this is now a totally honest question - when did MS harvest the time and effort of free programmers for their own good? I dont know of such a case and if provided i would really like to read into it. At the moment i see the only company doing that sort of thing is Google (at least of those doing it on a larger scale). They wait for a free and or open source software to grow and then SMACK copy it to make it THEIR invention. See Chrome, Google Earth, Google code (one thing i REALLY hate is Google code! Thats such a rip off of Sourceforge..)
I have never seen Microsoft doing something even similar - but i am always ready to be tought differently - but as long as this is not happening i still see no reason for hating MS or .Net because of their way of raising prices just as demand is raising.
And i wouldnt compare Sparkfun/Arduino to MS as Sparkfun and Arduino are small nieche hardware providers that have to go hand in hand with a certain community (and honestly - in case of the makers of the Arduino this is, in my opinion, not happening at all..) but Microsoft.. if they would hire free programmers, enable them to modify code, write modules or whatever they would end up being a mess like Linux is (this is the downside of Linux: It is not compatible enough with existing hard/software). sure it'd be better to have more community based parts in windows, a decent wm for 3rd party stuff would be great.. but maybe this is happening with Singularity in a few years anyway.. but all in all Microsoft is investing a shitload of money in their intellectual property - so are others to dictate what they can do or what not?
I cannot give you any convincing example of that.
My point was not about harvesting the results but the energy! The result does not matter in the end. Windows Forms, Silverlight, anything, just provide an alternative and lure developers. It's a form of a divide and conquer tactics. If (big-open-source-project-here) gets attention from some people with a will to contribute, then give them something else to contribute to - a new big and prospective development platform for example - .NET. What is wrong with Java? Or plain C for that matter? Which is more important - the result or what tools were used?
Having a ready open source product and providing it in new packaging (for free) is absolutely OK for me. That was the initial intention that went into it anyway - to be used somehow. And google actively invests development efforts and contributes back to the projects they use. WebKit is growing because of google and apple, not dying!
And the comparison of companies was not about size, but about practices. Being close to your users on one hand and being a big, greedy, anonymizing everything around you behemoth.
when did MS harvest the time and effort of free programmers for their own good?
You have not researched the Microsoft Bristol connection. And this is not a hate Microsoft or hate .NET discussion at all. It's about knowing when you are being used as a tool and knowing what rights you have using the software you are using. Read about Bristol, Mainsoft and the others, about what happened when Microsoft got the market share they wanted/needed, and what it did to all those customers who bought into the belief that their software had a future in Win32 source on UNIX platforms. And then look around at what people are saying about Mono and what Microsoft will not say about .NET licensing and patents regarding Mono. I gave you the example, get educated about what it means.
Ok. I think this is getting a little bit out of the topic.
And just for the sake of putting this back on topic I want to state that this project has for me (the current developer) some objectives:
1 – Being fun to develop and work with
2 – Give some contribute to the community
3 – Give some taste of the open source to the windows users (open source is not just Linux and Un*ix or 100% portable software)
4 – Open the mind of the people that I work with to the joy of open source
With does 4 objectives in mind I just want to clarify some things:
I really believe and admire the mono project, I've been following it since the start. The contribute of Miguel Icaza (one of the fathers of gnome) to the open source community, GNU and Linux is – in my opinion – indisputable. So if someone can port this project or any other open .net project to mono I will be a supporter of that effort.
Software is in fact a religion but I'm agnostic! (sorry about that)
(Lets continue this discussion in the bar?)
Good idea Curs0r - i will return back to topic. ;0)
;o)
it's interesting that just like a discussion in US politics of topics considered Democratic, Republicans will veer to bringing up Clinton when something becomes uncomfortable to accept. I've seen MS sympathizers veer to bringing up Google in the same way. It's a strange phenomenon and I've now seen it in a number of .NET discussions.
Maybe a group think thing or maybe the conversation stepped outside the comfort zone of one side but either way, it definitely is not a sign of an independent thinker.
regarding #3:
3 – Give some taste of the open source to the windows users (open source is not just Linux and Un*ix or 100% portable software)
would it not have been better to show them how working with an existing open source project enables everyone to enjoy the rewards? Or is your interest in open source personal satisfaction of some sort?
You really should have just stopped before the list of why you're doing this .NET Arduino project because it now looks like you are motivated because of its tie to Windows.
4 – Open the mind of the people that I work with to the joy of open source
Creating your own project does not show anybody the joy of open source unless you get someone to help. That's an interesting way to attempt to show your coworkers the joy of open source when you have no idea if anybody will help you. Sorry but it sounds like a fake and reactionary response and not very well thought out at the very least.
Software is in fact a religion but I'm agnostic! (sorry about that)
So you think software is a religion and you want to continue to spread the belief that MS .NET is legal to use without a Microsoft license? You obviously do not really want to put this back on topic.
Dougl,
You still seem to think you have some right to dictate what someone else does with their time. You don't. If you think he's wasting his time, courting a law suit from Microsoft or whatever then fine, you've warned him; now you can walk away having done your civic duty and forget about this (to you) worthless project.
