In the last days, I saw some interesting things around the future of .Net Micro Framework …
First, a post in the GHI Electronics community forum that speaks about the 2014 plan for .Net Gadgeteer. Gary, GHI employee, says :
We have some very exciting news to share with you today. First of all, we have been communicating your feedback to Microsoft and they have been very responsive. We can't share all the details yet but we can tell you that you will be very happy with what Microsoft will announce very soon.
There are two main points about it :
Of course … the above are great points !
Another thing I noticed is on .Net Micro Framework project web site on CodePlex.
Starting from May 2014, there is Steve Maillet as project member. Steve was already program manager on .Net Micro Framework from 2007 to 2011 and then in the Windows Embedded team. I think that his return is a good news with his experience on it for improving the platform. Furthermore, Steve will have a session at DotNetConf on “.Net Micro Framework and IoT” to show publically its main features and relative usage in the new Internet of Things world.
Last but not least thing is the update on main page of .Net Micro Framework project web site on CodePlex by Steve on June 16 …
In preparation for the longer term future of .NET MF we are in the process of some changes to the use of CodePlex. (Including switching to a GIT repository model to make things easier for a true OSS development process). As part of this transition everyone's permissions were reset to "editor" status, thus denying check-in permissions on the TFS tree. Fear not! This isn't a permanent change. We'll have more details on the results of the changes and the process for contributing into the official repositories in the very near future so stay tuned.
Here the main point is in the starting phrase “In preparation for the longer term future … “ so it means that .Net Micro Framework has a long term future supported by Microsoft and it’s a great news after the last year without updates (until the .Net MF 4.3 RTM QFE1 released in February)
In conclusion, it seems that in the near future a lot of news and updates will be available on .Net Micro Framework project and that it is alive; Microsoft thinks that it could be potentially useful in the Internet of Things to provide customers a global solution for it strong related with Microsoft Azure offers : from the devices to the cloud !
So … stay tuned !
UPDATE [June 19 2014]
Today Steve Maillet created a planned version of the framework on the CodePlex web site : .Net Micro Framework v4.Next !!
Another great news !
UPDATE [June 27 2014]
Hello!
This is the title of the post written by Salvador Ramirez, program manager at Microsoft, on the .Net Micro Framework official blog. The team is working hard to improve the framework and want to rely too heavily on the help of the community as open source project. A new feature has been unveiled ... they will soon integrate with Visual Studio 2013 !
UPDATE [July 11 2014]
The work of Salvador Ramirez on the state of .NET Micro Framework project continues. This time, the project home page on CodePlex was updated but especially Salvador has provided a number of answers in the .NET Micro Framework forum on the official website. In the first place, confirmed the imminent support for Visual Studio 2013 and the introduction of “generics” required by a lot of people. Finally, he reaffirmed the work within the team who had already realized a "refresh" in progress. With these interventions, we can be sure of one thing: the .NET Micro Framework project is alive and Microsoft took it over in his hand and is determined to carry it forward. Surely we will have great news for the summer (at least the ones announced) ... then only time will tell how things are !
UPDATE [July 24 2014]
This time the license was updated. Steve Maillet updated the .Net Micro Framework license file and assigned the copyright to Microsoft Open Technologies !
.NET Micro Framework
Copyright (c) Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.
There are other license updates on lwIP stack, OpenSSL kit and Dalla 1-Wire protocol.
UPDATE [September 18 2014]
On the GHI forum we can see a contribution by Pete Brown, Microsoft evangelist who has always had a passion for .Net Gadgeteer (as evidenced by the numerous posts on his blog); in the last months he has become part of the group for the Internet of Things with a look at .Net Micro Framework and Windows for IoT project.
The discussion is very "hot" but we have further confirmation …
The NETMF team is now part of the IoT org at Microsoft There will be an announcement soon on the first visible investments. It's a small, but important first step. We've committed to making NETMF faster, to bringing more language enhancements, and to making sure it works with the latest versions of Visual Studio.
The NETMF team is now part of the IoT org at Microsoft
There will be an announcement soon on the first visible investments. It's a small, but important first step.
We've committed to making NETMF faster, to bringing more language enhancements, and to making sure it works with the latest versions of Visual Studio.
Pete also wrote on Netduino forum confirming all things above and highlighting the framework weaknesses and strenghts :
NETMF, on the other hand, provides a number of services above that, including CLR garbage collection, memory management, threading, and more. It's also interpreted at runtime, not something that's natively compiled. For those reasons, it's impossible in its current state, to target 8 bit devices, or low memory devices with NETMF. Maybe we'll find a way to change that in the future, but I don't see a way to do that with .NET and C# as people currently recognize them. Similarly, you can't get Windows on an 8 bit device like that, because it's a full modern operating system.
NETMF, on the other hand, provides a number of services above that, including CLR garbage collection, memory management, threading, and more. It's also interpreted at runtime, not something that's natively compiled.
For those reasons, it's impossible in its current state, to target 8 bit devices, or low memory devices with NETMF. Maybe we'll find a way to change that in the future, but I don't see a way to do that with .NET and C# as people currently recognize them.
Similarly, you can't get Windows on an 8 bit device like that, because it's a full modern operating system.
There is an collaboration with the GHI team (Gus Issa) and the Secret Labs (Chris Walker) to improve the product.
Conclusion … yet another confirmation of the investment in Microsoft on .Net Micro Framework !
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