Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 13th Jun 2008 18:09 UTC, submitted by wakeupneo
"It's official: Microsoft will not accept any external code contributions to its planned Dynamic Language Runtime, which will run Microsoft's new scripting languages for the web and Silverlight content on .NET. Microsoft will, though, continue to accept source-code contributions to its slowly emerging implementation of Ruby for .NET, IronRuby. Contributions are helping to build IronRuby and shepherd the language towards the first-full release. The Register has learned, meanwhile, that Microsoft will start accepting external contributions to its other great scripting language project, putting Python on .NET - IronPython - in the "near future". The promise by Microsoft IronRuby lead John Lam comes nearly a year after the topic was first raised. The reason Microsoft decided to leave the DLR closed, despite taking contributions to the languages that will run inside it, is to protect itself from unwanted licenses and IP claims."
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Member since:
2006-02-05
I just finished listening to a DotNetRocks with John Lam, and he sort of explained this.
The general problem MS has with accepting outside code is that they don't really know where it comes from. Since they are the biggest litigation target in the industry (everyone remember Eolas?), their lawyers do not want core technology that is basically undefendable in court.
The reason IronRuby and IronPython are able to accept pulls from the community is that they are not core technology, will never ship with windows, and only be available as either an optional download or as a component in another program (for example, there is talks of making IRuby the recommended scripting language for dotnet, finally killing the abomination that is vba once and for all)
If MS is ever in a position where it has to yank IRuby or IPython from its sites and products that will suck, but it wont be disastrous. If they had to yank the DLR, that would be another story.