5 ms·
A friend and I were having a discussion about what Microsoft could do to help foster more widespread adoption of C#, and the number one thing we agreed on was f
by icey 16y ago
A friend and I were having a discussion about what Microsoft could do to help foster more widespread adoption of C#, and the number one thing we agreed on was fully open-sourcing the C# language and releasing it under a BSD or Apache 2 style license. It's nice to see they're taking that step with some of their less mainstream products.
- statictype 16y agoThe specification for C# is already an open standard is it not? There's an open source compiler implementation as well (Mono). In fact, there are two (DotGNU).
- icey 16y agoThe specification is an ECMA standard, but afaik Microsoft's implementation is not open. Mono has the unfortunate task of reimplementing everything instead everyone working off of the same master source.
- statictype 16y agoThe specification is an ECMA standard, but afaik Microsoft's implementation is not open Yes, that's true. But I'm curious: How would open-sourcing their implementation of the language (and not just the specification) help in making its use more wide-spread? (Especially when the compiler is already available at no-cost to those who want it, and for those interested in extending an existing compiler for their own internal use, the Mono source is available) I guess one possible answer might be that Microsoft's specific compiler implementation may actually diverge from the standard submitted to ECMA (this is actually the case on some edge cases in the language dealing with type casting where they found that what their compiler implements doesn't follow the standard exactly) What are the other reasons?
- nuclear_eclipse 16y agoLibrary implementations are not part of the ECMA standard; it would be really nice to have a dedicated open source project (a la AOSP) that contains not only the core language implementation, but the entire library implementation as well. That would potentially allow users to not only contribute bugfixes and improvements back to the project, but would give Mono et al access to library implementations to make it much easier for them to reproduce the work in a cross-platform method.
- jomohke 16y agoAs far as I know, they haven't released C# 3.0 or 4.0 to the ECMA. I'd love to be proved wrong. See wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_Sharp_(programming_language) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_Sharp_(programming_language)
- bad_user 16y agoThey are still working on it though. On March 27 they've published a working draft for the CLI specifications (ECMA 335) ... http://mono-project.com/ECMA-335-CLI-Public-Draft http://mono-project.com/ECMA-335-CLI-Public-Draft I don't know what went in, since .NET 3.5/4.0 haven't suffered major CLR changes. Also, ECMA 334 which covers the C# language hasn't been updated since June 2006, so it doesn't cover C# 3.5 or 4.0.
- utnick 16y agoAgreed, also: Give away visual studio for free ( the full 'professional' version ). Buy out jetbrains and make resharper a msft product that you must pay for. Make windows phone 7 rock, so that mobile development takes off. Work with mono to make .NET run 100% on any platform.
- rbanffy 16y agoThe only way would be for Microsoft to permanently and irrevocably renounce the rights to pursue patent licensing on products based or using free implementations of the C# language and the CLR/.NET stack. And even then, I would be cautious.