Microsoft Takes .NET Open Source And Cross-Platform


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For more than 12 years now, the .NET framework has been the programming model for developers who want to build apps for Windows. But in its efforts to take many of its developer tools cross-platform, Microsoft today announced that it plans to take .NET to both the Mac and Linux soon and that it is open-sourcing most of the full server-side .NET core stack (not client-side .NET), starting with the next version.

 

As Microsoft?s corporate VP of its Developer Division S. ?Soma? Somasegar told me, about 6 million developers are now building applications on top of the framework. ?We?ve been widely successful with that,? he said. But now the question is, how do you move .NET forward? Microsoft already open sourced the .NET compiler earlier this year, so it?s not new to this (even though many pundits may still take a double-take when they hear the words ?Microsoft? and ?open source? in the same sentence).

 

Looking at Microsoft?s recent history, however, today?s announcement doesn?t come as a total shock. At its Build developer conference earlier this year, for example, Microsoft announced the .NET Foundation and it?s that organization that will also shepherd this project.

 

More....

http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/12/microsoft-takes-net-open-source-and-cross-platform/

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I'm not sure what has happened in Microsoft recently, but I'm happy with this new direction that they're taking! (Y)

I thimk it's a case of Nadella looking at the books and choosing to make certain things free in order to make more money on their other products.

A full .NET implementation available on OSX and Linux will make cross platform .NET development much easier, and drive sales of Visual Studio. I presume it will also help Azure sales as well.

A cross platform .NET also reduces the value of Java as well, because it reduces their "we run on multiple desktop OS's" bragging rights.

Overall its a smart move, and I applaud Nadella for having the nouse to do it. Developers have always been Microsoft's greatest asset, looks like they're trying to uphold that philosophy.

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I'm not sure what has happened in Microsoft recently, but I'm happy with this new direction that they're taking! (Y)

I think a lot has changed in their corporate attitude since Nadella took over. He was an enterprise/cloud guy, so I think there's an increase acceptance of platform interoperability.

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This will mainly benefit Mono which is a great thing for all cross-platform .NET applications. In particular their garbage collector was much inferior, and now there will just be more consistency across implementations.

 

10 years ago nobody could have predicted that Microsoft would ever take this stance on open-source software. I hope that with these announcements the Linux folks finally set aside their suspicions towards .NET.

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