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Sure, here's an article from Microsoft describing how to access and view the source code for their library implementation, ASP/ADO/Forms/etc: https://weblogs.as

Sure, here's an article from Microsoft describing how to access and view the source code for their library implementation, ASP/ADO/Forms/etc: https://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/net-framework-library-source-code-now-available https://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/net-framework-library-source... That's from January 2008. This release is specifically what enabled Mono to really go to the next level, more than a decade ago. You can even see the little 'carve out' they made in the license to ensure Mono, in particular, could use the code down in the 'Reference License' section. You're making a reasonable mistake of confusing .NET Core with the .NET Framework. They're different things. .NET Core is a new development that is not directly compatible with applications relying on the .NET Framework. As you can read on the blog post you linked to, .NET core was announced as open source before it was released -- which was 2015. Its implementation and technologies being open sourced is something altogether different.

eesmith 9y ago
The link you gave is indeed to view the source. It is not, however, an open source license, as characterized by the OSI or DFSG, nor free software as characterized by FSF. Here is the license - https://referencesource.microsoft.com/license.html https://referencesource.microsoft.com/license.html . It contains obviously non-open source clauses like: > "Reference use" means use of the software within your company as a reference, in read only form, for the sole purposes of debugging your products, maintaining your products, or enhancing the interoperability of your products with the software, and specifically excludes the right to distribute the software outside of your company. Microsoft agrees that (quoting from a quote in my earlier comment) "the source code was available since Rotor but we didn’t use an OSI approved open source license, which made Rotor a non-starter". Like I said, I know little about this topic. However, I think you do not understand what open source means. I'm pretty sure that when woolvalley used the phrase "It has been for the longest time been a closed source MSFT only thing", that "closed source" meant "not open source according to OSI or similar guidelines." Not "available in source code form", which is what you seem to think it means.
- indubitable 9y ago
  From my perspective here, you're shifting the goal posts. In particular this conversation began with you apparently thinking that Mono lacked full implementations of ASP/ADO/etc. And I think that might justify the original comment that Linux implementations have been treated as second class citizens. I say might since ADO/ASP are not really part of .NET, but rather independent projects built on top of .NET. But in any case, that hasn't been an issue for many years now. You have now shifted into claiming that your issue is that the licenses Microsoft released their code under were insufficiently permissive. I could argue against this, because it's at best misleading -- different code was released under different licenses. You can see an archive of one of the CLI releases [1] with the license it came with. Or this [2] is a blog from the Mono founder expressing thanks for Microsoft and ECMA members releasing code under open source licenses. That blog was from the huge 2.0 release, in 2008. But ultimately that feels like a red herring, even if a fun one! You seemed to believe (as did the person I was responding to) that C# was a Windows only thing. That hasn't been the case for a very long time, and it is completely ridiculous now a days. In either case, it might seem we agree if you think that people are basing their views on obsolete information. But that then rather begs the question of why is that so especially the case here. If I was discussing e.g. javascript frameworks from the perspective of somebody 4 years out, let alone a decade, I'd be quite justifiably skewered. In other fields, 4 years ago things like TensorFlow did not even exist as public projects. 4 years is a very long time in software, so why are people so particularly slow on the uptake in this instance? Bias, bad marketing, something else? [1] - https://web.archive.org/web/20060421052106/http://www.microsoft.com:80/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=8C09FD61-3F26-4555-AE17-3121B4F51D4D&displaylang=en https://web.archive.org/web/20060421052106/http://www.micros... [2] - http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2008/Oct-06.html http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2008/Oct-06.html
  - eesmith 9y ago
    You asked for possible reasons for why you are being downvoted for your reply to the following comment by woolvalley: "It has been for the longest time been a closed source MSFT only thing. It wasn't open source and running on linux was a second class citizen. Not sure if it is still a second class citizen." Your reply was: "Why do you think it's been closed source with minimal cross platform effort?" I don't think you can argue that I'm shifting the claim to the topic of being insufficiently permissive when that was part of the original thread. The license[1] that you pointed to is not open source. It says "You may not use or distribute this Software or any derivative works in any form for commercial purposes". Again, just because the source code is available, that doesn't mean it's open source. There are few that would agree with you that the early Microsoft licenses you pointed to meet the usual criteria for "Open Source" as it's used in the industry. Your argument seems to be that things have changed and we should forget about the history. As woolvalley's comments were made in the past tense ("wasn't open source", "was a second class citizen"), I think you could have made a better reply along the lines of "a lot has changed since you last looked into C#", rather than the more accusative approach you did which challenges a viewpoint which seems to be historically justified. I find the idea that "4 years is a very long time in software" to be laughable. I've been using Python since the late 1990s, and am still going through the Python 2->3 upgrade cycle. My primary development environment of a Unix-like terminal environment and emacs would be recognizable to people in the 1980s. I've been developing and selling my software product for 8 years, with essentially the same core codebase. Or, going down that rabbit hole, Alan Kay is famous for arguing that there is little in the way of significant new inventions in computing since 1980. See https://stackoverflow.com/questions/432922/significant-new-inventions-in-computing-since-1980 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/432922/significant-new-i... .

