re:Beware: MS no-sue promise can turn on you by c · · Score: 1

      Mono developer Miguel de Icaza has pledged to continue to add Microsoft's code to Mono...

      ... and the sun still rises in the east.

      I haven't given a shit about what Miguel is saying or doing for a long time, and I don't intend to start now.

      Unless he gets involved in systemd development and makes a huge clusterfuck even worse.

      --
      Log in or piss off.
  77. Re:Microsoft is not less evil,more companies are E by antdude · · Score: 1

    Beta = evil!

    --
    Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
  78. Re:Microsoft is not less evil,more companies are E by Quarters · · Score: 1

    Monopoly means single, sole supplier. 89.95% (as of 10/14) is not a monopoly. It's exactly 10.15% (as of 10/14) short of being a monopoly. Just because no desktop Linux distribution can market itself out of a paper bag and Apple is happy with high margin low volume machines that doesn't mean Microsoft is a sole supplier.

    "being a monopoly is terrible, because people do not have a choice in using a product"
    So if I go invent some new item/widget/process/service/whatever that the world has never seen before and I end up doing amazingly well because of it I'm terrible? I'm the first and only supplier so I have a monopoly for no other reason than I had a brilliant idea and brought it to market. That doesn't make me terrible it makes me an innovator. Almost every government of the world will let me benefit from that by granting my a patent on my idea to give me a legally protected monopoly position for about a quarter decade. Nothing about any of that makes me or my fictitious company terrible - other than you and your incorrect definition of and views on monopolies.

    Hypothetical situations that refute your ignorant statements aside, Microsoft is not a monopoly. There are competing products and people every day choose to use them. Microsoft is not attempting to stifle the sales of devices that run other operating systems. It even creates markets on those systems; Office for Mac, Office Mobile for iOS & Android, Skype for just about damn everything - and even contributions to Linux, being the largest kernel submitter for 2012 and most of 2013. All of that helps increase the adoption of those platforms. That is not the behavior of an illegal monopolist.

    Communism has nothing to do with monopolies, absolutely nothing. Straw-man arguments are the first and last refuge of someone ill equipped to properly debate the topic at hand. If you believe Soviet era Russia only had one supplier for anything your knowledge of history is woefully small.

    I know about computing history in the 1990s. Again, it is irrelevant to the Build announcements this week. The Microsoft of 2014 is behaving amazingly well; developing good products and embracing the idea of letting developers use their tools to deploy software on a multitude of platforms, not just those that Microsoft owns.

    The only group of people that don't appear to appreciate what was announced at Build are people that just want to have a villain so they can act hurt and repressed. The only villains doing that to them are themselves.

  79. Oh good... by bearded_yak · · Score: 1

    Oh good, this will mean Mac folks can also suffer through insanely long, slow .NET patch updates every time there's a new remote-execution vulnerability.

  80. Re:Microsoft is not less evil,more companies are E by frog_strat · · Score: 1

    What is success ? Making money at any cost ? Producing defective games ? Telling your production engieers to shut up when the yields are below 50% ? Blaming the customer when the DVD reader design scratches the expensive games ? Using loopholes to extort small businesses ? Lying to congress ?

    The root of the problem is not just corporations, it is pretty much all large organization structures. Movement to the top is usually the result of being good at politics, or mentally ill. (http://www.patheos.com/blogs/drishtikone/2013/10/are-ceos-and-entrepreneurs-psychopaths-multiple-studies-say-yes/) Neither of which will direct a corporatiion to benefit both stockholders and customers.

    Maybe one hundred years from now, those in positions of authority will get extra scrutiny, as they should, and be assesed for narcissm, psycopathy. The company I work for is still reeling from misadventures of the previous CEO. I sensed a serious problem the day I first met him, and every time after that.

  81. A sort-of correction conducing to the same by jbn-o · · Score: 1

    A sort-of correction that reaches the same conclusion: End Software Patents (ESP) speculates that "the 2012 'in re Spansion' case in the USA and the judge ruled that a promise is the same as a licence". And since ESP mentions that Microsoft's Patent Promise has serious problems restricting its promise to those who don't add covered code to another project or those who produce something other than a "compliant implementation" of .NET, it seems that Microsoft patent promise has enough problems that it's still wise to not build dependencies on .NET (as the FSF warned).

  82. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You're absolutely wrong. Those stories didn't enter the public domain, they were always in the public domain. The lawsuit just clarified some details about a series of works some of which are copyrighted. Nothing comes out of the public domain in the US until at least 2019, though the term will likely be extended just before then.

