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Comment by johncolanduoni | Hacker News Reader

With their release of CoreCLR[1], which combined with the class libraries, I think there is a lot of reason to look at .NET on UNIX. The implementation includes the same JIT and GC that the .NET framework uses, it just cuts out a bunch of bits that likely wouldn't be relevant to people developing server backends (WPF, AppDomains, etc.).

For server stuff, .NET is now close to the level of openness and compatibility that the OpenJDK enjoys. If you like C# or F# better than Java, there is plenty of reason to switch.

[1]: https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr

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I think this is the same problem Google had with Motorola. Sure, Google was playing nice. But the OEMs are afraid how long Google would be playing nice until Google decide to favor it's own phone-making division? Same applies here. How long MS is going to play nice before they decide to favor their own platform. Needless to mention, MS's past history isn't going to help much either.

There is some risk that they'll take it back closed source since its MIT licensed (with patent grant) and their CLA[1] gives them a broad copyright license. However, I think with such a high-quality implementation being open source would be hard to put back in the bottle, especially since Mono is already integrating much of the code into their runtime[2]. On the other hand, external contributions to the Mono runtime are MIT licensed so that project could jump back to closed source if Xamarin so desires.

It's important to note that all of this applies to the OpenJDK too[3]. So you are at least no worse off if you make a leap from the JVM.

[1]: https://cla2.dotnetfoundation.org/cladoc/net-foundation-cont...

[2]: http://www.mono-project.com/docs/about-mono/dotnet-integrati...

[3]: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/oca-405177.pdf

edit: word choice

You may be right, I don't know. I suppose the acid test is when YC companies start posting for front-end developers with C#, .NET and UNIX experience versus what's required today, i.e. either node.js, django, ruby, etc.

Why YC companies? There are lots of other startups out there (some of which even using .NET).

Ah, great question. I sort of view the YC guys as cutting edge, i.e. willing and able to adopt new and sometimes still changing technology. In contrast to a Fortune 500 shop which in my humble opinion is unlikely to adopt a wholesale change to a new technology.

No, the acid test is if the big companies that have invested heavily into java start to adopt .net in meaningful ways.

Well, if they've got large existing Java codebases, I suspect the chance of the enterprise crowd investing in any new language is roughly zero.

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