Hellloooooooo, is there anyone there?

[Peter O'Hanlon]

As this has been quiet for such a long time, I thought I'd just fire a random thought out there and see what responses it engenders.

What would happen if Microsoft were to make WPF and Silverlight Open Source? Given the, still healthy, interest in these platforms, there could well be traction in seeing them developed, so what would the practicalities be that stopped this happening?

And yes, I would like to see them as OSS.

--
Peter O'Hanlon

[Michael Sync]

Hi Peter, 

I did request it to Microsoft once or twice but didn't get any reply.

I think if they make Silverlight open source, they will have to make .NET framework (at least BCL ) open source as well.. 

Thanks and Best Regards,
Michael Sync

Don't go the way life takes you.
Take life the way you go

http://michaelsync.net

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[Colin E.]

Can you hear me Major Tom?

Funnily enough I did a talk a couple of days ago on HTML5 and cross-platform mobile development, afterwards one of the audience members came up to me and asked "You were a WPF Disciple weren't you?". 

To your question, making them open source would be a nice gesture, but would not make much of a difference to me. The open sourcing of Flex Apache hasn't stopped developers leaving the platform in droves.

The thing that keeps bugging me was WPF was very mature, as was Silverlight. Neither product needs any significant further development work in order to make them a great platform to work on. What they need is backing from Microsoft.

Both WPF and Silverlight have been sidelined, and replaced with something that in my opinion is a big step backwards. A few years ago I was giving talks where I painted a picture of a rosy future, with Silverlight and WPF heading for convergence, unifying the plugin model, Windows Phone and desktop development. Did we reach that point? erm ... no.

Whilst the world around us has changed, and the plugin model is well and truly in demise, there is still a need for a cohesive platform for development of phone, tablet and desktop apps. There is still a need for a mature framework, with great tooling and portability of code. Unfortunately Microsoft is failing to deliver.

Colin E.

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Regards,
Colin E.

[Peter O'Hanlon]

Interesting Colin. Michael, I believe the BCL was made available as MS Reference Library.

I still have developers approach me about WPF, and there's still a lot of traction there - what people seem to be wanting to see is that there's a future vision for the platforms, even if it's community driven. And Silverlight has a huge amount of love surrounding it - this could be a huge PR coup from MS, if they were looking to regain the trust of devs who have felt badly burned by successive //build/ conferences.

Peter O'Hanlon

[Laurent Bugnion]

I don’t think that WPF was replaced. Anyone who thinks that Windows Store apps are a replacement for WPF doesn’t understand what Windows Store apps are. I always talk about them as a complement, another platform to support in addition to a desktop app. I don’t think that anyone should stop developing their desktop apps and work on Windows Store app instead. It is an additional platform, and all the apps we see there for the moment are a confirmation of this.

 

We and others in the industry that I talked to see a lot of interest in WPF app development. Actually more interest now than ever before. The fact is, there is nothing better in the moment to build desktop apps.

 

As for Silverlight, there was an interesting discussion on another private forum (I cannot mention which because of NDA) where it was argued that Silverlight is probably the most stable Microsoft platform there is, considering the long support period and the maturity of the product J I would have no problems advising a client to start a new Silverlight project, but the fact is that Microsoft (well, Sinofsky really) gave that brand a bad name and that people are worried about it. I think that Microsoft could reverse the steam with two simple actions: 1) support Silverlight in the browser on Windows RT (having Flash only is just ridiculous and cannot be justified), and 2) give a bit of marketing love to SL, for example showing how much faster and easier it is to build anything in SL than in HTML/JS. Honestly I don’t even care about adding new features, SL5 is already so good and mature that I can live without anything new in it.

 

On the plus side, I keep hearing some really good things about XAML and it is clear to me that this family of technologies as a whole has a bright future.

 

Cheers

Laurent

--

Laurent Bugnion Senior Director, Europe, IdentityMine
Microsoft Regional Director and MVP | +41 79 537 78 08

www.identitymine.com | www.galasoft.ch

   

[Colin E.]

