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I think those are Novell's "main" products.

Except for SUSE Linux Enterprise and Mono.

As for Sun, Solaris isn't 100% open source. Also Sun is largely a hardware company.

Did you forget about the whole Java thing (almost all open sourced)?

While the Java folks are "going to port it" the Mono project is already running C# applications on the iPhone. Check www.go-mono.org/monologue

Making silverlight truly multiplatform: I mean, not it runs on Windows and MacOS, and it will run on Linux too thanks to mono

Being able to develop rich cross-platform GUI apps in C# (ok, any .net based language) which is actually a pretty nice high-level language...

Ok, you can say "I have it in Java", and yes, you're maybe right, but I think silverlight puts together the best of Flash plus using a wellknown "classic-like" language (I'm not a Flash expert but I don't like how it looks like).

...and I love it. The screen is small, but the high resolution makes it very readable. Everyone I have shown it to, have immediately commented on how good the screen is. It's far-far better than any PDA that I have seen.

You can write .NET apps for it to, with Mono.

I'm veering off-topic here, but it's weird to me that a clone of Microsoft's clone of Java is easier to include in a Linux distribution than Java itself, from a licensing standpoint. I never compared the two in that light. Hmph.

The Mono project is public. If you participated or at least followed it...

Fortunately I have better things to do than participate in the mindless cloning of products merely to extend Microsoft's mindshare in the development community.

I take the above as confirmation that there is in fact no such legal opinion available able to offer any assurance on the patent question and that this "advice" is therefore just more arm-waving.

If you want a legal opinion, go pay for it.

I guess you offer the same advice to all prospective users of "your" platform?

What is standardized about C# is obviously ECMA C#. I neither stated nor implied anything more.

Your complete sentence is as follows:

Furthermore, Microsoft has publicly stated that it is their intention that people can implement ECMA C# (which includes a lot of .NET libraries) freely.

So you do make a coy little promise of free Dotnet. But of course you had to - after all the platform would offer virtually zero portablity without the main libraries, right? Wonder if we'll ever see the day when a Mono proponent comes clean and makes a clear distinction between language and libraries.

Regarding Dotnet patents:

There is no "assumption" there, there simply are no such patents.

Really? Then you'll be updating this section of the Mono FAQ soon then:

The controversial elements are the ASP.NET, ADO.NET and Windows.Forms subsets. [...] The Mono strategy for dealing with these technologies is as follows: (1) work around the patent by using a different implementation technique that retains the API, but changes the mechanism; if that is not possible, we would (2) remove the pieces of code that were covered by those patents, and also (3) find prior art that would render the patent useless. Not providing a patented capability would weaken the interoperability, but it would still provide the free software / open source software community with good development tools, which is the primary reason for developing Mono. The patents do not apply in countries where software patents are not allowed.

It's in it's first beta. 1.0 is due at the end of June. Here's the story. And the roadmap

http://www.go-mono.org/faq.html#q7

I don't know my ass from a hole in the ground, but I highly doubt Microsoft's .NET Class Libraries are licensed under the LGPL.

And you are correct. However Mono's class libraries are licensed under the LGPL. Jon developed this code using the Mono runtime, Mono's C# compiler (mcs) and the Monodevelop IDE.

Oh, did I mention that Mono is really cool? :)

I don't know my ass from a hole in the ground, but I highly doubt Microsoft's .NET Class Libraries are licensed under the LGPL.

And you are correct. However Mono's class libraries are licensed under the LGPL. Jon developed this code using the Mono runtime, Mono's C# compiler (mcs) and the Monodevelop IDE.

Oh, did I mention that Mono is really cool? :)

I don't know my ass from a hole in the ground, but I highly doubt Microsoft's .NET Class Libraries are licensed under the LGPL.

And you are correct. However Mono's class libraries are licensed under the LGPL. Jon developed this code using the Mono runtime, Mono's C# compiler (mcs) and the Monodevelop IDE.

