Boston, MA — (press release excerpt) — Ximian, Inc. today announced the formation of the Mono Project, a community initiative to develop an open source, Linux-based version of the Microsoft .NET development platform. Incorporating key .NET compliant components, including a C# (pronounced C-sharp) compiler, a Common Language Runtime just-in-time compiler, and a full suite of class libraries, the Mono Project will enable developers to create .NET applications and run them on Windows® or any Mono-supported platform, including Linux and UNIX. Besides greatly improving the efficiency of open source software (OSS) development, the Mono Project will allow the creation of operating system-independent programs.

Miguel de Icaza, Ximian CTO and president of the GNOME Foundation, will introduce the Mono Project during a presentation at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention (July 23 July 27) in San Diego.

Ximian is spearheading the Mono Project, which is based on the company's own efforts as well as the work and contributions of others in the Free Software and open source communities. The Mono Project will allow the creation of both graphical user interfaces through GNOME components and the creation of server applications and Web services. The source code will be released under open source licenses (the General Public License, or GPL, and the Lesser General Public License, or LGPL) to accelerate the completion of the fully .NET compliant runtime and development environment.

“We are . . . providing an upgraded development platform that enables UNIX and Linux developers to capitalize on the .NET framework proposed by Microsoft. By reusing much of the work of the GNU and GNOME projects, we can greatly accelerate the development process,” said Miguel de Icaza, co-founder and chief technical officer at Ximian. “There is so much potential inherent in Web services and this new development platform, and with this initiative the entire open source community can build a platform that will expand these benefits to the Linux world.”

Microsoft .NET is a broad-based initiative to provide development tools for both GUI applications and Web services (.NET Development Framework), and a user identity and authentication system (“Hailstorm”) to offer end-user applications as Web services and a number of other company products.

The .NET development tools, which include the C# compiler and Common Language Infrastructure (CLI), let programs written in C# and other languages run on non-Windows operating systems. Microsoft and Corel recently announced that they would collaborate in making these available on the FreeBSD platform under the terms of the Microsoft “shared source” license.

“Unfortunately, while C# and CLI have been submitted to the ECMA and W3C standards bodies, the limitations of the 'shared source' license impede the development and deployment of commercial applications on other platforms, such as Linux, Solaris and UNIX,” said de Icaza. “The joint Microsoft and Corel effort also does not provide support for GUI applications and database access.”

In contrast, the Mono Project development platform provides open source developers with a true “build once, deploy anywhere” tool set, taking advantage of the myriad of services enabled by Microsoft .NET. Under the terms of the GPL and the LGPL licenses used by the Mono Project, developers can write and distribute commercial and proprietary applications, something that is not possible with the Microsoft shared source license.

The Mono Project will provide three key elements in a development framework designed to allow developers to quickly create, deploy and run .NET compatible applications on the Linux platform. A C# compiler extending the GNOME development platform will allow Linux developers to create .NET compatible applications. These developers will also be able to build upon a complete implementation of class libraries compatible with the Microsoft CLI, enabling developers to create end-user applications as well as powerful Web services using the database functionality available on open source systems. Last, a Linux version of the Common Language Run-Time (CLR) just-in-time (JIT) run-time engine will allow Linux systems to run .NET applications built on Windows, Linux, or UNIX platforms. As the momentum of open source contributors to the Mono Project builds, the tools and libraries they produce are expected to be available in the middle of next year.

 
This article was originally published on LinuxDevices.com and has been donated to the open source community by QuinStreet Inc. Please visit LinuxToday.com for up-to-date news and articles about Linux and open source.