Microsoft Puts C# and the CLI Under "Community Promise"

FishWithAHammer writes "Peter Galli of Microsoft posted a blog entry on Port25 today, regarding the explicit placement of C# and the Common Language Infrastructure (the ECMA standard that underpins .NET) under their Community Promise: 'It is important to note that, under the Community Promise, anyone can freely implement these specifications with their technology, code, and solutions. You do not need to sign a license agreement, or otherwise communicate to Microsoft how you will implement the specifications. ... Under the Community Promise, Microsoft provides assurance that it will not assert its Necessary Claims against anyone who makes, uses, sells, offers for sale, imports, or distributes any Covered Implementation under any type of development or distribution model, including open-source licensing models such as the LGPL or GPL.'" Adds reader anshulajain: "Understandably, Miguel De Icaza is jumping with joy."

quickly, bash them.

[timmarhy]

they must be up to no good.

This shows

[Hal_Porter]

Microsoft love us and want us to be happy :-)

Re:quickly, bash them.

[wisty]

Maybe it's just a sign the Microsoft think they can beat Mono. If Microsoft sets the standards they will have a more mature platform out at any point in time.

Or maybe they think that a little competition is a good thing?

Re:It's about time

[moosesocks]

Don't forget that backward compatibility is sacred to Microsoft. Similarly, I can't possibly imagine that it would be a good business decision for Microsoft to begin suing its own developers.

The stench of microsoft

[Pausanias]

It still has what one slashdot poster called 'the stench of microsoft' on it. Even if microsoft GPLs the whole stack, there will always be that feeling of disgust in those of us who are old school.

Re:Is C# / Mono + libraries really *that* good?

[shutdown -p now]

I imagine that sane COBOL developers called Java the same thing. You only need to look around - Java is the only mainstream language that does not support proper lambdas, for example, and does not plan to in the next major revision.

When even C++ starts looking more modern than your language, it's definitely time to worry.

Re:quickly, bash them.

[Elektroschock]

It would be great to see Microsoft win and .Net win, because it is the best technology for a cross-platform future. With Microsoft moving towards the cloud it would be great to make Microsoft embrace cross-platform to resolve the remaining Java argument and indemnify developers from patent hassles, also ASP.NET and ADO.NET and Winforms. That would be a consequent move towards a cloud based architecture.