8 ms·

The Microsoft .NET platform has been forked: Introducing Open.NET

74 points by ghuntley 5y ago

tompazourek 5y ago
What is the relationship between .NET and LLVM? Can anyone please explain?
- detaro 5y ago
  They don't really have anything to do with each other. (There was a project for a LLVM-based compiler for the .NET ecosystem, but as far as I know that never went anywhere)
  - amir734jj 5y ago
    Yes. Because dotnet is inherently JIT (e.g. linq expression tree and runtime code weaving and etc.) and you can't do that with llvm. So it was a dead end effort.
    - DeathArrow 5y ago
      Here's a tutorial for implementing JIT in llvm: https://llvm.org/docs/tutorial/BuildingAJIT1.html https://llvm.org/docs/tutorial/BuildingAJIT1.html Also, there was a plan to AOT compile .NET not only for WASM targets but also for console.
      - amir734jj 5y ago
        Learned something new. Thank you.
- amir734jj 5y ago
  None. LLVM is a compiler toolchain. Basically it takes care of the back-end of your compiler. .NET is a framework (native libraries + CLR) usually associated with C# ecosystem.
- wiso 5y ago
  it's used in https://dotnet.microsoft.com/apps/aspnet/web-apps/blazor https://dotnet.microsoft.com/apps/aspnet/web-apps/blazor and Blazor is part of the .NET developer platform
  - tompazourek 5y ago
    I forgot about Blazor and all that WebAssembly stuff... Thank you, I think this is why open-dotnet maintains a fork of LLVM.
cable2600 5y ago
The https://open-dotnet.net/ https://open-dotnet.net/ does not work. I guess they are working on it? It looks neat as the .Net framework has been splintered and changed. One without an MIT license and Microsoft control.
- PikachuEXE 5y ago
  Not sure where you get that URL I only see https://open-dot.net https://open-dot.net (which redirects me back to https://github.com/open-dotnet https://github.com/open-dotnet)
- aliswe 5y ago
  *He Edit: Before I get downvoted for genderizing - I mean that it is one person.
  - boondaburrah 5y ago
    'they' is generally always appropriate to use especially when it's a person you don't know personally. Heck, we use it for companies which are grammatically singular (in american english)
    - aliswe 5y ago
      Here it is in fact one person though, which is also relevant to mention
      - rymate1234 5y ago
        And "they" can be used for one person though
        detaro 5y ago
        ... but as they just told you, doesn't hightlight that it's just one person, not multiple, as they wanted to do.
    - 5y ago
aliswe 5y ago
I like this initiative, although I fear it wont get a lot of real traction the statement is important and I believe a lot of us are thinking the same thing.
Shank 5y ago
> Send a pull-request to https://github.com/open-dotnet/.github/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/open-dotnet/.github/blob/master/README.md containing a random emoji to receive an invitation to join this GitHub organisation which enables you to participate in the private planning discussions repository. So...if you want to develop the "open" project, you have to join a private planning discussion? I appreciate the good intention here, but I think fundamentally that planning something like this should happen in the open. While you can say that this is an "open" method, I mean open as in "visible on search engines," and "visible to outside observers." Even a closed door with no lock and a "walk-ins welcome" sign on it is fundamentally a closed door.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ghuntley 5y ago
  Excellent points; I'm listening. Let's change the approach. edit: adjusted.
  - M3L0NM4N 5y ago
    Kudos
- thecopy 5y ago
  Seems like a way to game the number of collaborators displayed on the side-bar for every GitHub repo.
  - ghuntley 5y ago
    Membership of a GitHub organisation enables issues to be assigned to people in the community.
teruakohatu 5y ago
Does MSFT make "real" money from Visual Studio? Compared to Azure it must be spare change? It would be like a commercial property developer hamstringing their property development by selling shovels to builders. I can understand why Shovel Product Managers might want to keep shovels profitable, and not a subsidized product, but why are MSFT execs on board? Edit: This may be a Apples and Oranges comparison but Azure bought in 15 billion in Q3 2021, Unity (which is sort of partially a .NET IDE) bought in 273.6 million in Q2.
- dannyw 5y ago
