Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 17th Jan 2008 15:27 UTC, submitted by jayson.knight
"Last October I blogged about our plan to release the source code to the .NET Framework libraries, and enable debugging support of them with Visual Studio 2008. Today I'm happy to announce that this is now available for everyone to use. Specifically, you can now browse and debug the source code for the following .NET Framework libraries."
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Member since:2005-11-02
Member since:2005-07-22
Fair enough: you're probably right.
However, everthing depends on legal interpretation.
I can think of several scenarios that would be worth investigating.
1) Someone used the source code in a way permitted by the licence. They document their findings. What stops the Mono devs using these documents?
2) Someone in a nation where the licence has no legal standing to document what the code does. Can these documents be used by the Mono devs?
Naturally, until proven otherwise, I must agree with you. Nevertheless, the possibilities are intriguing.
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Member since:
2005-07-22
As a .Net dev this is the best news I have had in a long time.
Why?
1. The behaviour of the library is not always well documented. MSDN is notoriously bad in some areas. Being able to read the source code enables the dev to understand *exactly* what the libraries are doing, how to use them, why they are there and when to use them.
2. It enables devs to *verify* the existence of suspected bugs lin the framework, and to work with MS to resolve them (or at least to document them and their work-arounds).
3. It gives us the oportunity to learn from the people who developed the framework by looking at the techniques they have used.
4. It can provide insight into the reasons *why* the routines in the framework behave in particular ways.
5. It *could* enable clean-room development for the Mono devs. (INAL)
6. It will spawn a whole lot articles on all aspects of the framework, many of which will be instructive and become essential reading.
7. It will lead to more secure code. Security vulnerabilities in the framework will become known, understood, worked-around and patch.
8. Some of us are just interested because we like that sort of thing.
Couldn't we already get these benefits with Reflector? Of course we've been able to see decompile the source for a long time using Reflector (it is a wonderful tool), but that is no substitute for reading the original code with MS comments in, and being able to step through code in the debugger.
I don't always like Microsoft (I think many of their products are actuall quite poor, and really hate many of the policies that they have persued over the years) but .Net is actually rather good, and this is the best thing MS has ever done to enhance it.
Well done, Microsoft.