OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/25667/Building_Bridges_Open_source_according_to_Microsoft Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2013, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Thu, 20 Jun 2013 03:52:50 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif OSNews.com http://www.osnews.com free Visual studio http://www.osnews.com/thread?509178 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509178 I know there is a free crippled version but Microsoft should make the full feature versions of Visual Studio free.
Apple understand this, and don't charge you for theirs.
This will encourage more people to become involved in .net open source projects.

I also believe they should create some type of free runtime environment for Office VBA applications.
They might loose money with this but it will be cool. Currently the Office reader app cannot run VBA applications.
(Digressing..And for gawd sakes please make Python an Office macro language like in Libreoffice.) Thu, 01 Mar 2012 23:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (fran) Comments RE: free Visual studio http://www.osnews.com/thread?509194 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509194 Apple does not charge you for XCode, but if you want to be a "qualified" Mac OS X or iOS Developer, you must register into the Apple Developer Program and pay an annual fee of 100 USD.

At the end of the road, Microsoft and Apple earn money with similar tools in a different way. Thu, 01 Mar 2012 23:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (ebasconp) Comments RE: free Visual studio http://www.osnews.com/thread?509211 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509211
I know there is a free crippled version but Microsoft should make the full feature versions of Visual Studio free.
Apple understand this, and don't charge you for theirs.
This will encourage more people to become involved in .net open source projects.



Visual Studio Express is not crippled, you can write any type of program you want, you have full access to the full .net framework. What you lose is integration, each language (vb.net, c#, c++, as well as Web Developer) has it's own express edition, and there are no team functionality. The db management functionality (the IDE, not access from code), is limited, but there is an express edition of SQL Server, and it has a management console. Any apps you write can run on any Windows computer.

They also release the c# framework that lets you write games for the 360 and the Zune(I know, I know) It's called XNA Studio. It costs money to distribute on Live, but the tools are free.Edited 2012-03-02 02:51 UTC Fri, 02 Mar 2012 02:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (BluenoseJake) Comments RE[2]: free Visual studio http://www.osnews.com/thread?509212 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509212 Last time I checked you could not write 64bit applications in it. Fri, 02 Mar 2012 02:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (fran) Comments RE[2]: free Visual studio http://www.osnews.com/thread?509213 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509213 But Xcode is still free. You can still use even if you don't join the $100 affiliate program.Edited 2012-03-02 02:57 UTC Fri, 02 Mar 2012 02:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (fran) Comments RE[2]: free Visual studio http://www.osnews.com/thread?509214 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509214
"I know there is a free crippled version but Microsoft should make the full feature versions of Visual Studio free.
Apple understand this, and don't charge you for theirs.
This will encourage more people to become involved in .net open source projects.



Visual Studio Express is not crippled, you can write any type of program you want, you have full access to the full .net framework. What you lose is integration, each language (vb.net, c#, c++, as well as Web Developer) has it's own express edition, and there are no team functionality. The db management functionality (the IDE, not access from code), is limited, but there is an express edition of SQL Server, and it has a management console. Any apps you write can run on any Windows computer.

They also release the c# framework that lets you write games for the 360 and the Zune(I know, I know) It's called XNA Studio. It costs money to distribute on Live, but the tools are free. "

Don't you think Teamview will be beneficial to open source development? This is what the article is about. Opinions on how MS can improve it's open source policy.
Now the votetards vote me down for saying Visual Studio should be free. Fri, 02 Mar 2012 03:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (fran) Comments RE[3]: free Visual studio http://www.osnews.com/thread?509226 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509226 Sure can:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3190014/how-to-build-64-bit-visu... Fri, 02 Mar 2012 05:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (BluenoseJake) Comments not surprised http://www.osnews.com/thread?509227 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509227 I am not surprised by the contents of this interview. I always felt Microsoft was getting left behind in the pre vista days and the pre Windows 7 days. No new technology was coming out of Redmond. They spent a long time denying Linux and open source, and while they were doing that the world moved on without them. Now they are playing catch up. Spending money to get Apache and php running on Windows Server. I don't think it will work. Too many people now know you can do really cool stuff without Windows headaches. Every Top 500 company has Linux running in their server rooms. Fri, 02 Mar 2012 05:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (TechGeek) Comments RE[3]: free Visual studio http://www.osnews.com/thread?509228 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509228 It would be beneficial, but that's not the same as necessary. It doesn't make the express editions crippled with out them. You could use 3rd party team software, or build your own, buy an msdn sub for $350

They don't have to give away everything, and MS, they give away quite a bit. At least when it comes to Dev tools.Edited 2012-03-02 05:30 UTC Fri, 02 Mar 2012 05:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (BluenoseJake) Comments RE[4]: free Visual studio http://www.osnews.com/thread?509261 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509261 True Fri, 02 Mar 2012 09:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (fran) Comments RE[4]: free Visual studio http://www.osnews.com/thread?509263 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509263 The Express version of Visual Studio doesn't support viewing the currently running threads in the debugger.
As detailed here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/w15yf86f.aspx

That makes it virtually impossible to debug modern multi-threaded applications, and therefore it is most definitely crippled. Fri, 02 Mar 2012 10:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Powelly) Comments RE[3]: free Visual studio http://www.osnews.com/thread?509266 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509266
But Xcode is still free. You can still use even if you don't join the $100 affiliate program.

