4 ms·

Back in the day MS created a propriety native code interface for their "Java for windows" runtime instead of supporting JNI. Sun sued them for this and other BS

Back in the day MS created a propriety native code interface for their "Java for windows" runtime instead of supporting JNI. Sun sued them for this and other BS and eventually MS settled out of court for somewhere over $2,000,000,000 . Basically, MS got caught red handed trying to break cross platform compatibility of java applications. After this they tossed their Java runtime, added ActiveX to IE and started pretending that Java didn't exist. I'm not surprised at all that MS doesn't go near this project

frik 9y ago
That's their usual EEE tactics. After hey got caught, they renamed their efforts (C# v1), refactored the code. Don't waste your time with dotNetCore v1 or legacy dotNetFramework, use Java/PHP/Node/Go/Python/Ruby/etc and stay away from their vendor lock-in. They do this again and again. * Look at what they do with programming language R, adding incompatible changes and calling it R. Don't use their R fork! * Look at ES2016 and TypeScript, they lobbied to get Class syntax added to Javascript and now do an EEE with TypeScript and WebAssembly. Don't use TypeScript! Learn how to use Javascript and what prototype-based inheritance actually means - it's a rather great concept. Don't use VSCode! Use Atom, Sublime, IDEA, Eclipse, etc. * Look at Nodejs, they are lobbying to get their IE11/Edge's Chakra JS engine instead of V8 as default JS for Windows builds. * Look at Python, they have their hands reached out to it. * Look at Nokia, the former number one smartphone manufacturer, they implanted a Trojan horse manager that canceled various successful smartphone product lines to go full in with WinPhone. He single handed managed to destroy Nokia, drive the company value down so they in the end bought it for little. Now even this devision is dead, what a waste. * Look at Ubuntu, they sponsored the project to get a Linux usermode for Win10. Who ever steered up the community, at least they succeeded that Ubuntu now canceled their projects to have the rather polished Unity desktop and now goes back to the unpolished mess called Gnome. It also means the end of Ubuntu Phone with it's desktop mode - the only left competitor of WinPhone10 continuum desktop mode. They forgot about Samsung, they have now such a fearure in their recent flagship smartphones, and WinPhone10 is now merely supported on 13 devices. * Look at Silverlight, they tried to clone Flash, they went as far as make the whole WinPhone7 Silverlight-land based on WinCE and lobbied Netflix and others to use their Silverlight video DRM.
- alexvoda 9y ago
  Your hate of Microsoft clouds your mind. It is a higher moral ideal to oppose proprietary software in general than to oppose one target in particular no matter their actions. Microsoft is not a homogeneous entity. There are plenty of reasons to despise Oracle/Apple/Google too. I initially intended to write a counter to each of your points but there is no sense arguing this. A comment in a thread will not change your mind from a Microsoft hating one to a corporate proprietary opposing one. BTW, care to give an opinion on systemD?
  - shouldbworking 9y ago
    He makes some good points, others seem like more of a conspiracy mindset. I agree with him that EEE tactics at MS are probably alive and well. We're seeing a friendlier facade because MS is losing it's dominant market position. However technology isn't inherently good or evil so I'll gladly enjoy things like Typescript until the day MS tries to make them proprietary again. I think MS gave up selling software and wants to sell services like Amazon or Google.
    - alexvoda 9y ago
      Precisely. Microsoft is known to have various factions fighting for supremacy. Some factions are more willing to play fair in the open source world than others. The Windows faction and Office faction have long been known to engage in EEE tactics and still do when they can. On the other hand the .net team is much more open to releasing things as FLOSS. As long as something is FLOSS, EEE tactics do not work and can not work, because as long as a project is FLOSS, the mindshare of the project does not belong to the author of the project. The author should not be trusted to have good intentions even if the project is FLOSS. There have been various cases of FLOSS projects that were turned proprietary by the author having a CLA and nobody forking and maintaining the last version released as FLOSS. Should Microsoft or anybody else try to proprietar-ize a project, we as a community should absolutely fork the last FLOSS version and support that version instead. Trusting any author (not just Microsoft) not to do that is foolish. Google did it with components of Android and the community didn't do much. Oracle did it with ZFS and now everyone ignores the Oracle version of ZFS and only OpenZFS matters. I do not see any reason to hate TypeScript, VSCode, or the recent .net work that was released as FLOSS. On the other hand I see no reason to oppose Flash and Silverlight differently. Neither is FLOSS and both have a lot of issues. Unless you have an interest in Flash, hating Silverlight when Flash is the alternative, is either hypocritical or simply doesn't make sense. Note that while we benefit from Microsoft releasing FLOSS, the general trend of Microsoft/Oracle/Amazon/Google/others to move to selling services is more damaging to freedom in the long term than just proprietary software.
nl 9y ago
Microsoft's settlement was $20M, not $2B[1]. ActiveX was in IE before the settlement, and Microsoft's "Java" was one possible way to write ActiveX controls. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Java_Virtual_Machine#Sun_vs._Microsoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Java_Virtual_Machine...
- shouldbworking 9y ago
  You're looking at the wrong settlement. It was 1.95 billion. https://m.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/03/why_sun_threw/ https://m.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/03/why_sun_threw/

