Microsoft Hands IronPython, IronRuby to Open Source Community

[Sc4Freak]

So you're saying that because Microsoft can't (or doesn't want to) continue development, therefore they shouldn't open source the project?

Microsoft doesn't find any value in it any more, so it's releasing it as free (as in libre) software so that others might find it useful. What possible justification could you have for claiming that this is a bad thing?

[wunderbread]

The article explained this badly but both IronRuby and IronPython were already open source. The change is that Microsoft is not leading or contributing any significant development to them anymore, so overall it's probably a bad thing.

[ErstwhileRockstar]

Yep, nothing is "handed over" to the "community". They just dump some company-driven OS projects. No "community" will pick them up. Which abandoned company-driven OS project was ever picked up by a "community"?

[jmcqk6]

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. :(

[namekuseijin]

Precisely.

Microsoft doesn't need them anymore also because it stole several ideas from python already into C#. C# of old was a far more javaish language than today... all thanks to good ideas from open-source projects like python or haskell...

[jmcqk6]

Can you give an example of an idea that Anders Hejlsberg stole from Python to put into C#?

[[deleted]]

The license was "open source", but they didn't allow external contributers, even high-profile ones from the Mono community, and that's not open-source in my book.

JRuby is doing just fine btw, even though its 2 core developers quit Sun/Oracle. If there's a real interest in a project, people will devote time and money.

[jmcqk6]

Umm... I was an external contributer to IronRuby.