Oh, did I mention that Mono is really cool? :)

Here are some substantial pieces of software that can currently run on top of the Mono VM:

• The Mono C# Compiler (MCS) itself is self-hosting on Mono. This consists of "roughly 1.7 million lines of C# code."
• OpenLink Virtuoso is hosted on Mono on the GNU/Linux platform.
• MonoDevelop, though in its early stages, is already proving really quite useful as a full fledged IDE.
• XSP is already capable of running a number of complex sites, web services and all! Just have a look at the monodoc project.

... and if you still believe Mono to be "vaporware," perhaps you can explain why Novell would ever consider sponsering a project so obviously doomed to fail?

Let us not also forget that Mono is still in its infancy, whereas Qt has had the opportunity to mature over many years of constant development and deployment.

Don't get me wrong, I am thoroughly impressed with the TrollTech offering in Qt, it is just that I have a hard time buying into the whole "vaporware" pitch with regards to Mono...

Here are some substantial pieces of software that can currently run on top of the Mono VM:

• The Mono C# Compiler (MCS) itself is self-hosting on Mono. This consists of "roughly 1.7 million lines of C# code."
• OpenLink Virtuoso is hosted on Mono on the GNU/Linux platform.
• MonoDevelop, though in its early stages, is already proving really quite useful as a full fledged IDE.
• XSP is already capable of running a number of complex sites, web services and all! Just have a look at the monodoc project.

... and if you still believe Mono to be "vaporware," perhaps you can explain why Novell would ever consider sponsering a project so obviously doomed to fail?

Let us not also forget that Mono is still in its infancy, whereas Qt has had the opportunity to mature over many years of constant development and deployment.

Don't get me wrong, I am thoroughly impressed with the TrollTech offering in Qt, it is just that I have a hard time buying into the whole "vaporware" pitch with regards to Mono...

• Glow is an OpenOffice.org project to develop a full-featured groupware client application using Java, eventually covering group calendaring, mail, instant messaging, folders & web whiteboard and P2P content exchange (see Feature Plan below). Glow will function as a network client as well as provide full offline support, including synchronization.

Just imagine: running OpenOffice.org on the ReactOS (a free Windows NT clone), with Mono (a free .NET implementation). A completely free replacement for Windows.

We are left with no other option go with.NET

C# and MSIL have a free implementation. Whether this qualifies those technologies as "open" or not depends on your definition of "open."

Next thing you know they'll be saying how .NET and C# are the greatest thing ever.

Uh, you can't run bytecode on a raw machine.
Yes you can. There are several java-bytecode hardware microprocessors.
C and Assembler are what make the computer world run.
false. C and assembler are 20%-100% faster to execute, but 1000%-10000% slower to develop in.
You can't make Java in Java.
Yes you can. *and* you can make csc in c# (see here)
C turns directly into executable binary (or object files then linked into executables). Java cannot.
Look up gcj.
I suppose that if you were insane enough, you could make a bytecode to opcode converter, but then you lose 100% of the point of the langauge, probably a lot of the efficiency, and at that point you may as well use C.
As we were in the subject of python, look up psyco.
Man, this is the highest density of crap in the same paragraph I have ever read in /.

Linux is making a pretty big dent regardless of those tools. Nevertheless, since you obviously don't know what you're talking about and dont'care to research, I'll do it for you.

VB:
KBasic
Mono

Access:
knoda
GNOME-DB
(For non-free, I beleive that StarOffice may have something and there's also InterBase.)

The table of equivalents / replacements / analogs of Windows software in Linux.

You must have never looked at the Mono project.

I believe that once Mono gets to 1.0, along with MonoDevelop (a SharpDelevlop port to Mono and GTK#), there will be MUCH interest in the open source community for releasing libraries and entire subsystems.

I'm personally amazed by the pace of development the Mono team have been jugging along at, and there are already a lot of good things coming out of the Mono community; for instance, mod_mono is already capable of running a number of full-blown ASP.NET applications written for the MS.NET CLR.