True, but you wouldn't be able to use it for much as you can't install iOS apps (even ones you developed yourself) without signing up and OS X's app store is rapidly heading in that direction too.

It won't be long before Xcode is effectively as crippled as VS is.

Personally, I actually think the Express versions of VS are still better than the next best free IDE for Windows. I'm very much an FOSS advocate, but if there's one thing I can praise Microsoft for, it is Visual Studio. Fri, 02 Mar 2012 10:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Laurence) Comments RE[3]: free Visual studio http://www.osnews.com/thread?509267 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509267
Last time I checked you could not write 64bit applications in it.

When was the last time you checked? :p Fri, 02 Mar 2012 10:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Laurence) Comments Opinion on the open source policy of Microsoft http://www.osnews.com/thread?509272 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509272 1. Gianugo Rabellino is part of the ‘interoperability strategy team’. Is this the team that opposed ODF as the office standard, and pushed OOXML as an unneeded second "standard" that they haven't even implemted themselves? One of Microsoft's strengths is NON-interoperability. They do everything they can to make sure other software is NOT compatible. For instance, MS Office not able to correctly display ODF-files. The standard is open and publicly available

... So, is this lack of interoperability incompetence or a deliberate policy, so that users stick to MS products? There is truth in the old saying "DOS ain't done till Lotus won't run".

2. Locked boot on ARM machines - what has that got to with openness?

3. The lawsuits against Linux (MS/SCO) and Android (MS). Puke.

4. Rabellino proposes a model that has a core of proprietary software with layers of openness around it.....As a perfect example of this layer of openness, Rabellino mentions support of Red Hat Linux on Windows Server Hyper-V.

Ha ha.... sure.... Of course in reality the sensible thing is to have Linux (stable) as a core and possibly Windows in a virtual machine on top of that. Elastic Clouds at Amazon can be based on Linux machines or Windows machines. The Linux offer has a better uptime and lower cost. Why would that be, Mr. Rabellino?Edited 2012-03-02 11:34 UTC Fri, 02 Mar 2012 11:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (PieterGen) Comments RE[5]: free Visual studio http://www.osnews.com/thread?509274 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509274 you can download the debugger for free with the SDK. You can do anything with the free tools, it's just less integrated, like I said before.Edited 2012-03-02 12:25 UTC Fri, 02 Mar 2012 12:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (BluenoseJake) Comments RE[6]: free Visual studio http://www.osnews.com/thread?509275 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509275 Unfortunately, at least for C# programmers, the 'DbgCLR' debugger is no longer available in the SDK and looks to have been discontinued as of .NET V3.5.

Citation: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/windowssdk/thread/375... Fri, 02 Mar 2012 12:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Powelly) Comments RE: Opinion on the open source policy of Microsoft http://www.osnews.com/thread?509276 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509276 I gave up reading at this point (emphasis mine):

'Commercial software' is a carefully chosen term, meant to replace the well-known term 'proprietary software'. This triggers me to mention that open source software can also be called 'commercial software' and that the term should therefore not be strictly reserved for proprietary software. Rabellino disagrees, but to prevent the interview from becoming a game of semantics, I decide to mentally substitute 'proprietary software' for 'commercial software' during the rest of the interview.
Fri, 02 Mar 2012 12:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (l3v1) Comments RE[4]: free Visual studio http://www.osnews.com/thread?509281 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509281 hehe..too long ago now it seems Fri, 02 Mar 2012 13:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (fran) Comments RE[2]: Opinion on the open source policy of Microsoft http://www.osnews.com/thread?509286 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509286 That is the most interesting part. To bad the interviewer aborted here and is not able to present us the glory view of Microsoft why FLOSS cannot be commercial. It becomes even more interesting if you conclude what that means. You can only make money with proprietary software! Fri, 02 Mar 2012 14:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (cdude) Comments RE[3]: Opinion on the open source policy of Microsoft http://www.osnews.com/thread?509295 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509295
That is the most interesting part. To bad the interviewer aborted here and is not able to present us the glory view of Microsoft why FLOSS cannot be commercial. It becomes even more interesting if you conclude what that means. You can only make money with proprietary software!