eesmith 9y ago

The link you gave is indeed to view the source. It is not, however, an open source license, as characterized by the OSI or DFSG, nor free software as characterized by FSF. Here is the license - https://referencesource.microsoft.com/license.html https://referencesource.microsoft.com/license.html . It contains obviously non-open source clauses like: > "Reference use" means use of the software within your company as a reference, in read only form, for the sole purposes of debugging your products, maintaining your products, or enhancing the interoperability of your products with the software, and specifically excludes the right to distribute the software outside of your company. Microsoft agrees that (quoting from a quote in my earlier comment) "the source code was available since Rotor but we didn’t use an OSI approved open source license, which made Rotor a non-starter". Like I said, I know little about this topic. However, I think you do not understand what open source means. I'm pretty sure that when woolvalley used the phrase "It has been for the longest time been a closed source MSFT only thing", that "closed source" meant "not open source according to OSI or similar guidelines." Not "available in source code form", which is what you seem to think it means.

indubitable 9y ago
From my perspective here, you're shifting the goal posts. In particular this conversation began with you apparently thinking that Mono lacked full implementations of ASP/ADO/etc. And I think that might justify the original comment that Linux implementations have been treated as second class citizens. I say might since ADO/ASP are not really part of .NET, but rather independent projects built on top of .NET. But in any case, that hasn't been an issue for many years now. You have now shifted into claiming that your issue is that the licenses Microsoft released their code under were insufficiently permissive. I could argue against this, because it's at best misleading -- different code was released under different licenses. You can see an archive of one of the CLI releases [1] with the license it came with. Or this [2] is a blog from the Mono founder expressing thanks for Microsoft and ECMA members releasing code under open source licenses. That blog was from the huge 2.0 release, in 2008. But ultimately that feels like a red herring, even if a fun one! You seemed to believe (as did the person I was responding to) that C# was a Windows only thing. That hasn't been the case for a very long time, and it is completely ridiculous now a days. In either case, it might seem we agree if you think that people are basing their views on obsolete information. But that then rather begs the question of why is that so especially the case here. If I was discussing e.g. javascript frameworks from the perspective of somebody 4 years out, let alone a decade, I'd be quite justifiably skewered. In other fields, 4 years ago things like TensorFlow did not even exist as public projects. 4 years is a very long time in software, so why are people so particularly slow on the uptake in this instance? Bias, bad marketing, something else? [1] - https://web.archive.org/web/20060421052106/http://www.microsoft.com:80/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=8C09FD61-3F26-4555-AE17-3121B4F51D4D&displaylang=en https://web.archive.org/web/20060421052106/http://www.micros... [2] - http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2008/Oct-06.html http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2008/Oct-06.html
- eesmith 9y ago
  You asked for possible reasons for why you are being downvoted for your reply to the following comment by woolvalley: "It has been for the longest time been a closed source MSFT only thing. It wasn't open source and running on linux was a second class citizen. Not sure if it is still a second class citizen." Your reply was: "Why do you think it's been closed source with minimal cross platform effort?" I don't think you can argue that I'm shifting the claim to the topic of being insufficiently permissive when that was part of the original thread. The license[1] that you pointed to is not open source. It says "You may not use or distribute this Software or any derivative works in any form for commercial purposes". Again, just because the source code is available, that doesn't mean it's open source. There are few that would agree with you that the early Microsoft licenses you pointed to meet the usual criteria for "Open Source" as it's used in the industry. Your argument seems to be that things have changed and we should forget about the history. As woolvalley's comments were made in the past tense ("wasn't open source", "was a second class citizen"), I think you could have made a better reply along the lines of "a lot has changed since you last looked into C#", rather than the more accusative approach you did which challenges a viewpoint which seems to be historically justified. I find the idea that "4 years is a very long time in software" to be laughable. I've been using Python since the late 1990s, and am still going through the Python 2->3 upgrade cycle. My primary development environment of a Unix-like terminal environment and emacs would be recognizable to people in the 1980s. I've been developing and selling my software product for 8 years, with essentially the same core codebase. Or, going down that rabbit hole, Alan Kay is famous for arguing that there is little in the way of significant new inventions in computing since 1980. See https://stackoverflow.com/questions/432922/significant-new-inventions-in-computing-since-1980 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/432922/significant-new-i... .