In C#, any code you write MUST run on a Windows-supported platform under Windows

According to the Mono faq:

Question 58: Can I develop my applications on Windows, and deploy on a supported Mono platform (like Linux)?

Yes, you can.

As of today, Mono is not 100% finished, so it is sometimes useful to compile the code with Mono, to find out if your application depends on unimplemented functionality.

Parent has a point. While there are things I both like and dislike about Microsoft, I do get kinda sick and tired of seeing a story get posted on /. every time Bill Gates picks his nose in public, or something equally inane.

Yes, we're all aware of Microsoft's business practices. Yes, we're all aware of the faults in their OS code. No, I don't want to hear about it every FREAKIN' five minutes. Also, if there is such interest in Microsoft, why don't we ever hear about the good things that they do (save your "because they don't do any good things" replies)?

Take ASP.NET, for example. I've worked with JSP/Servlets, PHP, and "old-school" ASP, and nothing is better or easier to work with than ASP.NET, IMHO. Before you bad-mouth it, why don't you actually try using it? Plus, if it sucked as bad as some people on this site claim, why would Ximian, et. al. be working so hard on Mono?

All I'm saying is that there should be credit where credit is due, and that it would be nice if every nitpick associated with Microsoft didn't rate a new topic on /.

I know, wishful thinking.

This makes me wonder if they will do the old bait and switch for .net implementations - i.e. mono. Or Sun could do even do this for Java. I'm glad I'm starting to learn Python.

Isn't it amazing how seriously slashot readers really don't take .NET?

60 posts talking about a Microsoft fledgling technology here says so much more than 300 slashbots flaming each other on the other "Microsoft's New Core OS Team Learning from Linux" thread.

Microsoft is a smart company. No really, they must be. If you have shed loads of money, you can pay lots of smart people enough money to make them work hard enough to roll out products which will do something "acceptably well" at worst, "reasonably well" at best. That can't be denied because of the number of users Microsoft has. Yes, there's smart people who use Microsoft technology too.

Microsoft has recognised our strengths so I think it's time to acknowledge what Microsoft does well. The opening flames on the Server CE technology could be turned another way - isn't the MSSQL Server code ripe for an overhaul like someone going at it like a hatchet to make it run on embedded/compact devices?

The zealots don't do us any good. It slows Linux adoption and makes us look like nutters. And there are quite a few smart Linux people who like .NET as well.

Absolutely. A lot of people posting in this discussion don't seem to realise that OpenOffice is not a real substitute for Microsoft Office, except for very basic uses.

Any large organisation probably needs COM and VB, and OO just isn't mature enough to provide an alternative.

Hopefuly with the Mono project progressing, this will provide an underlying .NET-based object model that can eventually tie together with OO.

http://www.go-mono.org/faq.html#patents

Question 135: Could patents be used to completely disable Mono (either submarine patents filed now, or changes made by Microsoft specifically to create patent problems)?

First some background information.

The .NET Framework is divided in two parts: the ECMA/ISO covered technologies and the other technologies developed on top of it like ADO.NET, ASP.NET and Windows.Forms.

Mono implements the ECMA/ISO covered parts, as well as being a project that aims to implement the higher level blocks like ASP.NET, ADO.NET and Windows.Forms.

The Mono project has gone beyond both of those components and has developed and integrated third party class libraries, the most important being: Debugging APIs, integration with the Gnome platform (Accessibility, Pango rendering, Gdk/Gtk, Glade, GnomeUI), Mozilla, OpenGL, extensive database support (Microsoft only supports a couple of providers out of the box, while Mono has support for 11 different providers), our POSIX integration libraries and finally the embedded API (used to add scripting to applications and host the CLI, or for example as an embedded runtime in Apache).

The core of the .NET Framework, and what has been patented by Microsoft falls under the ECMA/ISO submission. Jim Miller at Microsoft has made a statement on the patents covering ISO/ECMA, (he is one of the inventors listed in the patent): here.