frik 9y ago

That's their usual EEE tactics. After hey got caught, they renamed their efforts (C# v1), refactored the code. Don't waste your time with dotNetCore v1 or legacy dotNetFramework, use Java/PHP/Node/Go/Python/Ruby/etc and stay away from their vendor lock-in. They do this again and again. * Look at what they do with programming language R, adding incompatible changes and calling it R. Don't use their R fork! * Look at ES2016 and TypeScript, they lobbied to get Class syntax added to Javascript and now do an EEE with TypeScript and WebAssembly. Don't use TypeScript! Learn how to use Javascript and what prototype-based inheritance actually means - it's a rather great concept. Don't use VSCode! Use Atom, Sublime, IDEA, Eclipse, etc. * Look at Nodejs, they are lobbying to get their IE11/Edge's Chakra JS engine instead of V8 as default JS for Windows builds. * Look at Python, they have their hands reached out to it. * Look at Nokia, the former number one smartphone manufacturer, they implanted a Trojan horse manager that canceled various successful smartphone product lines to go full in with WinPhone. He single handed managed to destroy Nokia, drive the company value down so they in the end bought it for little. Now even this devision is dead, what a waste. * Look at Ubuntu, they sponsored the project to get a Linux usermode for Win10. Who ever steered up the community, at least they succeeded that Ubuntu now canceled their projects to have the rather polished Unity desktop and now goes back to the unpolished mess called Gnome. It also means the end of Ubuntu Phone with it's desktop mode - the only left competitor of WinPhone10 continuum desktop mode. They forgot about Samsung, they have now such a fearure in their recent flagship smartphones, and WinPhone10 is now merely supported on 13 devices. * Look at Silverlight, they tried to clone Flash, they went as far as make the whole WinPhone7 Silverlight-land based on WinCE and lobbied Netflix and others to use their Silverlight video DRM.

alexvoda 9y ago
Your hate of Microsoft clouds your mind. It is a higher moral ideal to oppose proprietary software in general than to oppose one target in particular no matter their actions. Microsoft is not a homogeneous entity. There are plenty of reasons to despise Oracle/Apple/Google too. I initially intended to write a counter to each of your points but there is no sense arguing this. A comment in a thread will not change your mind from a Microsoft hating one to a corporate proprietary opposing one. BTW, care to give an opinion on systemD?
- shouldbworking 9y ago
  He makes some good points, others seem like more of a conspiracy mindset. I agree with him that EEE tactics at MS are probably alive and well. We're seeing a friendlier facade because MS is losing it's dominant market position. However technology isn't inherently good or evil so I'll gladly enjoy things like Typescript until the day MS tries to make them proprietary again. I think MS gave up selling software and wants to sell services like Amazon or Google.
  - alexvoda 9y ago
    Precisely. Microsoft is known to have various factions fighting for supremacy. Some factions are more willing to play fair in the open source world than others. The Windows faction and Office faction have long been known to engage in EEE tactics and still do when they can. On the other hand the .net team is much more open to releasing things as FLOSS. As long as something is FLOSS, EEE tactics do not work and can not work, because as long as a project is FLOSS, the mindshare of the project does not belong to the author of the project. The author should not be trusted to have good intentions even if the project is FLOSS. There have been various cases of FLOSS projects that were turned proprietary by the author having a CLA and nobody forking and maintaining the last version released as FLOSS. Should Microsoft or anybody else try to proprietar-ize a project, we as a community should absolutely fork the last FLOSS version and support that version instead. Trusting any author (not just Microsoft) not to do that is foolish. Google did it with components of Android and the community didn't do much. Oracle did it with ZFS and now everyone ignores the Oracle version of ZFS and only OpenZFS matters. I do not see any reason to hate TypeScript, VSCode, or the recent .net work that was released as FLOSS. On the other hand I see no reason to oppose Flash and Silverlight differently. Neither is FLOSS and both have a lot of issues. Unless you have an interest in Flash, hating Silverlight when Flash is the alternative, is either hypocritical or simply doesn't make sense. Note that while we benefit from Microsoft releasing FLOSS, the general trend of Microsoft/Oracle/Amazon/Google/others to move to selling services is more damaging to freedom in the long term than just proprietary software.

nl 9y ago

Microsoft's settlement was $20M, not $2B[1]. ActiveX was in IE before the settlement, and Microsoft's "Java" was one possible way to write ActiveX controls. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Java_Virtual_Machine#Sun_vs._Microsoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Java_Virtual_Machine...

shouldbworking 9y ago
You're looking at the wrong settlement. It was 1.95 billion. https://m.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/03/why_sun_threw/ https://m.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/03/why_sun_threw/