Microsoft Releases Source to .NET Framework Core

[whabang]

In an attempt to improve its appeal among the academic community, Microsoft on Wednesday released the Shared Source CLI, a beta implementation of the ECMA standard on which the .NET Framework is based. Code-named "Rotor," the almost 1.9 million lines of source code constitutes the internal workings of the .NET Framework, and has been released with developers and academia in mind. Although the code may not be redistributed for commercial purposes, students and teachers are encouraged to explore and modify Rotor.

Read more

Just for the press or an attempt to really do something good?

[Rodney]

Of course this is just an attempt to clean up their image, but hell, i say it works!!! I mean, this is a very generous thing for MS to do.

If i'd just wrote this huge bloody, possible brilliant applications thats possibly going to make billions of dollars, i wouldnt let people see the code :}

[Coder]

Microsoft and free? That's like me and a raise. It does not make sence.

Coder

[jd997uk]

M$ are just being bloody clever here. Just like in their recent court dealings, when they offered to "give away" $millions worth of PC's and software to schools (which was accepted until Apple and others pointed out that it gave M$ an unfair advantage as it would bias the kids against anything other than M$). What their doing here is simply bug (read: FLAW) hunting on a huge scale. After all tomorrows HaKeRz 'n CrAkErZ are todays students, so it makes perfect sense to get them to do all the hard work of flushing out all the many problems that M$ 'build-in' to their products.

-john

[RexxMast]

Heh?

What they are actually doing is this. They have 1.9
million lines of buggy bloated pathetic code. What
they are hoping, is that all these people will take this
crap that they have written, improve it and fix the
hundreds of thousands of bugs for free, before they
plug the plug on this act of kindness.

Actually, this is nothing new. People have killed themselves
to pay to beta test Micorsoft products for years, now
they are just letting someone do it for free!

How kind!

[System]

Its a big PR stunt with no real content, classic Microsoft.

Theyre using it to make open source noises but without actually releasing anything of use into the open source community.

If you look at the licence agreement, you're basically only allowed to look at the source but not make any derivative works from it or what you learn from reading it. Practically useless!

[Chathurawind]

They are trying to create a generation of programmers familiar with .NET.  It is an attempt to push .NET into dominance.

[Methuselas]

They are trying to create a generation of programmers familiar with .NET. It is an attempt to push .NET into dominance

Once again, Big Brother rears its ugly head.  :-?

[Fats]

I don't have read the license but it may even be worse. Students who have studied on such a university may become tainted for life so they never can co-operate on projects like MONO (GPL'ed CLI) and things like that.

[System]

HOw about setting up a global protest?!!  :-)