Basically a grant is given to anyone who want to implement those components for free and for any purpose.

The controversial elements are the ASP.NET, ADO.NET and Windows.Forms subsets. Those are convenient for people who need full compatibility with the Windows platform, but are not required for the open source Mono platform, nor integration with today's Mono's rich support of Linux.

The Mono strategy for dealing with these technologies is as follows: (1) work around the patent by using a different implementation technique that retains the API, but changes the mechanism; if that is not possible, we would (2) remove the pieces of code that were covered by those patents, and also (3) find prior art that would render the patent useless. Not providing a patented capability would weaken the interoperability, but it would still provide the free software / open source software community with good development tools, which is the primary reason for developing Mono.

The patents do not apply in countries where software patents are not allowed.

For Linux server and desktop development, we only need the ECMA components, and things that we have developed (like Gtk#) or Apache integration.

Perhaps he was assuming that the rationalisation effort would be rational?

E.g. a set of requirements gathered based on usage scenarios then prioritized based on popularity and a solution meeting as many of those requirements as possible designed and implemented.

Irrational developers can have their own project - I hear Mono could use more help ;-)

So here's the question: Do you want your company to be tied to the fortunes of Microsoft? If you trust Microsoft to do the right thing for you and your company, then use Microsoft's proprietary tools.

There are opensource implementations of the CLI too. Mono aims to be .NET compatitable.

So one does not need to be tied to Microsoft, or use their tools.

The original idea was to implement the Windows.Forms library with some native toolkit. But since it's so dependant on the Microsoft windows model, it turned out they would pretty much have to write it from scratch - or use Wine.

There's also React OS, an Open Source implementation of Windows NT. They've spent most of their effort over the last couple years working on the core functionality. Now that most of the core is working, they can use Wine libraries as the basis of much of the higher level functionality, instead of writing it from scratch.

Hrm... the ReactOS site seems to be offline at the moment. From the Google cache of the announcement of stuff due at the end of Augusy:

• Amongst other features and fixes, this release will include a greatly improved win32k.sys (better, windowing, keyboard support, more routines completed overall), the beginning of an explorer.exe, more controls ported from WINE for user32 (menus, messageboxes and dialogs), greatly improved performance for the standard VGA driver and further work on the NDIS driver.

How does this differ from mono? It seems to me as the two projects are trying to achieve the same things. If that's the case, why have two projects at all? Why not merge the two efforts? I guess somebody here knows why.

The issue was not what standards were involved, but whether those standards include Dotnet.

They do not.

I (and probably my boss, clients etc.) do not care what non-standard parts of Dotnet have been cloned. As the parent says, these are not covered by standards and are potentially at risk from patent claims.

Unfortunately, your web site is still misleading people into thinking that Mono is (now) an implementation of the Dotnet APIs. It is this kind of deceptive statement that is annoying people.

Mono is always going to be on shaky ground legally

Why? Because it's a clone of a proprietary technology? In that case, Linux will be on shaky ground, as well, given that it's a clone of UNIX. And so will KDE and GNOME, since they both clone other proprietary UIs.

it will let people begin their critical application development on Linux before deciding that for safety they need to move to Windows.

I thought the main advantage of Linux was preventing lock-in to a particular system or vendor. Why the hell shouldn't people be able to choose to move to whatever system they please, including Windows? The only alternative to your example is that people will develop on Windows and deploy on Windows. How is that any better?

If they wrote their application for Java instead

Java doesn't do half of what .NET does. For example, you can't mix different languages together in one app, which is one of the main features of Mono/.NET.

they would have less need to move off Linux, and should they wish to, a far greater choice of hardware and operating system environments to move to.

Mono is as portable as Java. And Java still enables people to move to Windows.

Nothing prevents a full free software port of Java

In that case, what prevents a full free software port of .NET? Wouldn't such a port be 'on shaky ground', given that Linux is Sun's main competitor?

