5 ms·

April Fools!

Sanddancer 12y ago
The CLR would be a pretty good universal runtime, to be honest. It's open source under a liberal license, so you don't have to worry about the copyright dickery that Oracle. It has a lot of modern language features, like closures, with syntax that doesn't want to make one punch kittens. Plus, it has things that go beyond a lot of languages, like having the compiler classes in all versions of the runtime, so you can extend your app as it's running. There are very few frameworks out there that give even a few of those features.
- cloudwalking 12y ago
  But nobody at Google writes C#. I think you're much more likely to see Go (or Python) where Google designed much of the toolchain.
  - ignoramous 12y ago
    Jon Skeet, highest rated user on staklckoverflow, is a C# expert and he works for Google UK. I remember reading somewhere that parts of teams in Google's London offices are Microsoft technology driven.
    - cloudwalking 12y ago
      He is not writing C# at Google. That said, sure, there ARE people writing some C#. Google has applications that run on Windows. But very very few people are writing C#.
- pron 12y ago
  The CLR has actually been open sourced under an extremely restrictive license[1]. It does not allow any modification or derivative works that are not part of the .NET runtime or a .NET app, or changes that make the platform non-conforming to the spec. The license is so restrictive that it probably even fails to meet the minimum criteria set forth by the OSI for being called "open source" (as it only allows grants very limited modification and derivation rights). Remember the great lengths Google went to avoid the OpenJDK's GPL license (which, BTW, is a plain-and-simple open source license, with its implicit, unrestricted patent grant); this one is a lot more restrictive (and dangerous). [1]: http://www.ifross.org/artikel/4-shifty-details-about-microsofts-open-source-net http://www.ifross.org/artikel/4-shifty-details-about-microso...
  - cwyers 12y ago
    This is inaccurate. The CLR has been released under the MIT, a permissive non-copyleft license that has been certified by the OSI. Microsoft has a separate patent grant that the article takes issue with, but the source itself is open.
    - pron 12y ago
      The source itself is not "open" (though it is available for you to read), neither is it under the MIT license. To meet the minimum requirements for open source, the copyright holder must grant you permission to modify the source and create derivative works. Microsoft most certainly does not grant you those permissions. The MIT license implicitly grants you patent-use permissions; MS has taken those permissions away, hence this is not the MIT license, but an MIT licensed that has been ammended (so much so that it is perhaps no longer open source at all). You can read DannyBee's comments here for clarification and a more thorough and precise discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9111849 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9111849 (he's an open source lawyer).
      - wvenable 12y ago
        What you are saying contradicts what is posted here: https://github.com/Microsoft/dotnet https://github.com/Microsoft/dotnet ".NET open source projects typically use either the MIT or Apache 2 licenses for code. Some projects license documentation and other forms of content under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. See specific projects to understand the license used."
        pron 12y ago
        Well, they "use" the licenses and then amend them considerably (those licenses grant you patent use permissions, while Microsoft doesn't). The licenses are still there, only with a nice juicy amendment on the side, which basically says: "You know all those permissions granted to you by the license? Well, were taking most of them away now, thank you". The legal instrument by which those permissions are taken away is patents, which is actually worse than copyright because patents are sneaky. See those DannyBee comments I linked to for an explanation. In any case, Facebook does something similar with React which also "uses" the BSD license, except not really, which is why Google, for example, have already said they can't use Facebook's open-source projects. Facebook keeps the project open source, except adds an unrelated auto-destruct mechanism; the CLR isn't even really open source (because you don't have permission to freely modify the code or derive from it). I don't know which is worse...

April Fools!

The CLR would be a pretty good universal runtime, to be honest. It's open source under a liberal license, so you don't have to worry about the copyright dickery that Oracle. It has a lot of modern language features, like closures, with syntax that doesn't want to make one punch kittens. Plus, it has things that go beyond a lot of languages, like having the compiler classes in all versions of the runtime, so you can extend your app as it's running. There are very few frameworks out there that give even a few of those features.

cloudwalking 12y ago
But nobody at Google writes C#. I think you're much more likely to see Go (or Python) where Google designed much of the toolchain.
- ignoramous 12y ago
  Jon Skeet, highest rated user on staklckoverflow, is a C# expert and he works for Google UK. I remember reading somewhere that parts of teams in Google's London offices are Microsoft technology driven.
  - cloudwalking 12y ago
    He is not writing C# at Google. That said, sure, there ARE people writing some C#. Google has applications that run on Windows. But very very few people are writing C#.
pron 12y ago
The CLR has actually been open sourced under an extremely restrictive license[1]. It does not allow any modification or derivative works that are not part of the .NET runtime or a .NET app, or changes that make the platform non-conforming to the spec. The license is so restrictive that it probably even fails to meet the minimum criteria set forth by the OSI for being called "open source" (as it only allows grants very limited modification and derivation rights). Remember the great lengths Google went to avoid the OpenJDK's GPL license (which, BTW, is a plain-and-simple open source license, with its implicit, unrestricted patent grant); this one is a lot more restrictive (and dangerous). [1]: http://www.ifross.org/artikel/4-shifty-details-about-microsofts-open-source-net http://www.ifross.org/artikel/4-shifty-details-about-microso...
- cwyers 12y ago
  This is inaccurate. The CLR has been released under the MIT, a permissive non-copyleft license that has been certified by the OSI. Microsoft has a separate patent grant that the article takes issue with, but the source itself is open.
  - pron 12y ago
    The source itself is not "open" (though it is available for you to read), neither is it under the MIT license. To meet the minimum requirements for open source, the copyright holder must grant you permission to modify the source and create derivative works. Microsoft most certainly does not grant you those permissions. The MIT license implicitly grants you patent-use permissions; MS has taken those permissions away, hence this is not the MIT license, but an MIT licensed that has been ammended (so much so that it is perhaps no longer open source at all). You can read DannyBee's comments here for clarification and a more thorough and precise discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9111849 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9111849 (he's an open source lawyer).
    - wvenable 12y ago
      What you are saying contradicts what is posted here: https://github.com/Microsoft/dotnet https://github.com/Microsoft/dotnet ".NET open source projects typically use either the MIT or Apache 2 licenses for code. Some projects license documentation and other forms of content under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. See specific projects to understand the license used."
      - pron 12y ago
        Well, they "use" the licenses and then amend them considerably (those licenses grant you patent use permissions, while Microsoft doesn't). The licenses are still there, only with a nice juicy amendment on the side, which basically says: "You know all those permissions granted to you by the license? Well, were taking most of them away now, thank you". The legal instrument by which those permissions are taken away is patents, which is actually worse than copyright because patents are sneaky. See those DannyBee comments I linked to for an explanation. In any case, Facebook does something similar with React which also "uses" the BSD license, except not really, which is why Google, for example, have already said they can't use Facebook's open-source projects. Facebook keeps the project open source, except adds an unrelated auto-destruct mechanism; the CLR isn't even really open source (because you don't have permission to freely modify the code or derive from it). I don't know which is worse...