  After some level of tenure, many executives lose the feeling of being told no. If they have a strategic initiative they want to push (e.g. increase lock-in between .NET and Visual Studio), they've lived and worked in a culture where they can make decisions without impunity or anyone saying to say no; so why would they care about a bunch of random github comments? To them, I doubt the community even feels like humans. They're numbers in a spreadsheet: userbases to be monetised; cattle to be bred and slaughtered for beef. From the Verge article: > Sources describe the move as a business-led decision, and it’s clear the company thought it would fly under the radar and not generate a backlash. TL;DR is that some exec high up thought this would increase their KPIs, and have enough fear in the org chart (from 29 years of tenure and being a Corporate Vice President) that no one dares to question. Let this action be clear: no matter how much a PR team spins, Microsoft's "open source" initiatives will never, ever, come close to true open source projects like Linux or SQLite.
  - passivate 5y ago
    Long term, its best to seek alternative means of funding, and reduce dependence on them. I don't think a commercial for-profit company should be on the hook to subsidize free software. The bottom line here is that the entity paying developers for their time has a very important say in what code they're going to work on.
- cerved 5y ago
  Azure is a different business unit to dotnet / Crap I mean Visual Studio
josteink 5y ago
What’s the incident they refer to with yanking MIT code? Does anyone have any backstory or links?
- mkl 5y ago
  Here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28952502 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28952502 (31 days ago, 59 comments) and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28973198 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28973198 (29 days ago, 9 comments) Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28759630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28759630 (47 days ago, 106 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28794352 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28794352 (45 days ago, 336 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28897314 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28897314 (35 days ago, 96 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28989341 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28989341 (27 days ago, 54 comments) Probably more too: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1637565463&dateRange=custom&dateStart=1627732800&page=0&prefix=false&query=.net&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1637565463&dateRange=custom&...
ghuntley 5y ago
ICMYI there's some foundational issues (https://github.com/open-dotnet/.github/issues/7 https://github.com/open-dotnet/.github/issues/7) at hand that need resolving such as .NET Foundation articles of incorporation give Microsoft veto over all decisions (like Zuckerberg) by the foundation. This problem should not block the community from progressing however as the .NET platform itself has been released under MIT.
- lodovic 5y ago
  I don't really see the problem. .Net was developed by Microsoft and so far they have done a pretty good job as a benevolent dictator. By all means, go ahead and fork it, but I don't see how this would improve the platform or gain trust from the enterprises using .Net. I mean, in my view even Mono was barely accepted and only because it ran on Linux.
armchairhacker 5y ago
not sure if this is on topic, but what is the advantage of the .NET platform over Swift/_Kit and (especially) the JVM? Is it just the platform for Windows-specific things?
- viraptor 5y ago
  This is between the platform and C# itself, but the dotnet world gets usability improvements years / decades before Java. Nullable annotations, nicer generics, value types, Linq, type inference, more intuitive memory limits settings, ... and so many more. It's also got some opinionated standard(ish) solutions - you know which DI interface you'll use, likely which GUI toolkit you'll use. .Net/C# also had the modules and installation sorted for quite some time. And .Net FFI is so much better to deal with. And .net has a built-in async support. Ikvm and similar projects show that they're roughly equivalent in power once compiled. But the .net dev friendliness is so much better imo.
omgmajk 5y ago
Interesting project, good luck. Wish I could help.
amir734jj 5y ago
You cited this[1] GitHub issue. In the comment section, I see this user[1] has been commenting many times saying negative things about Microsoft's open source commitment. Including this comment[3] saying: > Maybe it is time to fork .NET and to get something like AdoptOpenJDK, etc… However, this person hasn't done anything but forking other people's repos. Its kind of funny and sad. [1]: https://github.com/dotnet/core/issues/505 https://github.com/dotnet/core/issues/505 [2]: https://github.com/vintzl https://github.com/vintzl [3]: https://github.com/dotnet/core/issues/505#issuecomment-961236776 https://github.com/dotnet/core/issues/505#issuecomment-96123...