Just face it, .NET is a major breakthrough that is not going away any time soon. Yes, Microsoft does innovate once or twice every 20 years (or at least hires smart people who do). Furthermore, .NET really learns from the mistakes Java made. Ask anyone who uses .NET, and they will tell you that it dramatically increases programmer productivity. That single advantage is enough to cause most companies to keep using Windows and dump Linux. Just one more fact: many, if not most, of the people developing Mono use Windows. So I don't think the switch will be happening in the direction you predict.

Finally, please realize that Mono has the potential to dramatically improve Linux applications. C++ is a kludge and Java is slow as molasses, so people use regular C when a more modern language is appropriate. .NET solves this problem, which is why Ximian and Miguel de Icaza are embracing it. Please, read this, this, and this.

Mono is always going to be on shaky ground legally

Why? Because it's a clone of a proprietary technology? In that case, Linux will be on shaky ground, as well, given that it's a clone of UNIX. And so will KDE and GNOME, since they both clone other proprietary UIs.

it will let people begin their critical application development on Linux before deciding that for safety they need to move to Windows.

I thought the main advantage of Linux was preventing lock-in to a particular system or vendor. Why the hell shouldn't people be able to choose to move to whatever system they please, including Windows? The only alternative to your example is that people will develop on Windows and deploy on Windows. How is that any better?

If they wrote their application for Java instead

Java doesn't do half of what .NET does. For example, you can't mix different languages together in one app, which is one of the main features of Mono/.NET.

they would have less need to move off Linux, and should they wish to, a far greater choice of hardware and operating system environments to move to.

Mono is as portable as Java. And Java still enables people to move to Windows.

Nothing prevents a full free software port of Java

In that case, what prevents a full free software port of .NET? Wouldn't such a port be 'on shaky ground', given that Linux is Sun's main competitor?

Just face it, .NET is a major breakthrough that is not going away any time soon. Yes, Microsoft does innovate once or twice every 20 years (or at least hires smart people who do). Furthermore, .NET really learns from the mistakes Java made. Ask anyone who uses .NET, and they will tell you that it dramatically increases programmer productivity. That single advantage is enough to cause most companies to keep using Windows and dump Linux. Just one more fact: many, if not most, of the people developing Mono use Windows. So I don't think the switch will be happening in the direction you predict.

Finally, please realize that Mono has the potential to dramatically improve Linux applications. C++ is a kludge and Java is slow as molasses, so people use regular C when a more modern language is appropriate. .NET solves this problem, which is why Ximian and Miguel de Icaza are embracing it. Please, read this, this, and this.

Where should I send you the 200.000 usd? ooouh great master of the universe, gimme a break.

Easy - send it here or here. At least they know what they are doing and have concrete results. Their VMs can run any interpreted language you can shake a stick at. No need for Parrot at all.

Well, Mono is actually a decent, open source .NET implementation. I really doubt it, but maybe it scales better than Windows with MS software? I wouldn't recommend it for production use just yet, but this could be an issue.

This was a very interesting article. I natively speak Perl, C, and C++, know enough about PHP to get by, and still remember some Commodore 64 BASIC (10 ? CHR$(147)). I am also, as I believe I've said before, not afraid to learn things like Java, Python, Ruby, maybe even Visual Basic again (God forbid) should they prove exceedingly relevant to my case - in fact, I quite look forward to knowing (hopefully) all of them and then some. But never Pascal. (Just kidding.)

I've really found that the thing I hate most about programming in general is that no single language is the right one to use for any of my programs! I am very interested in any effort I ever come across to do functional merging of disparate environments. In addition to a couple of workarounds I've invented in the past for shoehorning Perl into PHP, I like reading about things like SWIG, the open CLR, and even COM (the concept more than the implementation), and a smile always comes to my face when I think about the Inline library written for Perl.

