[macintux]

I asked on Twitter long ago for any prominent examples of open source software that originated on Windows and transitioned to other platforms. I think after some discussion we may have come up with an example. Maybe. I certainly can't recall what it was.

[saosebastiao]

And to the other extreme, I know of quite a few open source projects on .NET that have gone proprietary. ServiceStack anyone? Kinda leaves a little bit of a bitter taste in the mouth.

[locusm]

Well, V3 is still open from memory and very capable.

[axus]

PuTTY! For some reason, it was the only software that would reliably communicate on the serial port of one particular Linux system I was using.

[CmonDev]

http://MonoGame.net

[ironman1478]

Chromium started on windows (it wasn't a .NET project, but you only said windows).

[jameshart]

Well, now that Microsoft's open sourced ASP.NET and working on .NET Core, you can add ".NET" to that list.

[m_fayer]

Reactive Extensions and ReactiveUI.

[innguest]

I'm a programmer who started with VB6 on Windows 98 and now I don't even own a partition with Windows installed.

When I programmed VB6 I used to go to Planet Source Code (a website) to see what others had done. There was a lot of beginner code samples being posted which helped newbies like me at the time to learn the ropes. Then there were also a few gems from which I learned a lot over a few weeks of studying the same code base.

Despite my going back there to see what the community was doing, I never thought of PSC as a place where I can find functions I'm missing. I always used the MSDN library for that (it was incredibly helpful with nice examples). In other words, my mental model was: there's VB6 which comes with all functions I'll ever need (it could call any Win32 API function) and then there's PSC where I go hang out with other people that also code VB6 who want to show or share or teach something to the community.

Fast-forward to today - the main language I use at work is Ruby, and it is emblematic of the traits shared by all open-source languages: they do not come with "all functions", in fact most core functions (or what I would consider "core") have been delegated to libraries ("gems" as Ruby calls them). The difference is that my mental model of open-source languages is that they come with barebones functionality and expect the community to contribute with core functions, to the point where basic functionality like HTTP requests have several different libraries modeling the same behavior.

Even though I work solely in open-source languages nowadays, I miss the times where as a programmer I could expect my programming language to be self-sufficient in terms of its environment and its functions. A language should bring as many pre-made functions as possible, and guarantee that they work as expected and amongst each other. I should not be expected to rely on unpaid workers for core functionality, documentation, tooling, etc.

It is a spectrum. On one end (let's call this side "left") you have Small Scheme and Forth and other barebones languages; on the other end (the "right" side of the spectrum) you have giants like SAP and TIBCO. I'd say Ruby leans to the left and VB6 leaned to the right. I'd also pay very good money for a modern, individual-programmer oriented TIBCO-like environment.