Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 18th Nov 2008 06:45 UTC, submitted by pablo_marx
Microsoft has released an initial release of version 2.0 of the Singularity operating system (research development kit, as it likes to call it). Singularity is a microkernel research operating system, where the kernel, drivers, and applications are all written in managed code. Singularity is released under a shared source academic license, and you can do whatever you want with it, except making money (simply put).
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RE[7]: First open source kernel from Microsoft!
by segedunum on Wed 19th Nov 2008 22:55
in reply to "RE[6]: First open source kernel from Microsoft!"
Member since:2005-07-06
That is exactly what I was saying. Singularity as it stands is only useful in an academic setting, the license makes it inappropriate for use in any practical way.
That's great. I hope Microsoft aren't expecting to see any outside code contributions, or even people doing anything with it. Rotor was a classic example in that regard.
MS-PL has a hell of alot of use if you are a .NET developer, which many people are.
Within a Microsoft controlled environment, possibly. The MS-PL code you see dotted around is not coming out of a .Net environment any time soon, and if you come up with a good project then Microsoft will merely come up with something closed and integrated with the next version of Visual Studio and leave your code to stagnate. It's certainly happened.
Congratulations. You just did free market research for Microsoft. I'm stunned at how much people love getting hit over the head with a frying pan, and it has even dawned on Joel Spolsky how poor the relationship is for you as a developer.
I would not be suprised if the work they did with ROTOR helped them push out a mac version of of the CLR for silverlight.
So the code they produced in Rotor helped them create a Mac version of the CLR? Errrrr, the whole point of opening source code is that you give people the freedom to do lots of things with the code, they do lots of things you could never have thought of and in return you get those ideas back and the code for them.
The DLR/IronRuby/IronPython are obvious exceptions
They're all projects funded by Microsoft.
I just can't see Microsoft having any kind of real open source community with that kind of unequal relationship, and as far as I can see, both the public and academic licenses are little more than an exercise to give the impression of 'opening source'. The only one who is going to be motivated to write MS-PL licensed code is Microsoft.
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Member since:
2006-02-05
That is exactly what I was saying. Singularity as it stands is only useful in an academic setting, the license makes it inappropriate for use in any practical way.
MS-PL has a hell of alot of use if you are a .NET developer, which many people are.
Yes. Barely anything ever gets productized directly out of MS Research. Things like singularity are created to test out ideas, those ideas are then rolled into products.
No it wasn't, but ROTOR was. It was an exercise in implementing .net on a non MS platform.
I would not be suprised if the work they did with ROTOR helped them push out a mac version of of the CLR for silverlight.
The MS-PL is generally used for code you will have great difficulty getting off Microsoft platforms like Windows and .Net, and the academic license is where the latter is possibly feasible or where they see it as a real risk.
The DLR/IronRuby/IronPython are obvious exceptions, but I agree in a general way. MS doesn't care about making their competitors lives easier, but they care alot about their developers. From a .net developer point of view, a library licensed under the MS-PL is just as useful and relevant to me as something licensed under the GPL. The MS-PL projects only exist to make life easier for people like me, and the MS-RL projects are a bone for schools to teach using microsoft technologies. Anyone who says anything different is either uninformed or lying to you.