To a certain extent this is true.

The only place where people are making money with FLOSS is server side software, support and training.

Which is already a big deal, but so far no one has found a way to make money out of FLOSS in desktop applications. This is one of the reasons why FLOSS has not taken off in the desktop. Fri, 02 Mar 2012 14:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (moondevil) Comments RE[4]: Opinion on the open source policy of Microsoft http://www.osnews.com/thread?509404 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509404
To a certain extent this is true.

The only place where people are making money with FLOSS is server side software, support and training.

Which is already a big deal, but so far no one has found a way to make money out of FLOSS in desktop applications. This is one of the reasons why FLOSS has not taken off in the desktop.


But one can argue though that all things being equal you wouldn't be selling a desktop Linux in isolation but as part of a larger support contract - an end to end service where Linux would run on the server and the desktop with a fixed amount charged each year. Businesses care about ensuring that their capital (computer + software) are working at peak efficiency with the lowest amount of downtime possible - and that is done by saying, "I'm going to pay xyz company $x per year and I let them handle the details" which is where the likes of Red Hat will make their money.

What the desktop needs are two things. Firstly, better hardware support - not just specifications given out but developers actually completely implementing the driver. How long has the ATI/AMD specifications been out and the Xorg developers still haven't fully implemented the ATI/AMD hardware specifications and Mesa is still behind the curve when it comes to bringing it up to OpenGL 4.2 compatibility. It is all very nice having specifications out there but if there are only 1-2 people working on implementing it then it is unrealistic to expect something beyond a bare basic driver functionality that exists today.

Secondly there needs to be a third party ecosystem that fills in the niches where the open source community aren't able to address. LibreOffice has potential but how many full time programmers are the likes of Red Hat are really dedicating to its development and maintenance? look through the bug database and the number of bugs from 10+ years ago is horrific - what is happening? The issue at stake isn't so much the lack of third party commercial software for the desktop but also the lack of man power behind some of the largest projects that underpin the whole Linux on the desktop 'movement' (if you can call it that).Edited 2012-03-03 02:18 UTC Sat, 03 Mar 2012 02:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (kaiwai) Comments RE[5]: Opinion on the open source policy of Microsoft http://www.osnews.com/thread?509440 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509440 This only works at the enterprise level.

The normal home users don't care about such support contracts. Most prefer to ask help to some friend that knows something about computers.

A big issue in the desktop is that what most users care about and is the concern of many bug reports, is not what most FLOSS developers would consider as fun work to do. Sat, 03 Mar 2012 09:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (moondevil) Comments RE[2]: free Visual studio http://www.osnews.com/thread?509463 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509463

Visual Studio Express is not crippled, you can write any type of program you want, you have full access to the full .net framework.

Yes it is crippled, they have removed powerful optimizations such as profile guided optimization and link time optimization and also openmp. Sat, 03 Mar 2012 15:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Valhalla) Comments RE: free Visual studio http://www.osnews.com/thread?509554 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509554
(Digressing..And for gawd sakes please make Python an Office macro language like in Libreoffice.)


It's called IronPython. Sun, 04 Mar 2012 12:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (moondevil) Comments RE[7]: free Visual studio http://www.osnews.com/thread?509558 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509558 I didn't know that, I wonder if they plan to replace it. Sun, 04 Mar 2012 16:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (BluenoseJake) Comments RE[2]: free Visual studio http://www.osnews.com/thread?509579 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509579 wow, thanks for tip. Sun, 04 Mar 2012 23:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (fran) Comments RE[3]: free Visual studio http://www.osnews.com/thread?509599 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509599 Once again, useful, but not required to write apps. You can use a 3rd party profiler. Or you could, buy something. Mon, 05 Mar 2012 11:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (BluenoseJake) Comments RE[2]: free Visual studio http://www.osnews.com/thread?509602 http://www.osnews.com/thread?509602 it most definitely _IS_ crippled.

Though probably usable for small student projects which is obviously the intent.

- No OpenMP support
- No building from the command line (misses tool to build a project from the command line).
- Binary incompatible when linking with debug builds of libs built in commercial MSVC. - caused me much lost time to figure this out. Mon, 05 Mar 2012 13:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (ideasman42) Comments RE[3]: free Visual studio http://www.osnews.com/thread?510038 http://www.osnews.com/thread?510038
But Xcode is still free. You can still use even if you don't join the $100 affiliate program.

Xcode is not free. Nor is any version of Visual Studio, for that matter. Apple and MS just have a bit different ways of distributing what you pay (even if, say, MS perhaps demands somewhat less overall here) Thu, 08 Mar 2012 23:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (zima) Comments