You could always get the .NET Framework Library Source code with Lutz Roeder's .NET Reflectorand Reflector.FileDisassembler but now Microsoft went and licensed it to us. They also included comments and made it easy to debug into it, which is really cool.
The source is Reference Licensed, which means you can read it, but you can't use it. So unlike Delphi's VCL/RTL source code, you can't make an enhancement in the framework and recompile and ship. Nor can you build on the code in new and creative ways.
Interestingly, they changed the Reference License to specifically exclude anyone working from the Mono project to look at the source code (or to forfeit their legal ability to contribute if they do). But if the .NET Framework clone is for the windows platform, you can look all you want. Under the unmodified license, if you looked at the code, you couldn't build similar functionality on any platform. Now they only prohibit it on non-Windows platforms. So I wonder . . . If someone looked at the code to work on a Windows port of Mono, it would seem that would be permitted under the license. Then someone could take the new inspired code, and use that in a non-Windows port of the Windows port of Mono. Hmmm . . . I am not a lawyer, nor have a read the license, but it is an interesting proposition.
5 comments:
In fact, Mono guys have no interests in Microsoft's implementation at all. And if I need to implement something using CLR source code, I rather use Mono's because it is real open source.
Now they went end copied Borland/CodeGear's policy of making the RTL/VCL sources available to their customers (which they have done since Delphi 1). Microsoft sure are inventive. ;-)
You can only 'enhance' the VCL so long as Borland says it is ok -- Borland reserves the right to revoke that privilege -- and has done so in the past (and not so distant past).
I know of one company that I worked at, got acquired, then had to re-released their product soon after. The 'enhanced' version removed the customized version of the vcl, and removed any features that relied on it. Why? Because Borland didn't like the company that acquired the software.
Not much of an enhancement.
Chris, if you read the license on the VCL code, that, there is no basis for what you are talking about, however, there are parts of the VCL that were never licensed for redistribution in modified or unmodified versions. For a while that was unenforced though. Most likely what happened is that after they were purchased they were raised up on Borland's radar and they became aware of the fact that they were including unlicensed code.
Either way, Microsoft is NOT Allowing you to incorporate their code as it is under a REFERENCE license. So they are still years behind Borland/CodeGear and Delphi in this regard.
Özel EğitimÖzel Eğitim sitesi Bayan
teşekkürler
Post a Comment