numlock86 5y ago
> Open .NET > What would .NET look like without Visual Studio? I am not sure what these people have been doing, but as someone who as been doing professional .NET development for the last two decades I have not used any Visual Studio at least since 2018. What is this headline trying to tell me? > What use is an open-source programming language that can only be debugged with proprietary software? Sorry, what? > What would programming languages and a platform that didn’t have the Visual Studio baggage look like? ... what is "Visual Studio baggage"??? > What would .NET look like if it didn't lose that generation of brains back in 2006? If anything, .NET had a Visual Studio lock-in back in those days, but not today ... Sorry, I am really trying to understand the point here, but I just can't. Help? Also are we talking about .NET or "programming languages" here? Or both?
- amir734jj 5y ago
  The same. I have been developing in C#/.NET Core for sometime and haven't used visual studio. I only use vim / vscode / Rider. Even now that I work at Microsoft, I don't use Visual Studio. Its too resource intensive and I use vim to get the job done. Not sure why people use Visual Studio at all these days.
  - yakubin 5y ago
    I haven't used C#, so don't really know, but doesn't Visual Studio have a great debugger for C# with things like custom visualizers? Looking from the outside, it seemed to me that for C# the Visual Studio debugger has an edge over the competition.
    - moksly 5y ago
      It used to, and it’s still a better choice if you’re still doing old school stuff like web-forms with GUI library extensions like Telrik, which a lot enterprise companies are legitimately still doing and to great effect. But if you’re doing anything modern .Net, at least with C# then you won’t miss VS at all.
    - cerved 5y ago
DeathArrow 5y ago
Looking at .NET repos in Github, they were forked over 2.5k times. What's different with this fork?
- amir734jj 5y ago
  To contribute to a repo (i.e. send a PR) you need to fork a repo. This is different.
celdon25 5y ago
.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ghuntley 5y ago
  I have no idea what you are talking about but would love to hear you out because it's clear there's pain. I don't work for Chocolatey and never have. Contact me please.
chenzhekl 5y ago
It is just a performance art, isn't it? It is hard for me to view it as a serious project...
- DeathArrow 5y ago
  It seems for me a guy wants the community to compete with MS, but the only thing he does is forking repos, inviting to discussions and posting on HN. I don't think it will result in anything.
DeathArrow 5y ago
At this stage, it is clear that different departments inside MSFT have diverging interests. A solution to this would be splitting the company in two. Cloud and development tools, Azure, .NET, Github would be one part. The other would be Legacy and business apps, Windows, Office, Edge, gaming, hardware.
ameyv 5y ago
Well well well. Seems like post has been Flaged. Again somebody wants to bury the voices. Well done M$. Well done.
DeathArrow 5y ago
Julia Liuson had something to learn from Bill Gates in Visual Studio vs .NET infight. Bill Gates: "One thing we have got to change in our strategy — allowing Office documents to be rendered very well by other people's browsers is one of the most destructive things we could do to the company. We have to stop putting any effort into this and make sure that Office documents very well depends on PROPRIETARY IE capabilities. Anything else is suicide for our platform. This is a case where Office has to avoid doing something to destory [sic] Windows."[1] [1] http://antitrust.slated.org/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/2000/PX02991.pdf http://antitrust.slated.org/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/...
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
  The part that follows is also interesting: "Likewise this love of DAV in Office/Exchange is a huge problem. I would also like to make sure people understand this as well."
DeathArrow 5y ago
Does anyone think .NET ecosystem (platform, libraries, languages, tools) could get at the level it is without MS or someone else paying for millions of dev hours? Or that it can continue to stay at the top without millions of dev hours? The only value I see in forking is only tracking MS close and undoing the "bad" changes MS does like the one with hot reload. Otherwise, I don't see how things could work without a massive investment.
- cerved 5y ago
  that's the point of lots of OS forks, no?

