Microsoft Open Sources .NET

jeremy · 11-12-2014, 09:52 AM

Quote:

Today, Scott Guthrie announced that Microsoft is open sourcing .NET. This is a momentous occasion, and one that I have advocated for many years.

.NET is being open sourced under the MIT license. Not only is the code being released under this very permissive license, but Microsoft is providing a patent promise to ensure that .NET will get the adoption it deserves.

The code is being hosted at the .NET Foundation's github repository.

This patent promise addresses the historical concerns that the open source, Unix and free software communities have raised over the years.

.NET Components

There are three components being open sourced: the .NET Framework Libraries, .NET Core Framework Libraries and the RyuJit VM. More details below.

.NET Framework Class Libraries
These are the class libraries that power the .NET framework as it ships on windows. The ones that Mono has historically implemented in an open source fashion.

The code is available today from http://github.com/Microsoft/referencesource. Mono will be able to use as much a it wants from this project.

We have a project underway that already does this. We are replacing chunks of Mono code that was either incomplete, buggy, or not as fully featured as it should be with Microsoft's code.

Read more...

--jeremy

kingbeowulf · 11-12-2014, 10:45 AM

*gasp*. ��

Yes, big news,
...but I am not a fan. I live with the horror of .NET used in laboratory data acquisition products.

I prefer not to have LINUX saddled with that pain.

John VV · 11-12-2014, 01:54 PM

but with the MIT license you can NEVER sell anything that uses that license

so there will NEVER be any commercial software that can use anything derived from it

and that might include making money from advertising on your website

that can be defined as commercial use

dugan · 11-12-2014, 01:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by John VV

but with the MIT license you can NEVER sell anything that uses that license

Er, that's not correct? The MIT license is the most permissive do-whatever-you-want license.

From the license as quoted on its Wikipedia page:

Quote:

Copyright (c) <year> <copyright holders>

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Emphasis added by me.

This should make it even more clear:

https://tldrlegal.com/license/mit-license

Most of my own open-source projects are MIT licensed.

szboardstretcher · 11-12-2014, 02:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by John VV

but with the MIT license you can NEVER sell anything that uses that license

so there will NEVER be any commercial software that can use anything derived from it

and that might include making money from advertising on your website

that can be defined as commercial use

All the OSI licenses allow commercial usage. This license you are talking about, which is definitely not the MIT license, sounds incompatible with the Open Source Licenses that are available:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compari...arison.5B20.5D

metaschima · 11-12-2014, 04:10 PM

Interesting move from M$. The MIT license is actually a pretty good FLOSS license. I was expecting them to use their own license with strings attached. Well, maybe they are changing for the better ? One event doesn't change my mind about them, but if they keep it up maybe I will change my mind.

szboardstretcher · 11-12-2014, 04:15 PM

Its a business decision. If you make the language and the tools open source and portable, people will end up using them more and creating more things that require MS products...

metaschima · 11-12-2014, 04:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by szboardstretcher

Its a business decision. If you make the language and the tools open source and portable, people will end up using them more and creating more things that require MS products...

Except that this is a fundamental building block here, it is basically class libraries, plus mono as a compiler. Programs require libraries, not the other way around.

dugan · 11-12-2014, 06:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by szboardstretcher

Its a business decision. If you make the language and the tools open source and portable, people will end up using them more and creating more things that require MS products...

What MS products could you possibly be referring to?

szboardstretcher · 11-13-2014, 09:22 AM

I was really thinking about the abysmal sales of Windows 8 and the Windows Phone. What better way to get people programming for windows than to offer Visual Studio for free?

metaschima · 11-13-2014, 12:56 PM

They are not offering Visual Studio for free.

EDIT: I was wrong:
http://winsupersite.com/visual-studi...cross-platform

I don't think it is FLOSS, and it only runs on Windoze.

smeezekitty · 11-13-2014, 12:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by szboardstretcher

I was really thinking about the abysmal sales of Windows 8 and the Windows Phone. What better way to get people programming for windows than to offer Visual Studio for free?

That still won't make people switch to Windows h8

Quote:

and that might include making money from advertising on your website

This is incorrect. The MIT license is quite unrestricted including sale.

And as far as I know (although IANAL) but usually advertisements are not usually considered when selling software is concerned.