←back to thread

612 points dayanruben | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | source
Show context
krupan ◴[] No.42901726[source]
The discussion here reminds me so much of early C# days. It was being touted as open source and cross platform back then, and Microsoft even hired a top GNOME developer to port it to Linux and GNOME was going to be rewritten in C#. It was going to be amazing. Never quite panned out.
replies(6): >>42901942 #>>42902129 #>>42902287 #>>42902325 #>>42902819 #>>42905920 #
homarp ◴[] No.42901942[source]
do you remember who was the 'top GNOME developer'?
replies(2): >>42901994 #>>42902003 #
IshKebab ◴[] No.42902003[source]
Probably talking about Miguel de Icaza. I think his history is wrong though. I don't recall any talk of rewriting GNOME in C# - they were all about their pet language Vala.

And Miguel started Mono way before Microsoft made C# cross-platform. At that point they were antagonists.

replies(1): >>42902377 #
tamlin ◴[] No.42902377[source]
Microsoft had a research version of the CLR called Rotor (2002) that predated Mono (2004). Rotor built for Windows, FreeBSD, and macOs, albeit with a not-very-open license.

When Mono came along, the internal position at Microsoft was surprisingly positive. There was a dev slide deck that went into Mono in some depth. And a telling slide that said it wasn't a threat because the performance wasn't competitive at the time.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_Source_Common_Languag...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_(software)

replies(1): >>42902792 #
caspper69 ◴[] No.42902792[source]
Rotor was BSD licensed, so I suppose if that’s your definition of a not very open license…
replies(2): >>42903070 #>>42907371 #
1. tamlin ◴[] No.42907371[source]
Rotor had it's own license:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_Source_Common_Language_...

I have various snapshots of the Rotor 1 and 2 sources around and they have the SSCLI license. There is a file that contains BSD licensed code (pal\rotor_pal.h).

replies(1): >>42911075 #
2. caspper69 ◴[] No.42911075[source]
Thank you for the follow up. You know after I posted that my thought was am I mistaking their BSD release for a BSD license, and of course I was. The memory isn’t what it used to be.