74 points by ghuntley 5y ago

tompazourek 5y ago

What is the relationship between .NET and LLVM? Can anyone please explain?

detaro 5y ago
They don't really have anything to do with each other. (There was a project for a LLVM-based compiler for the .NET ecosystem, but as far as I know that never went anywhere)
- amir734jj 5y ago
  Yes. Because dotnet is inherently JIT (e.g. linq expression tree and runtime code weaving and etc.) and you can't do that with llvm. So it was a dead end effort.
  - DeathArrow 5y ago
    Here's a tutorial for implementing JIT in llvm: https://llvm.org/docs/tutorial/BuildingAJIT1.html https://llvm.org/docs/tutorial/BuildingAJIT1.html Also, there was a plan to AOT compile .NET not only for WASM targets but also for console.
    - amir734jj 5y ago
      Learned something new. Thank you.
amir734jj 5y ago
None. LLVM is a compiler toolchain. Basically it takes care of the back-end of your compiler. .NET is a framework (native libraries + CLR) usually associated with C# ecosystem.
wiso 5y ago
it's used in https://dotnet.microsoft.com/apps/aspnet/web-apps/blazor https://dotnet.microsoft.com/apps/aspnet/web-apps/blazor and Blazor is part of the .NET developer platform
- tompazourek 5y ago
  I forgot about Blazor and all that WebAssembly stuff... Thank you, I think this is why open-dotnet maintains a fork of LLVM.

cable2600 5y ago

The https://open-dotnet.net/ https://open-dotnet.net/ does not work. I guess they are working on it? It looks neat as the .Net framework has been splintered and changed. One without an MIT license and Microsoft control.

PikachuEXE 5y ago
Not sure where you get that URL I only see https://open-dot.net https://open-dot.net (which redirects me back to https://github.com/open-dotnet https://github.com/open-dotnet)
aliswe 5y ago
*He Edit: Before I get downvoted for genderizing - I mean that it is one person.
- boondaburrah 5y ago
  'they' is generally always appropriate to use especially when it's a person you don't know personally. Heck, we use it for companies which are grammatically singular (in american english)
  - aliswe 5y ago
    Here it is in fact one person though, which is also relevant to mention
    - rymate1234 5y ago
      And "they" can be used for one person though
      - detaro 5y ago
        ... but as they just told you, doesn't hightlight that it's just one person, not multiple, as they wanted to do.
  - 5y ago

aliswe 5y ago

I like this initiative, although I fear it wont get a lot of real traction the statement is important and I believe a lot of us are thinking the same thing.

Shank 5y ago

> Send a pull-request to https://github.com/open-dotnet/.github/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/open-dotnet/.github/blob/master/README.md containing a random emoji to receive an invitation to join this GitHub organisation which enables you to participate in the private planning discussions repository. So...if you want to develop the "open" project, you have to join a private planning discussion? I appreciate the good intention here, but I think fundamentally that planning something like this should happen in the open. While you can say that this is an "open" method, I mean open as in "visible on search engines," and "visible to outside observers." Even a closed door with no lock and a "walk-ins welcome" sign on it is fundamentally a closed door.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ghuntley 5y ago
Excellent points; I'm listening. Let's change the approach. edit: adjusted.
- M3L0NM4N 5y ago
  Kudos
thecopy 5y ago
Seems like a way to game the number of collaborators displayed on the side-bar for every GitHub repo.
- ghuntley 5y ago
  Membership of a GitHub organisation enables issues to be assigned to people in the community.

teruakohatu 5y ago

Does MSFT make "real" money from Visual Studio? Compared to Azure it must be spare change? It would be like a commercial property developer hamstringing their property development by selling shovels to builders. I can understand why Shovel Product Managers might want to keep shovels profitable, and not a subsidized product, but why are MSFT execs on board? Edit: This may be a Apples and Oranges comparison but Azure bought in 15 billion in Q3 2021, Unity (which is sort of partially a .NET IDE) bought in 273.6 million in Q2.

