Boston, MA — (press release excerpt) — Ximian, Inc. today announced that Miguel de Icaza, Ximian CTO, will be participating in the O'Reilly Open Source Convention to showcase new functionality related to the Mono Project. The Mono Project is a community initiative launched by Ximian to develop an open source version of the Microsoft .NET development platform for Linux and UNIX.

Specifically, de Icaza will demonstrate how Mono developers can use Linux to develop and run applications based on a number of .NET specifications, including ASP.NET and ADO.NET. For the first time, an audience will witness how the Mono Project provides broad flexibility to developers, enabling solutions that harness the full functionality of .NET on Linux and UNIX systems across a variety of architectures.

The O'Reilly Open Source Convention is being held at the Sheraton San Diego Hotel and Marina in San Diego, Calif., from July 22-26. De Icaza will be leading two sessions on the Mono Project, both on Wednesday, July 24. The first, 'Introducing Mono', will be held in Grand Ballroom C beginning at 4:30 p.m., and the second, 'Developing with Mono', will be held in Harbor Island II at 5:15 p.m.

De Icaza's discussions showcase an extraordinary first year for the Mono Project, which was initiated by Ximian on July 9, 2001. The project aims to give developers a set of open source tools for building .NET applications that can run on Windows or any Mono-supported platform, including Linux and UNIX. Incorporating key .NET compliant components, including a C# (pronounced C-sharp) compiler, a Common Language Runtime just-in-time compiler, a precise garbage collection system based on the Intel Open Runtime Platform and a full suite of class libraries, the Mono Project extends the functionality of .NET to the open source developer community.

During his presentations, de Icaza will highlight the broad developer benefits of the Mono Project, including dramatic productivity gains and the ability to develop and deploy applications across supported Mono platforms. Among other items, he will demonstrate how the Mono framework can build Linux Web applications based on Microsoft's ASP.NET framework. ASP.NET is a set of technologies that allows developers to develop Web-based methods of accessing and working with legacy and other enterprise data from sources that are also based on Mono or .NET. Ultimately, the Mono Project will allow developers to write Web services applications that can run on Linux and UNIX systems. In addition, de Icaza will demonstrate how Mono developers can utilize ADO.NET, Microsoft's framework for accessing back-end databases, to build more comprehensive Mono solutions.

de Icaza will review Mono's milestones and community achievements of the Mono Project to date. These milestones include:

• Contributions from more than 90 developers around the world.
• The completion of a fast run-time (JIT) engine.
• A self-hosting C# compiler, which can also compile its class libraries.
• More than 520,000 lines of code.
• Significant support from developers at Intel,
• Hewlett-Packard and other companies actively involved in .NET and Web services development.

Mono Project achievements also include two efforts to create better development tools for the GNOME open source developer environment. The Gtk# project allows developers to use C# to create new streamlined GNOME applications, while the Vorbis# effort enables decoding of specific streaming files within the GNOME environment. While not directly related to .NET, these initiatives indicate the Mono Project's success in enabling GNOME developers to build better applications more efficiently.

For more information about Mono, visit the Ximian web site or the Mono Project web site.

 
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