  83. Re:Microsoft is not less evil,more companies are E by LordWabbit2 · · Score: 1

    It's a business, it's about making money, not about patting puppies on the head and kissing babies. Dick moves will be made, trying to dominate the market and squeeze out competition, all of that is about making money. I hate when people go MS is EVIL because they are doing crappy/unethical things.... THAT MAKE MONEY! Stop whining about it and make Linux a viable alternative, because at the moment Linux is STILL not as user friendly as windows.

    --
    There are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third is statistics.
  84. Re:Microsoft is not less evil,more companies are E by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yep - and guess who is "owning" the government?

    Certainly not you and me. Our pockets are not deep enough..

  85. That's my point by coder111 · · Score: 1

    I just love this way of thinking. Oh, they are being dicks and screwing people over to make money. Well that's ok then...

    I know businesses and corporations, most of the big ones at least, are being dicks to make money. That is still NOT OK. I know it's the "usual" way to do business. But it's still NOT OK. I know that's the way things have been for a very long time. That still doesn't make it OK.

    And I do know Linux has it's share of problems, especially on desktop for newbie users. That still doesn't make it OK for Microsoft or any other organization to be dicks.

    --Coder

  86. Funny enough I'm neither by coder111 · · Score: 1

    I've lived under Soviet Union. It wasn't much fun. I'm definitely NOT a communist, even though Soviet union wasn't really communist.

    I don't pretend to know the solution. But I'll be the first to say that the current system of corporate demoracy is broken and must be improved.

    I also believe that the solution will probably depend heavily on individual freedoms, and keeping computing, communications and the internet free and private. The alternative is a totalitarian regime backed by modern technology and that is the scariest thing I can imagine- and we are rapidly moving in that direction.

    --Coder

  87. There's a good Java - C# code translator and IKVM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Many of the most famous Java stuff has C# counterparts, often direct ports. The issue with those is, since there's no tool that can automatically backport changes in the translated code versions, they aren't often up to date. I've suggested this auto-merge/backporting of changes to the Java to c# converted but it would probably be quite challenging to do so the author wasn't interested, perhaps if more people suggest it, then.

    I'm not affiliated but I've tested it. if you google C++ to C# converter or instant c# you also find the Java to C# converter.

    Also you can run Java stuff some Java stuff with IKVM without porting the code.

    As far as perf goes. porting stuff with no changed from Java to C# nevermind using IKVM, will cause noticeable perf hit. In C# you'll need some experience in doing things C# way to get the best out of it. And since MS wants you to use C++ for perf, they have only recently (due to C# game dev) started adding some perf features to C#. But those won't really speed up everything across the board.

    I've used C# since V1.1 as a hobbyist, porting various C++ and Java games to C#, because even though Java has catched up a bit, I love having WU patch up .NET security issues automatically.

    Is .NET secure? IKVM author has steadily publicized couple vulnerabilities a year so. This suggests to me that if more people were to poke around, they might find something. If .NET becomes as popular as Java now, I'm guessing they'd have similar rate of findings.

  88. Oh, and regading Linux on Desktop by coder111 · · Score: 1

    One big problem with Linux on Desktop is lack of proper hardware support out of the box.

    Microsoft and its monopolistic practice of strong-arming hardware vendors is directly responsible for a lot of it.

    --Coder

    1. Re:Oh, and regading Linux on Desktop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Linux supports far more hardware than any three Windows versions.

      It is not even close.

  89. Get edition with the instrumenting profiler by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm not sure if it's in the Professional or not though. It's my favorite feature after the auto-completion and C# syntax (just personal preference - I find VB/Pascal/Python etc hard to read).

  90. Hmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well, does this mean a .NET Minecraft would work cross platform?

  91. Desktop, snap an app, and by tepples · · Score: 1

    Does MS still sell that kind of thing?

    Yes. Windows 8 kept the desktop. Even Windows RT has the desktop, though only File Explorer, IE, and Office are allowed to run in it.

    wasn't the whole point of the win8 hate that win8 was terrible at handling multiple windows?

    The Windows 8 desktop is almost identical to that of Windows 7, other than replacing Aero with a flatter theme. Modern UI apps can snap to a 320px-wide strip down the side, which is about as wide as a phone's display. This "snap an app" feature was made slightly more flexible in Windows 8.1. It's also possible to run a Modern UI app in a window on the desktop using a third-party app called ModernMix. You have to become an administrator to install it, but unlike on Android, becoming an administrator on desktop Windows doesn't require exploiting the kernel or wiping your PC.

    1. Re:Desktop, snap an app, and by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your post is funny.

      1. That MS actually named its "new" interface Modern, when it was new over 20 years ago.

      2. That shills like you insist on calling it Modern, when it is not.

      Fuck off MS shill.

