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.

Comments

Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems"

[iggymanz]

Too little too late, Billy Bob Gates

Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems"

[bill_mcgonigle]

They're taking it Mono a Mono.

With nasty patent clauses, no doubt.

Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems"

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems"

[ArcadeMan]

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.

Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems"

[ljw1004]

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

Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems"

[xonen]

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.

Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems"

[RavenLrD20k]

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.

Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems"

[lgw]

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.

Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems"

[weiserfireman]

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.

Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems"

[kthreadd]

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.

Re: Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems"

[benjymouse]

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.

Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems"

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Sounds like what Sun did

[ErichTheRed]

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.

Re:Sounds like what Sun did

[Morpeth]

"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.

Re:Sounds like what Sun did

[ThePyro]

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

Re:Too little, too late

[i kan reed]

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.

Perfect Linux Application for .NET

[trandles]

I really hope systemd is rewritten using .NET!

Re:What license?

[Barlo_Mung_42]

The MIT license. Are you certain that was your only question?

Die, mono, die!

[damn_registrars]

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.

Microsoft is not less evil,more companies are Evil

[coder111]

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

Real cross-platform is HARD

[HyperQuantum]

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.

Re:Open, but will it run?

[ljw1004]

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.

Re:Brutal Load Times

[ljw1004]

.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)

Cite for "Linux is a Cancer"

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

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.