[dtech]

Microsoft has been going away from that path for quite a while now, ever since Balmer left. For example the .NET runtime now runs on BSD/Unix/Mac OS X and sql server was released for Linux.

Ultimately it is still in the interest of Microsoft if their toolchain is interesting because it is compatible among all target devices (PC, Xbox, PS, Mobile) so I'm unsurprised they are moving in that direction.

[wolfgke]

> For example the .NET runtime now runs on BSD/Unix/Mac OS X

Under Balmer's time, there already publicly existed Microsoft Rotor - a .net runtime that ran under FreeBSD and OS X:

> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Shared_Source_Com...

So don't do a corruption of historical facts.

[dtech]

You're being really pedantic when you say there was already Microsoft support for .Net on non-windows platform.

It was a unsupported (no release after 2006) bare fork of the runtime that couldn't be used commercially [2]. Would you have corrected me if I stated "Internet Explorer doesn't run on Mac Os X" just because there is a version of it from 2003?

Especially when you compare it to a large part of the toolchain including compiler and runtime under a MIT license that builds to multiple platforms from the same codebase [1], that's not even in the same league.

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

[2]: From your own "This license [...] allows for personal or academic usages, but they can't be used for commercial products"

[wolfgke]

> Would you have corrected me if I stated "Internet Explorer doesn't run on Mac Os X" just because there is a version of it from 2003?

Without kidding: I actually know Apple fanatics who use this to "point out" that Internet Explorer does run on OS X and use the argument that this version is from 2003 to show how badly Microsoft treats Apple users. :-)

[josephcooney]

While you're technically correct, ROTOR hadn't received any updates for a long time, and the source was licensed in such a was as to make sure anyone who could benefit from it running on *NIX platforms was heavily incentivized not to do so.

[krylon]

IIRC, Rotor's license explicitly forbade porting it to Linux.

The impression I got back then was not so much of Microsoft showing how "cross-platform" .Net was, more like a big middle finger towards Linux.

[my123]

.NET Core on Linux runs on guess what... Rotor. Rotor has been relicensed to MIT

[my123]

.NET Core on Linux and macOS runs on Rotor, as does ChakraCore.

[my123]

.NET Core works on Rotor for Linux and macOS, right. Silverlight for macOS also works on Rotor AFAIK.