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> We don't expect Microsoft to develop its proprietary APIs out in the open despite it having a large presence in the open source world, why would we of Apple?

> We don't expect Microsoft to develop its proprietary APIs out in the open despite it having a large presence in the open source world, why would we of Apple? .NET is fully open-source now and it is developed in the open. And not just the BCL, but also platform UI/UX libraries like [WinForms](https://github.com/dotnet/winforms https://github.com/dotnet/winforms) and WPF. (Yeah I was taken aback too: if you told myself from 10-15 years ago that WinForms would be open-sourced under the MIT license I'd think you were mad - or that Microsoft went out of business after the Year of the Linux Desktop really happened and open-sourcing everything was their swansong).

pkphilip 6y ago
WinForms is just a wrapper around Win32 API - which is closed, and so won't run on other platforms. So in many ways very similar to Apple's position on Swift and SwiftUI
- DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
  Yes, but even-so it's now far easier to make an alternative WinForms implementation for non-Windows platforms. Mono had their own workable WinForms implementation a while ago (which was a clean-room implementation, IIRC), but now that isn't necessary. WPF, unlike WinForms, is ostensibly fully separate from Win32 and so should be possible to port it to non-Windows platforms.
  - simonh 6y ago
    Mono reimplemented WinForms from scratch, and any port of WPF would also have to be a from scratch reimplementation. Same for SwiftUI.
    - DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
      But they don't need to reimplement it entirely from scratch or as a clean-room implementation because: 1. WPF is now MIT-licensed. 2. Unlike WinForms, the bulk of WPF is managed-code, not a thin-wrapper over Win32. Therefore anyone can now port WPF to Linux, macOS, etc - and they only need to port the "PresentationCore" part of WPF (i.e. the native parts that expose Direct3D drawing surfaces to WPF).
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    I wrote a project about a decade ago that used WPF and was disappointed to hear later that Mono wouldn’t be implementing a clone. They actually recommended Silverlight if one wanted cross-platform WPF. But WPF is just so much better than WinForms IMO, and Silverlight was on its way out then.
tasogare 6y ago
The opening of those libraries are really recent and they were not developed as open source.

pkphilip 6y ago

WinForms is just a wrapper around Win32 API - which is closed, and so won't run on other platforms. So in many ways very similar to Apple's position on Swift and SwiftUI

DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
Yes, but even-so it's now far easier to make an alternative WinForms implementation for non-Windows platforms. Mono had their own workable WinForms implementation a while ago (which was a clean-room implementation, IIRC), but now that isn't necessary. WPF, unlike WinForms, is ostensibly fully separate from Win32 and so should be possible to port it to non-Windows platforms.
- simonh 6y ago
  Mono reimplemented WinForms from scratch, and any port of WPF would also have to be a from scratch reimplementation. Same for SwiftUI.
  - DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
    But they don't need to reimplement it entirely from scratch or as a clean-room implementation because: 1. WPF is now MIT-licensed. 2. Unlike WinForms, the bulk of WPF is managed-code, not a thin-wrapper over Win32. Therefore anyone can now port WPF to Linux, macOS, etc - and they only need to port the "PresentationCore" part of WPF (i.e. the native parts that expose Direct3D drawing surfaces to WPF).
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  I wrote a project about a decade ago that used WPF and was disappointed to hear later that Mono wouldn’t be implementing a clone. They actually recommended Silverlight if one wanted cross-platform WPF. But WPF is just so much better than WinForms IMO, and Silverlight was on its way out then.

tasogare 6y ago

The opening of those libraries are really recent and they were not developed as open source.