Hi Laurent,

I totally agree with you that Desktop is still relevant, and it is the environment that most of us use for our 9-to-5 spent sat at the desk. And I completely agree that WPF is *the* technology to use for desktop development and I don't hesitate to recommend it to people. I have been asked by quite a few people "We have a WPF app, do we need to port it to HTML5 now?", to which my answer is most often "No". Porting from WPF to HTML5 just for the sake of it is a world of pain!

But Silverlight? I'd certainly think twice about recommending that technology. The entire point of an app being browser based is to extend its reach, to allow people to use it on a variety of platforms without the need for deployment. Unfortunately the reach of Silverlight is decreasing rather than increasing. 

This is nothing to do with the maturity of Silverlight, it is in all honestly the most mature and best UI framework I think I have ever used. It is simply the world around Silverlight that has changed. Google, Apple and even Microsoft do not see a future for the plugin model. I don't see any evidence that this will change.

Colin E.

[Laurent Bugnion]

Sorry, I didn't mean in browser Silverlight for new development, but out of browser, which is most apps we made anyway. Of course each project deserves a careful weighing of interests but in the right conditions, it is still a good way to go. After all we know that SL will still run in 2021, what about .NET? Heck what about HTML for that matter?

For in browser, I still think that supporting SL in the Windows RT devices should be the way to go. It annoys me to no end when I cannot use a site with SL on my Surface RT, but I can use Flash. It just doesn't make sense.

Cheers
Laurent

---

From: Colin E.
Sent: ‎16.‎05.‎2013 10:38

[Michael Sync]

Yes Peter. It's in MS Reference Library. It's not open source that everyone can contribute, right? 

If I remember correctly, the code in symbol server and the code in SDK are not sync as well. 

Thanks and Best Regards,
Michael Sync

Don't go the way life takes you.
Take life the way you go

http://michaelsync.net

[Karl Shifflett]

Hi Gang,

 

Great to hear from everyone, hope all is well.

 

<Rant>

  <Rant.Text>

Microsoft has been a ship with a broken rudder for some time.  WPF is a casualty of very poor leadership and management.  WPF is easily the best platform for desktop business applications. Some how they got some to see the new stuff has “new and improved.”  How ridiculous.

 

The real sin is Microsoft is shooting itself in the foot by not championing its VERY successful desktop platform.  Again, just very poor leadership and business management.  To be clear, championing does not equate to changing all the time (another great sin).

 

I’m grateful for people like Sam Bent who have done a super job after management walked away from their WPF platform.

  </Rant.Text>

</Rant>

 

OK, I’m back to normal, smiling and being productive working on my huge WPF application.

 

Best to everyone!

 

kdawg

Daily WPF Developer of very complex Manufacturing Software

 

From: Michael Sync

Sent: Thursday, May 16, 2013 4:26 AM

To: WPF Disciples

Subject: Re: [WPF Disciples] Hellloooooooo, is there anyone there?

 

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Regards,
Colin E.

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Peter O'Hanlon

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[Peter O'Hanlon]

Eloquently ranted there sir. I'm still continuing to show my WPF love.

How are you doing my fine sir?

---

From: Karl Shifflett
Sent: 16/05/2013 14:06

[Karl Shifflett]

Hey Pete,

 

So good to hear from you.  I’m doing well here in Idaho.  Love the culture here.  Great place to ride my Harley and ATV, not to mention the super outdoor shooting ranges.

 

I’ve got to dive back into ASP.NET MVC 4 land for a website I’m doing for my church.  Have to go back and read the Project Silk book we wrote when I was at P & P.

 

I’m hoping to come to the UK next year, be nice to hook up with you and Sacha.

 

Best,

 

Karl

[Colin Blair]

WCF RIA Services has been going through the process of being open sourced for the last 7 months. Getting management to sign off on it happened pretty quickly considering they were in the middle of releasing Windows 8 at the time. The delay since then has been waiting for the lawyers to approve it. Considering how small WCF RIA Services is compared to Silverlight as a whole, I am not sure how long it would take to get through the legal process.