    2. Re:Desktop, snap an app, and by tepples · · Score: 1

      That shills like you insist on calling it Modern

      So what name for the design language associated with the Windows 8 Start screen and Windows Store apps should one use instead without mentioning the German company Metro Group?

  92. Thanks Miguel by iwbcman · · Score: 1

    The years of ridicule and ad hominem attacks, that you have had to endure, have finally paid off, hats off. Congrats.

  93. Re:Microsoft is not less evil,more companies are E by Ravaldy · · Score: 1

    Actually it's not that simple. I have yet to see one positive argument go towards ANY large corporation that finds success. I would bet money that if Linux went as big as MS or Apple that it would immediately be called evil because it would no longer cater to the 1%.

  94. Re:Microsoft is not less evil,more companies are E by Ravaldy · · Score: 1

    I don't know one company that can go down the drain nobly. It's part of human nature. When one drowns it brings other down with it. If you know your losing you house no matter what you do you'll stop making payments. That is evil from the bank's point of view so everybody is just as evil as the same companies we call evil. Evil companies are made up of the same people that talk on /.

  95. Java Linq == QueryDSL by kervin · · Score: 1

    For Linq queries in Java you need QueryDSL http://querydsl.com/

  96. Re:Microsoft is not less evil,more companies are E by Ravaldy · · Score: 1

    Thanks!

  97. Microsoft's .NET/ASP uptake strategy by Helldesk+Hound · · Score: 1

    This is clearly an attack on Java and Tomcat.

  98. Re:Microsoft is not less evil,more companies are E by Ravaldy · · Score: 1

    Read the parent and following responses.

  99. Re:Microsoft is not less evil,more companies are E by Ravaldy · · Score: 1

    If large companies are so bad why do we still buy their products and services? It's too easy to point at successful people and call them liars, crooks and hypocrites. At the end of the day the biggest hypocrite is the one that continues to buy their products.

  100. Re:Microsoft is not less evil,more companies are E by frog_strat · · Score: 1

    >>If large companies are so bad why do we still buy their products and services?
    Often we are forced to choose the lesser evil. And of course, I am in the vast minority, considering a company's behavior before my purchase.

    >> It's too easy to point at successful people and call them liars, crooks and hypocrites
    I acknowledge your opinion but I was addressing the question "do we have serious problems with organizational leadership ?" I included a link to research that seems to confirm what many have felt for a while.

    >>At the end of the day the biggest hypocrite is the one that continues to buy their products.
    You make a good point. If everyone shopped like me there would be less of a problem. But looking at developmental studies that is not likely to happen soon. So should I abandon any attempt to improve the system ? I say no.

  101. Re:Microsoft is not less evil,more companies are E by RyoShin · · Score: 1

    Though its step is massive, a giant moves slowly.

    Microsoft may well be mending their ways under new leadership. I don't expect it, of course, but if they were it would be slow change as new patterns of thought work their way through the company, they play out existing partnerships/contracts, and make some moves to see how the public/partners act (and/or revenue changes) and use that feedback to guide them on future changes.

    All of which takes some time to play out, in spans of years and not months. Microsoft in 2015 won't look much different than 2014, but in 2020 it could.

  102. Re:Microsoft is not less evil,more companies are E by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    its a very new reversal of policy. Consider this, 20 years ago, microsoft tried labeling Free Open Souce Software developers as terrorists and have the barred entry to the country, calling them all communists. They went as far to try and use the state security aparatus against the competition. I welcome the news of .NET openess greatly, and hopefully microsoft can reverse course, but history does not simply go away.

    Citation please.

  103. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems by Calavar · · Score: 1

    There is a big difference between "was born in 1901" and "published novels and short stories in 1901." No one who is alive today knew Arthur Conan Doyle.

  104. MS-DOS? Seriously? by tepples · · Score: 1

    PCs running MS-DOS are general-purpose computers in the sense of not needing "mother may I". They're just not part of the set of computers under discussion here. Most are used either by a (negligible) set of hobbyists or in industrial control settings, so they probably wouldn't noticeably affect the usage share figures anyway. Besides, there were several popular third-party multitasking environments that ran on top of MS-DOS. One such environment, called Windows, became so popular it inspired its own operating system based on a VMS-clone kernel, called Windows NT.

    1. Re:MS-DOS? Seriously? by the_B0fh · · Score: 1

      Don't understand. Are MS-DOS machines considered computers or not?

      If you are interested in talking about "mother may I" computers, are windows computers in a domain, managed by GPO and software management services, considered computers?