And it's open source even if only one person works on it as long as they're making the source available for other people to use if they wish. Remind me again how many people worked on the Linux kernel right at the very beginning?
Andrew
You still seem to think you have some right to dictate what someone else does with their time. You don't. If you think he's wasting his time, courting a law suit from Microsoft or whatever then fine, you've warned him; now you can walk away having done your civic duty and forget about this (to you) worthless project.
Do you people even read any of my posts? I'm talking about those who keep twisting this into an anti-Microsoft, anti-Google, hate this, hate that type of junk. Nowhere have I ever stated what anyone should do with there time or that they should not work on this project, or any project. And I've stated at least a couple times that the issue is with people in this forum stating or believing that this is in anyway a cross platform project. That's it. And my comments of other languages were in the context of their cross platform capabilities and legalities so where that sideways comment about Python came from is another amazing stretch of someones imagination. Once again, do what you want, just don't go saying things that are not true about what the project is, it a Windows-only Arduino IDE. That's it.
And it's open source even if only one person works on it as long as they're making the source available for other people to use if they wish. Remind me again how many people worked on the Linux kernel right at the very beginning?
Dude, read the context of the comment! GAWD! I'm sure Linus was doing the Linux kernel to give his buddies "a taste of what open source is". Yeah, that's the ticket, he was so into showing off this open source stuff to his friends that he started a kernel. Get real. Someone needs to pass out the ADD and/or ADHD pills.
FYI - here's a nice little quote from Microsoft on .NET and Mono and MS patents made by Microsoft President Bob Muglia -
There is a substantive effort in open source [sic] to bring such an implementation of .Net to market, known as Mono and being driven by Novell, and one of the attributes of the agreement we made with Novell is that the intellectual property [sic] associated with that is available to Novell customers.
I can now only imagine how this is somehow going to be twisted into something tied to Apple or some other unrelated issue.
LOL: really I don't have patience for this... I just don't know if I want to give up or just Laugh?
I don't get your point? and I don't want to any more?
I was just looking to gtk# and then to wxNet (because of look and feel) then before i read this post? for one “second” tough that? Maybe if I just go with the ECMA part I will be ok? but no, this is FUD actually?
Going to play my guitar at 35 years old its simpler... LOL
It looks like you are doing a good job. Personally, I wouldn't be using Arduino at all if it weren't multi-platform. Anything .net is of no interest to me.
I'm not crazy about the editor in the IDE and I use BBEdit for most of my projects.
Curs0r: (and others who need to know)
I had the problem that Scilex.dll fired an exception although it was in System32.
Problem as solved quite simple: I only needed a reboot (could have thought of that earlier) - maybe some other people have the same problem (Vista x64).
So i have had my first glance at the IDE: GREAT WORK! Keep it up and dont let yourself distracted!
I've uploaded an installer for the 0.1.0015 alpha version of the sketch editor at
http://code.google.com/p/skedit/downloads/list
I've just tested the installer in my machines. so if you find any problem or bug just drop me a note or a bug report.
This version needs winAVR installed: http://winavr.sourceforge.net/
Disclaimer:
Sketch Editor is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
See the GNU General Public License for more details: Licenses - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation
The are some bugs in the current version due to some changes in the working directory.
I'am preparing another release soon
[Edit]I've uploaded a small update to google code: Google Code Archive - Long-term storage for Google Code Project Hosting.
[Edit]I will start a major code review today before i release 0.1.0015.4 alpha (version 0.1.0015.3 was another small update fix)[/Edit]
Pedro
I'm an experienced software developer who might be interested in some basic emulation for step-through debugging. I'm really just looking into how feasible this project might be (beyond the obvious simulation part).
Does anyone know how to get avr-gcc/g++ to output debug information? Everywhere I look says it's not supported (yet). Without this information, this is definitely not do-able.
Yes AVR gcc provides debug information in coff format and into the elf... i've step debug avr gcc code in AvrStudio with the built in simulator.
There is also an option to use gdb and simulavr but simuavr is outdated (and i never tryed it)
Just found another conversation http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1196617535/0 that talks about how to do exactly that. It looks a little stale, but if I can get it to debug, I'll have saved myself a lot of work! 
Curs0r, the editor looks great!
Is there a todo list for this project? What are the next steps?
There might be some developers out there (including me) who want to support this project. Maybe you can explain your classes somewhere and add some comments to the source code so it is easier for others to participate?
But all in all it looks very nice! Thank you.
..anything new on development?
I love this program and I don't understand why this thread has turned into some sort of hate thread aimed at pissing off curs0r and MSFT, some one said they liked Arduino because it is multi-platform, .NET isn't on linux so I don't care attitude! This is completely stupid, many people use Windows and .NET makes more complex projects like this accessible to many developers to tackle, even if you don't use this your self it adds awareness to how sucky the Processing IDE currently is, after all it was never designed for this sort of use.
I will take this opportunity to thank curs0r for the great program and for his time. And I would also like the people who used this thread to rant about MSFT and .NET to feel ashamed of themselves for dropping to such a disgusting level.
Regards,
/me