 

The best advice I can give about getting Microsoft to open source something that they don’t have active plans for is to come up with your own plan. I put together a roadmap for the future of Open RIA Services that showed exactly what my long term plans are. A plan supplies Microsoft with cover as just dumping code out there as open source looks bad and it helps gain you a champion inside Microsoft who can push things along.

 

From: wpf-di...@googlegroups.com [mailto:wpf-di...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Peter O'Hanlon

Sent: Thursday, May 16, 2013 1:58 AM
To: WPF Disciples

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[Sacha's Gmail]

I'd love to see you Karl. For me wpf is alive and well I get called about 4 times a week for jobs wanting wpf guys.

Looks fine from where I'm sitting

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[Peter O'Hanlon]

Colin, that's a great idea. It's definitely one to think about, and see what we can put together. I'm sure the vNext forums have plenty of raw material lying around.

It would be interesting to here what Pete Brown has to say on this.

--
Peter O'Hanlon

[Peter O'Hanlon]

There's definitely love for WPF in the community. We just need to get the feeling that the loving is still there from Microsoft.

And yeah, Karl, it would be uber-cool to catch up with you man.

--
Peter O'Hanlon

[Colin E.]

Hi Sacha,

I don't doubt that WPF is going to keep paying the bills for many more years!

Colin E.

--
Regards,
Colin E.

[Michael Sync]

Hello,

Are you hiring still wpf guys in company?  Wpf and sl developers are losing jobs day by day in Singapore.. I like to know if there is any company that want to hire wpf guy and can help in arranging work visa.. Thanks guys!

---

From: Colin E.
Sent: 17/5/2013 3:24 PM
To: wpf-di...@googlegroups.com

[Colin E.]

Are we still hiring WPF guys? Yes, although we do not have much demand from our clients for WPF development - although this is a reflection of our client-base ... as Sacha and Laurent point out there is a lot of WPF work going on out there.

I don't tend to pigeon hole developers based on their technology experience. A skilled WPF developer can typically turn their hand to any other technology if they are given the time and the motivation.

Regarding work visas - haven't got the foggiest, that's not my area!

[Michael Sync]

Thanks for your reply, Colin!

Id love to hear from other folks here as well.

---

From: Colin E.
Sent: 17/5/2013 6:05 PM

[The entire original message is not included.]

[Brennon Williams]

You know what is funny guys, as much as they want it to go away, it just cant.

I am working on a solution for MSFT at present, which just cant be done without WPF. That is the server and client configuration components.

The even funnier thing is that this is for Win 8 client applications for an installation - some genius thought it would be great to create an SDK from a Windows Runtime Component... yes sounds great in theory, but practically - completely useless.

Any ways, I still always head straight to a WPF solution when I need to test something, knock out a prototype or just want to check some logic... 

All good..

Hope youre all well!

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From: "Michael Sync" <mchl...@gmail.com>
Sent: 17 May 2013 12:12
To: "wpf-di...@googlegroups.com" <wpf-di...@googlegroups.com>

[Peter O'Hanlon]

Long time no hear Brennon. It's good to hear that you still have the love. It almost seemed as though most had moved to different platforms, this list had become that quiet.

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From: Brennon Williams
Sent: 17/05/2013 15:17
To: wpf-di...@googlegroups.com

[Corrado Cavalli]

Think we’re all just busy with different XAML incarnations… ;-)

[Michael Brown]

There’s a lot of movement around WPF in the market from what I’m seeing. It’s caught some traction at the Fortune 500 companies, especially those with rich data visualization needs (Finance, Energy, Logistics). If you’re doing desktop development, it’s a no brainer.

 

I’m excited about the platform still. I’m also happy that even though WinRT is another entry in the ring, at least what we’ve been doing for the past 7 years still applies. I’m interested in seeing what Build brings. Hopefully, they skip over the discussion of Blue and talk about Windows 9. Leave the current stuff to TechEd.

 

--Mike