    2. Re:MS-DOS? Seriously? by tepples · · Score: 1

      Are MS-DOS machines considered computers or not?

      MS-DOS machines are computers in the same sense that Android machines are computers. Like Android machines, MS-DOS machines lack multi-window window management as a standard feature. But my point is that the MS-DOS market is statistical noise compared to the 1000 PPM uncertainty in Anonymous Coward's usage share figures. Unlike Android machines, MS-DOS machines don't have enough usage share that their inclusion or exclusion meaningfully affects the conclusion associated with "the 3% Apple market and 0.8% Linux share" that Anonymous Coward mentioned above.

      If you are interested in talking about "mother may I" computers, are windows computers in a domain, managed by GPO and software management services, considered computers?

      Yes. They are computers to the company that owns the computers and sets their IT policy. With iOS, by contrast, even the domain administrator has to play "mother may I" by paying a recurring fee for a Developer Enterprise Program subscription.

  105. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystem by Calavar · · Score: 1

    Sorry, I meant no one who is alive today knew him when he wrote the books and short stories. Why should his descendants still have cla to them?

  106. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems by morgauxo · · Score: 1

    Sure, of course. You will notice though that I actually copied in the specific sentence I was replying to. It's not that unusual to know someone who lived at the turn of the last century. That's the only point I was trying to make. I wasn' t making any claims about how long copyrights should last.

  107. Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You do realize that Unity uses mono, right? And an ancient/shitty version at that.

  108. Re:Microsoft is not less evil,more companies are E by davydagger · · Score: 1

    no, I am responding to you. You said "we hate success", success at what? Today I was successfuly at putting on my pants. a theif who gets away is succesful, a terrorist who completes his "mission" and kills people is "successful". So what the blazes are you talking about without putting out buzzwords?

  109. GNU/Windows by Galik · · Score: 1

    And in other news Microsoft announced the next version of Windows would be called GNU/Windows.

  110. Re:Microsoft is not less evil,more companies are E by Ravaldy · · Score: 1

    That's why I said read the parent. His comments were in the context of large companies that have success.

  111. Re:Microsoft is not less evil,more companies are E by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Corporate shill is obvious and fucking pathetic

  112. Re:Microsoft is not less evil,more companies are E by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So if I go invent some new item/widget/process/service/whatever that the world has never seen before and I end up doing amazingly well because of it I'm terrible?

    How does that relate to Microsoft?

  113. Re:Microsoft is not less evil,more companies are E by davydagger · · Score: 1

    success at what though? being large companies?

  114. Re:Microsoft is not less evil,more companies are E by Ravaldy · · Score: 1

    In this case successful at selling a lot of what they offer at a large profit. Products that aren't good don't sell or quickly get replaced. GM and Chrysler experienced this first hand.

  115. Re:Microsoft is not less evil,more companies are E by davydagger · · Score: 1

    Products that aren't good don't sell or quickly get replaced. GM and Chrysler experienced this first hand.

    really, I am pretty sure they made crappy products for decades.

    In this case successful at selling a lot of what they offer at a large profit

    I knew someone would back me on this. See my friend Leon is a pimp, and everyone thinks he's evil. They just hate his success. He too sells a lot of what he has to offer for a profit! So does my friend Anthony, who tells me selling large volumes of black tar heroin.

    Those fucking cops right, they just hate success. I mean what do they do besides steal from "successful" people.

    In all serious, microsoft always had a crap product they kept afloat through bullying tactics. Success? For whom? Steve Balmer mabey, who recieved a nearly 1 billion retirement package, right before MS layed off 10,000 people with no severence package, all stemming from the rotten nokia deal. If Microsoft is successful in the same way we say Gengkis Khan was "successful".

  116. Re:Microsoft is not less evil,more companies are E by Ravaldy · · Score: 1

    GM and Chrysler didn't always make crappy products and because the average lifespan of a vehicle is about 10 years it takes a decade just to get customers discouraged from buying their products. It probably takes another 5 - 10 years for the company to start suffering and the bailout was proof the companies were no longer attracting customers which is why they are re-inventing themselves.

    As for MS, if someone truly had a solution to replace them they would had been replaced if their products were crap. I keep hearing people calling MS products crap but yet nobody explains why it is. Billions of dollars are invested YEARLY in R&D surrounding MS and their APIs so I'm not sure why professionals continue to buy their products if they are crap. Is it because the alternatives aren't viable or require a higher level of expertise?

    Sure, MS like every other product out there isn't perfect but clearly they are perfect enough for 95% of the PC base. The significant increase in revenues for their business division is also sending a clear message that businesses trust them more than ever.