[jdmichal]

Microsoft even made the C# language specification ECMA and ISO standards. The ECMA process started shortly after the first commercial release. I'm pretty sure if they had just talked to the Microsoft guys, they would have realized everything would be fine.

[taneq]

You have to remember that Microsoft is a very different beast today than they were back in 2005.

[jdmichal]

Not really relevant to this particular conversation. C# was commercially released in July 2000. The ECMA standardization committee was founded in September of the same year. Writing began in January 2003, and the standard officially adopted in June 2006. This is all described in the standard:

http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/files/ECMA-ST...

There's also a standard for CLI (Common Language Infrastructure), which is the underpinning of the .NET platform:

http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/files/ECMA-ST...

[taneq]

I didn't say C# was released after this time, I said Microsoft is a different beast now. They've made a significant swing towards open source and embracing the OSS community. Back in 2005 they still very much thought they ruled the world and could get away with anything.

[jdmichal]

Your opinion on 2005 Microsoft is great and all, but I still don't see its application to this exact conversation. From 2006 and on, anyone could implement a C# compiler and runtime from the ECMA standard with absolutely no barriers from Microsoft. This was the result of a process that started in 2000, a few months after the official release of the language.

[onli]

I think it is relevant. The Microsoft of that time (and it is debatable how much that changed) is not one company on which you'd rely on for a cooperation in such a project. There is no telling which tricks MS might have used to make money out of it – the same way Oracle's API copyright bullshit was a trick to make money. Don't forget that Microsoft uses patents to extort a share of many android phones sold, see http://uk.businessinsider.com/microsoft-android-patent-licen.... I thought that had stopped by now, but that article is from april…

[zamalek]

> Microsoft uses patents

So does Google, so does Apple and so does Samsung. If you don't protect your rights they will be taken away. The mobile market is in a state of mutually assured destruction. The fault lies with our broken patent system and all the players in that market: not Microsoft alone.