[Discuss] .net now open source

[Alan W. Irwin]

On 2014-11-13 08:07-0800 Adam Parkin wrote:

> Never thought I'd see this day:
>
> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dotnet/archive/2014/11/12/net-core-is-open-source.aspx
>

This Microsoft employee still doesn't get it.  There is no
direct mention of exactly which OSI-approved license is being used
(although there is an indirect mention of the MIT license in the
remarks).  Which license is important to open-source developers so
should be front and center in any such announcement.  The other big
issue is who has the copyright on a contributor's work?  Apparently,
you have to sign a legal contract with Microsoft in order to
contribute to .net which raises huge concerns with would-be
contributors concerning whether they are entering into an extremely
one-sided deal where they completely lose control of their
contribution.

> Wonder what implications this will have for Mono.

If you read what is said, it is an attempt to destroy it since Microsoft
has no use for two different code bases.  But I doubt that most
Mono contributors will want to lose control of their work so I
imagine it will become a failed attempt to destroy Mono.

Finally, there is still the matter of trust.  Both open-source .net
and open-source Mono could still potentially become victims of
Microsoft patent attacks.  So many developers (including me) would not
touch Mono (or open-sourced .net now) with a barge pole.

In sum, I will say this Microsoft employee probably feels there is
something to be gained (likely the annihilation of Mono) by the
open-source development of .net with OSI-approved license. But to get
open-source developers to trust Microsoft with a potential patent
attack hanging over their heads and with the first demand being to
sign a contract with Microsoft is (rightly) going to be extremely
difficult so I doubt this is going anywhere.

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state
implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); the Time
Ephemerides project (timeephem.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting
software package (plplot.sf.net); the libLASi project
(unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net);
and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net).
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Linux-powered Science
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