4 ms·
.NET and the languages C# and VisualBasic.NET are open source (definitely not free software) but tightly developed by one central R&D. I find the second argumen
by oaiey 8y ago
.NET and the languages C# and VisualBasic.NET are open source (definitely not free software) but tightly developed by one central R&D. I find the second argument especially weak. You can be completely open source (and probably even free) without giving up any control over your distribution.
- mythz 8y agoThey're only central R&D because MS employ most of the paid dev resources working on it and no one would use any forks except from MS (or possibly Google, but they wouldn't ratify MS's platforms by investing resources in maintaining a fork) so there's no risk of fragmentation. That definitely doesn't apply to all projects, you can look at the successful forks of Oracle's OSS acquired products. If the OSS'ed code-base is valuable, you've just given a open invitation to all your competitors to create their own competing forks.
- noblethrasher 8y ago> or possibly Google, but they wouldn't ratify MS's platforms by investing resources in maintaining a fork. While they're not maintaining a fork, it's worth noting that the head of the ECMA C# standards committee is, in fact, a prominent Google employee.
- oaiey 8y ago"prominent" ... What a modest description :)
- oaiey 8y agoTotally right. And the copyright like Oracle does/did. However, the same applies to Wolfram Research. I do not disagree to them being closed source for e.g. monetarily reason, just for this argument of language control.