dannyw 5y ago
After some level of tenure, many executives lose the feeling of being told no. If they have a strategic initiative they want to push (e.g. increase lock-in between .NET and Visual Studio), they've lived and worked in a culture where they can make decisions without impunity or anyone saying to say no; so why would they care about a bunch of random github comments? To them, I doubt the community even feels like humans. They're numbers in a spreadsheet: userbases to be monetised; cattle to be bred and slaughtered for beef. From the Verge article: > Sources describe the move as a business-led decision, and it’s clear the company thought it would fly under the radar and not generate a backlash. TL;DR is that some exec high up thought this would increase their KPIs, and have enough fear in the org chart (from 29 years of tenure and being a Corporate Vice President) that no one dares to question. Let this action be clear: no matter how much a PR team spins, Microsoft's "open source" initiatives will never, ever, come close to true open source projects like Linux or SQLite.
- passivate 5y ago
  Long term, its best to seek alternative means of funding, and reduce dependence on them. I don't think a commercial for-profit company should be on the hook to subsidize free software. The bottom line here is that the entity paying developers for their time has a very important say in what code they're going to work on.
cerved 5y ago
Azure is a different business unit to dotnet / Crap I mean Visual Studio

josteink 5y ago

What’s the incident they refer to with yanking MIT code? Does anyone have any backstory or links?

mkl 5y ago
Here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28952502 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28952502 (31 days ago, 59 comments) and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28973198 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28973198 (29 days ago, 9 comments) Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28759630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28759630 (47 days ago, 106 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28794352 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28794352 (45 days ago, 336 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28897314 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28897314 (35 days ago, 96 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28989341 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28989341 (27 days ago, 54 comments) Probably more too: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1637565463&dateRange=custom&dateStart=1627732800&page=0&prefix=false&query=.net&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1637565463&dateRange=custom&...

ghuntley 5y ago

ICMYI there's some foundational issues (https://github.com/open-dotnet/.github/issues/7 https://github.com/open-dotnet/.github/issues/7) at hand that need resolving such as .NET Foundation articles of incorporation give Microsoft veto over all decisions (like Zuckerberg) by the foundation. This problem should not block the community from progressing however as the .NET platform itself has been released under MIT.

lodovic 5y ago
I don't really see the problem. .Net was developed by Microsoft and so far they have done a pretty good job as a benevolent dictator. By all means, go ahead and fork it, but I don't see how this would improve the platform or gain trust from the enterprises using .Net. I mean, in my view even Mono was barely accepted and only because it ran on Linux.

armchairhacker 5y ago

not sure if this is on topic, but what is the advantage of the .NET platform over Swift/_Kit and (especially) the JVM? Is it just the platform for Windows-specific things?

viraptor 5y ago
This is between the platform and C# itself, but the dotnet world gets usability improvements years / decades before Java. Nullable annotations, nicer generics, value types, Linq, type inference, more intuitive memory limits settings, ... and so many more. It's also got some opinionated standard(ish) solutions - you know which DI interface you'll use, likely which GUI toolkit you'll use. .Net/C# also had the modules and installation sorted for quite some time. And .Net FFI is so much better to deal with. And .net has a built-in async support. Ikvm and similar projects show that they're roughly equivalent in power once compiled. But the .net dev friendliness is so much better imo.

omgmajk 5y ago

Interesting project, good luck. Wish I could help.

amir734jj 5y ago

You cited this[1] GitHub issue. In the comment section, I see this user[1] has been commenting many times saying negative things about Microsoft's open source commitment. Including this comment[3] saying: > Maybe it is time to fork .NET and to get something like AdoptOpenJDK, etc… However, this person hasn't done anything but forking other people's repos. Its kind of funny and sad. [1]: https://github.com/dotnet/core/issues/505 https://github.com/dotnet/core/issues/505 [2]: https://github.com/vintzl https://github.com/vintzl [3]: https://github.com/dotnet/core/issues/505#issuecomment-961236776 https://github.com/dotnet/core/issues/505#issuecomment-96123...

