It's happening: .NETMF v5

It seems that there is a plan for NETMF v5!
The GitHub repo just got a v5_dev branch!! :dance: :clap:

5 Likes

Good to see there is progress, but it sounds like it’s still a good way off a official release though.

@ JSimoes - That is good news. It shows Steve is working on it and it is not dead in the water.

Good news indeed but I’m going to hold off on getting excited…

Big question: will GHI make it to 4.4 before 5.0 comes out? Or, have they pretty much abandoned NETMF for Octavo stuff? Or, is Octavo stuff just the new mBed, which was the new Arduino-ish, which was the new NETMF?

Fun fact: netmf.com still has links to codeplex. Which obviously don’t work.

Sorry if this is antagonistic, I’m having a frustrating morning. Blame VMWare.

@ godefroi - technology always change, sometimes too quickly. We will always strive to bring the latest technologies to our customers and do as much as we can, and then some more, within our limited capabilities.

OK, I apologize for ripping off the quote somewhere in this forum, but if you put enough coins in, anything is possible.

I’m curious to know, has maintaining .netmf, or even specific functions of it ever been considered for a Kickstarter project? Microsoft isn’t exactly an unknown company to take a bet on. I know that for some of the functionality, (ie the Memory leak with SSL), or much easier porting between processors, (including Octavo?), would be something that I’d be willing to support, and from a lot of the posts I’ve read, others would to? I’m not an expert on the kickstarter process, and suspect that I’m not the first to think of this, but thought I’d throw that out there, as in the superman movie, enough fractions of a penny, add up to a lot of money.

@ michaelb - Kickstarter project to collect funds for whom ? Is this to fund GHI development or MS or someone else ?

GHI may need to rely more on community code to get big projects out the door…

@ Designer - Either or, or a hybrid of both. Possibly set it up as a block of hours 50% MS, 50% GHI, or some ratio there of. The problem with me placing that split out there is I don’t have a good grasp for where Microsoft ends, and GHI picks up. Pick the top 10 things that we want, as contributed on a forum such as this, or as votes for issues on github/codeplex, pick 160hrs (1 month) * 2 (or what ever ratio), dedicated to knocking off the issues in order. As I don’t know what hi end programmers make, but just to justify it, lets sponsor 2 programmers, $200/hr, * 160 * 2 = $64k. I know I’ve wasted over 5k, just myself working on the SSL issue, and I know others have wasted money as well. I’m just putting this out there as a way to speed up the top 5-10ish issues that exist. If 1 or 2 get knocked off, and the community is happy, wash, rinse & repeat. If not, well, I somehow doubt that for people that have thrown in behind .netmf will get nothing out of it from Microsoft / GHI. I’d also suspect, that if there was a dedicated Microsoft / GHI person on it, and results were being updated, the community at large would be willing to help with testing, and reviewing.

This should be automatically added to all of your posts! :whistle: hahahahaha, I just couldn’t help myself.

1 Like

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Like you have ever needed an excuse to be a grumpy shit :smiley:

1 Like

I did a 150 mile “Bike for MS” charity ride a few years ago.

But then I found out it wasn’t actually for Microsoft. It was for some medical condition instead. Oh well.

5 Likes

@ mtylerjr - Understood, but I may have worked with some cards for Charley, & Dave years ago (either you get it or you don’t), and when I got into it, the first rule was to read, read, then read some more… I’ve been following far more posts than I ever comment to, as I believe in if I can’t add something constructive to it, don’t post at all. I’m simply asking, given the few number of needed updates, has this been tried before, its not a replacement for the existing system, but simply a way, say 5/10/15/x companies can all pay for the same work they are doing themselves… Kickstarters have been launched for much stupider idea’s, I’m just saying its a way people invested in netmf can pool together to get what they need. That said, if there is no support for it, well, just trying to not be that last guy programming in it going huh?

@ Mr. John Smith - GHI won’t rely on community code. There are still, to this day, open source ports of NETMF that have features that GHI’s ports don’t. GHI won’t use it, because they can’t claim exclusive rights to it and therefore charge a premium for it.

Not that I can blame them, they’re a business.

I am absolutely not being negative when I say this, but GHI is the last island of interest in NETMF (as it currently exists, anyway), and the community here is more loyal to GHI than they are to NETMF. When GHI was doing NETMF stuff, NETMF was the greatest thing ever. When it was Gadgeteer, Gadgeteer was the only interesting technology in the world. Arduino-ish stuff, Arduino-ish stuff was the most awesome ever. mBed, then we all were rabid mBed fans (even I got on that bandwagon). Now it’s Octavo/BB stuff, and so that’s what we’re doing now. Maybe NETMF will come around again, maybe not.

A loyal community is a wonderful thing.

2 Likes

The biggest thing about moving away from .netmf for me, is, (the minor), the code won’t be portable to newer generations of processors, but the (major), is it is all custom. It means no known flaws to exploit, and access in / access out is controlled at such a low level, I’m not saying it can’t be hacked, but the means / time / effort, would have to be duplicated everywhere, as there is no commonality to the operating software. Everytime I read an article about a car being hacked, (sony), ect, I’m like Blackberry, everyone believes us to be dead, but those that count on us, pay…

I’d contribute. I’m betting my entire company on ghi being up to speed still in 5 to 10 years. We need a fund to make sure they don’t fall behind.

1 Like

@ stotech - just a note, we are not behind. 4.4 is not adopted by choice. And v5 is being worked on by awesome people on their free time, with no guarantee of timeline or commercial reliability.

For our commercial users, much more is happening internally at GHI. Unfortunately, we can’t share more details yet.