I don't think this is any technical change. Instead MS just got bored with F# and gives it a non-profit ("F# foundation") for maintenance. So it will be independent, ie. not affiliated with MS.
The F# Foundation is an initiative from the F# community to promote F# as an independent, open source language across multiple platforms. You're right this is not a technical change and the foundation is independent.
MS is not abandoning F#. This is a community-led effort to try to increase adoption of an excellent language and to create a better experience on non-microsoft platforms.
That's not quite right. A choice quote from the kick-off call today helps explain more about what's going on here: "Some customers require Microsoft support in order to adopt a technology; some customers require community (non-Microsoft) support in order to adopt a technology."
You can think of the F# Software Foundation as the community side of that equation and, well, Microsoft as the Microsoft side of that equation.
F# has been open source for quite a while. I'm guessing they are seeing some resistance to adoption due to the affiliation with Microsoft. They've always been quite independent, compared to the C# team, so I wonder what this even means. Porting to LLVM and/or JVM would be wonderful for the language though, it really is up there with Clojure as one of the more exciting functional languages under development.
Who is "they"? Mono was transferred from Novell to Xamarin some time ago, but is alive and well (better than ever?): http://mono-project.com/Main_Page.
So mono's future is secured - Android, iPhone, iOS, OS X, linux, windows 8, ... no other high-level-to-native tools get this reach and none based on a language as c# (so much better than java). F# looks like nice added sauce to this.
Curious to see where that goes. I've been wanting to try it for a while, but a combination of lack of time and lack of enthusiasm for the .NET stack has kept me away from it. Is this used in production anywhere?
It's being used commercially in a number of companies. Off the top of my head: Credit Suisse, Aviva, Trayport, Gamesys as well as quite a few hedge funds on both sides of the pond.
F# is a really cool language. However without it's interop with the CLR it looks to me to be another ML clone. I wonder what they mean by "independent."
I'm not sure what you're referring to; F# is only a CLR-compatible language. Mono is used for a completely open source solution and the foundation's web page (http://fsharp.org) has links to instructions for installing mono and related tooling.
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[ 28.7 ms ] story [ 77.6 ms ] threadYou can think of the F# Software Foundation as the community side of that equation and, well, Microsoft as the Microsoft side of that equation.
so mono's future looks secure now
http://skillsmatter.com/podcast/home/expert-panel-discussion...
So mono's future is secured - Android, iPhone, iOS, OS X, linux, windows 8, ... no other high-level-to-native tools get this reach and none based on a language as c# (so much better than java). F# looks like nice added sauce to this.
If one wants a strict ML language than compiles to native code then OCaml is a better solution, ditto for lazy ML languages by making use of Haskell.
F#'s real value is the ability to have a ML language as (almost as) first citizen in the .NET ecosystem.
Port it to LLVM? Then it can be compiled to native, in which case it has to compete with Haskell (et al).
The "#" in F# basically binds it to the CLR, and that's what it's strength is. Too bad it want to be something is isn't.