posted by gavinjoyce(25.7k) 2 years, 4 months ago

Not quite open source, more like shared source. A great move nonetheless.

posted by gavinjoyce(25.7k) 2 years, 4 months ago

Debugging is going to be fantastic, what a nice journey it will be navigating the depths of the .NET framework while debugging.

posted by atifaziz(990) 2 years, 4 months ago

Great move, indeed, that it deserves a kick of a lifetime!

posted by benrick(1020) 2 years, 4 months ago

Yeah it isn't quite open source, but it is close enough. I wouldn't expect any more than this.

posted by jamesewelch(2265) 2 years, 4 months ago

Nice...

Need to allow users to do a double drop kick on a story once a day :)

posted by gavinjoyce(25.7k) 2 years, 4 months ago

Published to the homepage in 13 minutes - a record.

posted by jamesewelch(2265) 2 years, 4 months ago

I thought about adding that category to the Zeitgeist - Quickest articles to be published. Easy to do, just subtract the CreatedOn from the PublishedOn. Didn't think it would be very useful other than bragging rights :) I think the DNK articles would mostly be in that top 10 list, those get published pretty fast too.

posted by MichaelDotNet(450) 2 years, 4 months ago

What happens when developers begin coding around implementation details though? That's my only concern, still very cool though.

posted by yesthatmcgurk(3805) 2 years, 4 months ago

Hell, when has it not been open source? Reflector is such an awesome tool. "I wonder what this control does in this particular situation?" *reflectors* "Aaah"

posted by yesthatmcgurk(3805) 2 years, 4 months ago

Comments, too!! Now THAT is awesome.

posted by gavinjoyce(25.7k) 2 years, 4 months ago

"What happens when developers begin coding around implementation details though?"

As yesthatmcgurk says, they can already do that with reflector. It is also their problem to deal with.

"Hell, when has it not been open source?"

We can now see the code as it was written. It also indicates (to me anyway) that someone in MS is pushing the open source model internally. I hope to see a fully open source .NET framework in the future sometime (.NET 5 perhaps?).

posted by MichaelDotNet(450) 2 years, 4 months ago

@gavinjoyce,

It's true that they CAN do that will reflector. Not many do I wager. The difference now is that this code is going to be in every developer's face via VS2008 debugging.

posted by yesthatmcgurk(3805) 2 years, 4 months ago

Somebody go over to /. and see if they're freaking out.

Wait, strike that, how BAD they're freaking out.

posted by gavinjoyce(25.7k) 2 years, 4 months ago

If they link to Scott's post, I wonder will our little 'kick it' button hold up. Does it count as a slashdotting if it doesn't? ;)

posted by jamesewelch(2265) 2 years, 4 months ago

Yeah, I agree. It's always been easy to use Reflector, but I'm still amazed at how many technologists or developers think that .NET assemblies are compiled and can't be just "opened" and looked at.

I really don't think this will have a major impact on .NET in the short term, but hopefully its a small step in a better direction for future .NET products/frameworks.

posted by jamesewelch(2265) 2 years, 4 months ago

@gavinjoyce,
>If they link to Scott's post, I wonder will our little 'kick it' button hold up. Does it count as a slashdotting if it doesn't?

Might be a good time to add that image caching code to the image gen...

posted by gavinjoyce(25.7k) 2 years, 4 months ago

@james

I'm just about to leave here so I won't be able to get it done. I think it should be OK, it is loaded via javascript on Scott's blog so it won't slow his post down anyway.

posted by aquinas(20) 2 years, 4 months ago

*blink*

posted by Aaronontheweb(980) 2 years, 4 months ago

I honestly don't understand the degree of benefit this will provide to the average .NET developer.

However I am enjoying watching the idiots at ReadWriteWeb and Slashdot clown themselves over this announcement.

posted by jamesewelch(2265) 2 years, 4 months ago

I don't think that there won't be any benefit for the average developer.

And the above average developer already uses Reflector for some of this (as others pointed out above).

posted by Aaronontheweb(980) 2 years, 4 months ago

That's what I thought and wrote as much on AjaxNinja. Thanks, James.

Maybe one day after I get a few more years of experience under my belt in a professional .NET development environment (interviewed for a position today!) I'll be adept enough to appreciate this release.

posted by crpietschmann(11.1k) 2 years, 4 months ago

"We can now see the code as it was written. It also indicates (to me anyway) that someone in MS is pushing the open source model internally. I hope to see a fully open source .NET framework in the future sometime (.NET 5 perhaps?)." - gavinjoyce

We already have an Open Source .NET Framework; it's called the Mono Project (http://mono-project.com). I know it's not the same as Microsoft releasing the .NET Framework itself as full Open Source, but we don't want to forget about such a cool project.

posted by JudahGabriel(755) 2 years, 4 months ago

James and Aaron, this benefits developers in 3 ways beyond what Reflector gives us:

First, the source comments are intact, which means it becomes easier to understand .NET library source code.

Second, the code structure and local variable names are preserved.

Third, we can use the debugger to step in to .NET libraries and use the threads, locals, watch, etc. windows.

posted by cdjaco(5) 2 years, 4 months ago

Wow.

posted by marco.ragogna(0) 2 years, 4 months ago

You can use Reflector to disassemble the code but with comments included is for sure more readable =)

posted by spirit1(3140) 2 years, 4 months ago

it seems not everythign is bread and butter:
http://weblogs.asp.net/fbouma/archive/2007/10/04/don-t-look-at-the-sourcecode-of-net-licensed-under-the-reference-license.aspx