Now, the thing I really pine for is all of this interlanguage binding stuff being easy, fairly portable, more synactically simple, and less hacky. I know that these exist, but not quite completely together. If I write a program in Perl with use Inline C, I can never be sure that anyone else has all the development tools necessary to compile all the C on the fly. Writing a program in Visual Basic with a nice mouse-drawn GUI and an external component is really easy - but it's Visual Basic. Writing a component wrapper for Perl is fairly straightforward with SWIG, but some well-thought-out language features would make it easier. And COM... I'm going to have to try wrapping my head around that book again someday... I'm sure the ATL makes it all very simple, but can I use ATL from MinGW? From C? From Perl? And don't try to tell me that I need to learn yet another flavor of XML to make all of this work.

That's mis tus centavos.

(Note: I disclaim perfection. Don't hit me too hard; I admit I haven't done enough of my homework to claim this post isn't full of holes. Once I've looked this whole matter through, if ever, and if I still haven't come up with anything good, I may just have to take a deep breath, lay down a syntax, figure out how to use a lexer generator and a compiler compiler, and throw together some ghastly but very easy-to-use homogeneous aggregator system. Either that, or I wait for Parrot to interoperate with Mono...)

Ever heard of Mono?

Open source, multi platform .net

It's owned/created by Microsoft.

Exactly. Once mono is more complete and I'm convinced MS won't try to kill it, then I'll take a look at .Net.

Microsoft released the source to an implementation that compiles and runs on Windows, FreeBSD and MacOS 10.2.

Mono is a clean-room implementation that runs natively on x86 Linux and interpreted on PPC, S390 and StrongARM.

I realize you don't do a lick of Java or .Net programming, but, just like the press, that doesn't excuse you from checking the facts first.

I've used Java longer than the reviewer -- since it was an alpha. I still use it and am an official participant in the JCP. I plan to continue using Java, probably for years to come.

That being said, I find the C# language to be significantly better designed than the Java language. Things like delegates are a great improvement over interfaces. When Anders Hejlsberg was still at Borland, he tried to persuade Sun to use them in Java instead of the interface approach and they just blew him off. "Syntactic sugar" they called it, and then they went ahead and implemented their own syntactic vinegar. I'll take the sugar, thank you.

Using "properties" in an OO language is a natural.

a.b.c++ calls a set() method instead of directly accessing a member var named c. (The c property may not even be backed by a variable. It may be calculated on demand.) In Java, to use OO methods instead of exposing private variables, you would do something like

a.getB().setC(a.getB().getC()+1);

although usually it would be broken into several simpler steps with temp variables for ease of reading.

C# makes it a breeze to create visual interfaces to object properties without losing the encapsulation of the implementation of those properties.

There are so many other improvements in C# relative to Java that it really annoys me to hear the political refrain "C# is just a knock off of Java". It's such a superior "knockoff" that, for the first time in years, Sun has gotten back in the mode of making language improvements (all of which make it more like the "knockoff") instead of their knee-jerk "you're not language designers so, trust us, you don't need that" reaction of the past.

The Java class libraries are far more complete than those of .Net, though .Net's have the benefit of learning from Java's mistakes. (A nice, consistent way of converting between fundamental data types, well-designed containers, etc.)

I now find myself in the position of using C# when I can (mostly for personal utilities) and Java when I must (for professional production). Since I strongly prefer to use Linux servers and strongly prefer to avoid the MS license ball-and-chain, I anticipate having to continue using Java for years.

While doing so, though, I will continue rooting for Mono and working thru the JCP to try to steer the Java language to embrace and extend what I consider the significant advantages C# (and to some extent the .Net classes) have over Java. All the anti-MS bigots don't make that easy, though.

Java's standard libraries are definitely more developed (=larger, more comprehensive) than those of .Net, but C# is a better language. C# has a whole laundry list of nice features that Java either lacks or has been scrambling to add since the debut of C#. I work in both languages, with much more experience in Java, and I definitely enjoy C# (the language) more than Java.

