After a protest from the open-source community, Microsoft reversed its decision to remove a key feature in.NET 6's upcoming release. Microsoft upset the.NET open-source community by removing a key feature of Hot Reload from the upcoming.NET 6 release. This feature allows developers to modify source code in real time and see the results immediately.
This feature was something many were eager to use in Visual Studio Code across multiple platforms. However, Microsoft made a controversial decision to lock it to Visual Studio 20,22 which is a paid product limited to Windows. According to Microsoft sources, The Verge was informed by people familiar with the matter that Julia Liuson (head of Microsoft's developer division) made the change at the last minute. It was a business-focused decision.
Microsoft admits its mistake
Microsoft reversed its decision after a backlash and anger from employees. Scott Hunter, director for program management at.NET, explains that we made a mistake in executing our decision and took longer to respond to the community. Microsoft has now accepted the pull request from the community to re-enable the feature. It will be included in the final version the.NET 6 SDK.
Microsoft did not respond to our request to comment on the fact that an executive had ordered the change. A Microsoft spokesperson said that they have taken steps to address the issues some members of our OSS community have encountered. Hot Reload will be available in the general availability build for the.NET 6SDK, which is expected to be released on November 8th.
Microsoft's blog post does not address this controversial decision. It suggests that it was a mistake to delete the code, not disable it. This is not a business decision. Hunter says that in our attempt to scope, we accidentally deleted the source code, instead of simply not invoking that path.
Although the reversal is a positive one for the.NET community it will not be easy to understand the circumstances and explanations surrounding this incident.
Hunter says that we are still learning how to balance our roles as corporate sponsors for.NET and the OSS community. Sometimes we dont get it right. We can learn from our mistakes to improve moving forward.
After weeks of protests in the.NET community about Microsoft's involvement in.NET Foundation, this eventful episode was a welcome relief. It was established in 2014, when Microsoft made.NET open-source. It is supposed to be an independent organization that promotes open source software development and collaboration. Resigning board member questioned recently the role of.NET Foundation, asking if it is there to enforce Microsoft's will on.NET Open Source or if its here to foster and promote a healthy community.
Claire Novotny, the executive director of the.NET Foundation, resigned recently. Others questioned the independence and privileges granted to Microsoft. Microsoft's u-turn has clearly damaged some of its open source work over the past 10 years. The company still has a lot of work to do to improve relations and address issues surrounding Microsoft's influence on the.NET Foundation.
