Oddly enough, if the tables were turned and it was Microsoft in a difficult position, we couldn't say the same things about .NET. As a .NET-developer I have to

Oddly enough, if the tables were turned and it was Microsoft in a difficult position, we couldn't say the same things about .NET. As a .NET-developer I have to say this is true and for a reason. Java has had much more time in the market, Sun has been a lot less willing to adapt to the market, and hence communities has formed to cover up for Sun's shortcomings platform-wise. As for Microsoft, they haven't been around for as long with .NET, and in the short time they have, they have evovled the platform unimaginably more than Sun ever did with Java trough it's entire lifetime so far. And Microsoft did so to cover up for what the marked asked for. Unlike Sun they were also willing to break backward and version compatibility if it was needed in the name of progress (ie the .NET 2.0 release). So there has been less time and less incentive for communities to provide FOSS-style solutions to .NET, not to mention that most .NET technologies not having Visual Studio support are dead on arrival. Had Visual Studio been a open-source product, things might have been radically different, but that's pure speculation on my part(1). So in this case I would say Microsoft is both to credit and blame for the lack of open-source .NET communities and projects compared to Java. 1: Disclaimer: I have never tried to develop my own Visual Studio add-ons.