[DMCA-Activists] DotGNU in Software Development Times

[Seth Johnson]

> http://sdtimes.com/news/094/story3.htm


Taking on Microsoft ‘Mano a Mano’

DotGNU and Mono: .NET replacement projects coming


By Edward J. Correia
January 15, 2004


It looks like 2004 could be the year of .NET replacements. In 2003, two
separate open-source projects aimed at compatibility with Microsoft’s
application runtime reached significant milestones. 

Grabbing much of the spotlight was Mono. The “.NET for Linux” project
originated by open-source developer Miguel de Icaza gained headlines when
host company Ximian was acquired by Novell Inc. A road map published in
December promises a long list of major components to be released with Mono
1.0 by midyear, including a C# compiler, VM with JIT and precompilers and
development and security tools. 

Analysts believe that Novell, which also acquired SUSE Linux last year, is
now in a good position to regain mind and market share lost to Microsoft in
the server and office productivity wars of the 1990s. 

Charlie Ungashick, Novell’s director of product management and marketing for
Ximian Business Services, denies any anti-Microsoft strategy. “Linux desktop
adoption is still only around 1 percent and Microsoft is over 70 percent. So
it’s not feasible for us to spend time figuring out how to get from 1 to 70
overnight. We need to build a solid foundation with Mono and the Ximian
desktop and provide tools and technologies that get us to 5 and 10 percent
quickly. We’re looking to get that right first.”

Far less coy about its intentions is the Free Software Foundation and its
DotGNU project, which is developing an open-source implementation of
Microsoft’s Common Language Infrastructure intended as a replacement for
Microsoft’s own. Among the motivations for the project posted on
www.dotgnu.org is “a desire to prevent Microsoft from achieving monopolistic
control of ‘webservices,’ which might be similar to how around the end of
the twentieth century they had effective control of ‘the desktop.’” The
group released DotGNU 0.1 in November 2003, including functional runtimes
for Linux, Mac OS X, Unix and Windows. 

Among DotGNU’s leading contributors is Rhys Weatherley, who in January 2001
began development of Portable.NET, which merged with DotGNU in July of that
year and is now one of its three primary projects. The DotGNU project also
includes DGEE, a Web services execution environment; and phpGroupWare, a
Web-based collaboration suite. 

Weatherley would not put a release date on a version 1.0, but did state his
objectives for the coming year, which include completion of the runtime
engine, C# libraries, compiler and build tools. “My big goals for 2004 are
to complete the fundamental infrastructure, System.Windows.Forms under
Xwindows, and GNU Compact .NET Framework,” the latter of which he said is
currently running well on Compaq’s iPAQ and Sharp’s Zaurus Linux-based
handheld computers. Weatherley said Portable.NET would likely be updated to
0.6.2 this month, including “significant improvements to
System.Windows.Forms,” user interface classes. 

A RUNTIME IS A RUNTIME

Despite their similarities—both are developing portable .NET replacements
using CLI specifications submitted by Microsoft to ECMA, and both are
intended to run .NET apps unchanged—DotGNU and Mono have differing
objectives, insisted Bradley Kuhn, executive directory of the FSF. “Mono was
done by Ximian, which is now owned by Novell, so it has much more of a
corporate flavor to it. They offer different projects with different goals
and ways of getting things done. We’re making sure developers actually get a
free replacement for C#,” he said.

Ungashick would not comment on the possibility of fee-based versions of Mono
down the road. “Mono is an open-source project, and we haven’t made any
public statements about what will happen in the future,” he said. Defending
the corporate development methodology, he added, “Developers need a road map
that usually accompanies a commercial project that gives them a comfort
level with how often the APIs will move and how stable the builds will be
over time. Mono is pure open-source today, and people can download daily
builds. But the road map gives developers certain points over the next 24
months [when] there will be stable builds that deliver key functionality
with solid APIs.” 

Conversely, it was evident that Weatherley was free of such corporate
demands when pressed for a release date. “I’m notoriously bad at predicting
timetables. It really depends on what users want. 1.0 will be the name of
the most stable and complete release sometime in the future. It would be
silly to put a date on it; it will be ready when it is ready.” 

He added that C# will be the first language supported, followed by C. “Then
probably JScript and finally [Visual Basic]. This order reflects my own
personal interests.”

The DotGNU and Mono projects also differ technically. 

According to Kuhn, de Icaza “wrote Mono from the ground up in C#. That meant
he had to bootstrap with Microsoft’s C# compiler system. DotGNU was written
entirely in C. Developers who are used to C and the GNU toolchain can
continue using them; they don’t have to learn C# to get involved in the
project.” 

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