But the fact that I can use Java on all platforms of interest to me, particularly Linux servers and client devices, is why I keep using Java, so I'm working with the JCP to try to add the C# improvements to Java. If I could use C# everywhere I use Java, though, I would go 100% C# without a second thought.

Also, the .Net bytecode (IL) reputedly has designed-in support for generics, tail calls, and other goodies that Java lacks. I understand [rumor] that for years Guy Steele has been pushing for changes in Java bytecode that would allow for good Lisp/Scheme support. Nothing has changed with Java, but .Net incorporated his suggestions.[/rumor] It wouldn't surprise me if this rumor is true because I've seen how interested MS was in gathering requests from disgruntled Java developers in order to make C#/.Net more attractive.

I sure hope Mono succeeds.

well, if you want to see some of my code on the web, you can go to the mono project. I did:

• the class status pages, and the corcompare tool that generates them.
• the mono tinderbox.
• the XPath engine.

• Visual C++ 2.x
• Visual C++ 4.x
• Visual J++ 1.x

Java is slow for desktop applications because its graphics library is rubbish, not because the VM is inherently slow.

Supported platforms: C# 1 (Windows), Java 3 (Windows, Linux, Solaris) (and that's just from Sun).

Actually thanks to the mono project C# is also supported under Linux. And I'm willing to bet it compiles under Solaris as well. Undoubtly Java runs on much more platforms (don't forget mobile devices), but let's be correct on this one.

Vendors: C# 1 (Microsoft), Java 5 (Sun, IBM, BEA, Oracle, Allaire)[...]

Well, I guess you win on this one since the open source community and Icaza's boys are not really a "Vendor" ;)

...I think I'd base it on the .Net framework or the Java framework. My preference would be .Net because of the genuine interest MS is taking in making it a good platform for lots of languages and the fact that, if it fit my language adequately, I'd get all those libraries, GC and other services, ASP.Net, ADO.Net, etc., all for free.

However, the genuine interest Sun has taken in making the Java runtime available for lots of *platforms* is pretty attractive, too. If the Mono Project doesn't make it, I'd have to go with Java, but I think Mono will eventually have pretty good coverage of the platforms of interest to me.

Mono and Portable.NET really shine in allowing former Windows developers to get involved with Linux and still have a comfortable and semi-familiar place to start.

I don't see Mono or Portable.NET as cross-platform technologies (unless you mean cross-platform across Unices) because Mono and Portable.NET grew up on Unix and will be used here the most. Besides, Microsoft has simply created too many API's and hence the barrier to a *quality* cross-platform development environment is too great.

Rather, Mono and Portable.NET will be good for rapid prototyping and as a conversion tool for Windows Application developers. Is also important for providing an alternative when the great migration begins of Smart Clients begin from Windows to Linux.

As for the rest of the article: Yah, I'm sure the Microsoft developers who created .NET are enthusiastic about Mono, but the higher-ups (see: PHB's) have no love for Mono or Linux.

He is using the CLR and C# specs, NOTHING more.

• Gtk#
• Gtk# samples
• Qt#

add to this a bit of "Microsoft to Buy Rational and/or Borland?" (more informative article article - javatips (66293) ) and you get a better view of the options MS are working on.

Borland are developing their own architectural solution for .NET and remember Rotor already runs on FreeBSD so borgifiying any of Borlands tools into a XP Visual Studio for Linux gives MS means to kill any competition - (Open source Mono classes). Remember MS's MO is to set and 'own the standard'. Nails get hammered and Mono is a target.

add to this a bit of "Microsoft to Buy Rational and/or Borland?" (more informative article article - javatips (66293) ) and you get a better view of the options MS are working on.

Borland are developing their own architectural solution for .NET and remember Rotor already runs on FreeBSD so borgifiying any of Borlands tools into a XP Visual Studio for Linux gives MS means to kill any competition - (Open source Mono classes). Remember MS's MO is to set and 'own the standard'. Nails get hammered and Mono is a target.