Re: AW: this affects DotGNU (was: this doesn't affect DotGNU (was Re:[DotGNU]New addendum for MS redistributables))

[Rhys Weatherley]

Tim Terlegård wrote:

> > .NET: I'm wondering what Microsoft will do about it's BSD release of .NET
> > this summer: Will BSD users be allowed to run programs developed under
> > VS.NET on it, or is it the first Microsoft product that is dead on arrival?
>
> Uhm, what, BSD release of .NET? Never heard of that. Where can you read more
> about that?

The BSD version is "Rotor", their reference implementation
for FreeBSD and Windows.  Carsten already posted the URL's.

It will most likely be distributed under a shared source "free
for non-commercial use only" license which will be neither
GPL-compatible nor Open Source compliant.  Even if it could
use arbitrary MS redistributables, the license would prevent
users from running it in a real-world environment.

My contacts tell me that they are pushing this in universities
all over the place as a research platform.  i.e. they are trying
to taint the uni's so they can't help either pnet or Mono
become successfull.

We should try approaching language research groups at
universities.  Portable.NET is an obvious platform for
performing language integration, JIT research, and multi-
bytecode VM development.  I've been touting it as such
in the presentations I've been giving lately.  Perhaps we
can counter this push by MS by offering our own Free
research platform.

Rotor will probably be dead on arrival outside the research
community.  From what I've been able to glean, it is designed
to be ECMA-compatible.  Which makes it highly unlikely
that it will run VS.NET stuff out of the box (which requires
the .NET Framework SDK classes).

There's really no incentive for MS to turn Rotor into a
real system that can run arbitrary .NET applications.
For example, if Rotor on FreeBSD ever became capable
of running ASP.NET, then it would be a threat to
Windows NT server sales.  The MS marketing
department will shoot that in the head real quick.

I suppose we'll find out this (northern) summer when
they finally release it.

Cheers,

Rhys.