numlock86 5y ago

> Open .NET > What would .NET look like without Visual Studio? I am not sure what these people have been doing, but as someone who as been doing professional .NET development for the last two decades I have not used any Visual Studio at least since 2018. What is this headline trying to tell me? > What use is an open-source programming language that can only be debugged with proprietary software? Sorry, what? > What would programming languages and a platform that didn’t have the Visual Studio baggage look like? ... what is "Visual Studio baggage"??? > What would .NET look like if it didn't lose that generation of brains back in 2006? If anything, .NET had a Visual Studio lock-in back in those days, but not today ... Sorry, I am really trying to understand the point here, but I just can't. Help? Also are we talking about .NET or "programming languages" here? Or both?

amir734jj 5y ago
The same. I have been developing in C#/.NET Core for sometime and haven't used visual studio. I only use vim / vscode / Rider. Even now that I work at Microsoft, I don't use Visual Studio. Its too resource intensive and I use vim to get the job done. Not sure why people use Visual Studio at all these days.
- yakubin 5y ago
  I haven't used C#, so don't really know, but doesn't Visual Studio have a great debugger for C# with things like custom visualizers? Looking from the outside, it seemed to me that for C# the Visual Studio debugger has an edge over the competition.
  - moksly 5y ago
    It used to, and it’s still a better choice if you’re still doing old school stuff like web-forms with GUI library extensions like Telrik, which a lot enterprise companies are legitimately still doing and to great effect. But if you’re doing anything modern .Net, at least with C# then you won’t miss VS at all.
  - cerved 5y ago

DeathArrow 5y ago

Looking at .NET repos in Github, they were forked over 2.5k times. What's different with this fork?

amir734jj 5y ago
To contribute to a repo (i.e. send a PR) you need to fork a repo. This is different.

celdon25 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ghuntley 5y ago
I have no idea what you are talking about but would love to hear you out because it's clear there's pain. I don't work for Chocolatey and never have. Contact me please.

chenzhekl 5y ago

It is just a performance art, isn't it? It is hard for me to view it as a serious project...

DeathArrow 5y ago
It seems for me a guy wants the community to compete with MS, but the only thing he does is forking repos, inviting to discussions and posting on HN. I don't think it will result in anything.

DeathArrow 5y ago

At this stage, it is clear that different departments inside MSFT have diverging interests. A solution to this would be splitting the company in two. Cloud and development tools, Azure, .NET, Github would be one part. The other would be Legacy and business apps, Windows, Office, Edge, gaming, hardware.

ameyv 5y ago

Well well well. Seems like post has been Flaged. Again somebody wants to bury the voices. Well done M$. Well done.

DeathArrow 5y ago

Julia Liuson had something to learn from Bill Gates in Visual Studio vs .NET infight. Bill Gates: "One thing we have got to change in our strategy — allowing Office documents to be rendered very well by other people's browsers is one of the most destructive things we could do to the company. We have to stop putting any effort into this and make sure that Office documents very well depends on PROPRIETARY IE capabilities. Anything else is suicide for our platform. This is a case where Office has to avoid doing something to destory [sic] Windows."[1] [1] http://antitrust.slated.org/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/2000/PX02991.pdf http://antitrust.slated.org/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/...

hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
The part that follows is also interesting: "Likewise this love of DAV in Office/Exchange is a huge problem. I would also like to make sure people understand this as well."

DeathArrow 5y ago

Does anyone think .NET ecosystem (platform, libraries, languages, tools) could get at the level it is without MS or someone else paying for millions of dev hours? Or that it can continue to stay at the top without millions of dev hours? The only value I see in forking is only tracking MS close and undoing the "bad" changes MS does like the one with hot reload. Otherwise, I don't see how things could work without a massive investment.

cerved 5y ago
that's the point of lots of OS forks, no?