"Open source advocates are in an uproar over the
announcement (by one of their own) to build an open source
implementation of Microsoft .NET based on the European Computer
Manufacturer's Association (ECMA) standard currently in the draft
phase. Miguel de Icaza, one of the original developers of GNOME,
has announced the Mono project. The original intent of the GNOME
project was to make UNIX competitive in the desktop application
space by providing a standard user interface and the interface
libraries for developers to code against (much like the Win32
interface did for Windows developers). GNOME and KDE are the
competing standards for user interfaces on UNIX, and more
importantly, Linux. Mono, on the other hand, is aimed at making
UNIX developers competitive in the Web services space by giving
them a feature-rich implementation of the .NET development platform
using existing open source technologies. I'll give you the scoop on
Mono, and I'll discuss what it could mean for open source and for
Microsoft.
The open source camp is divided over whether this announcement
is good or bad for the open source movement. Once implemented, a
Mono user could develop an application in C# (or any other
CLS-compliant development language available on Mono), test it on
Linux (or any other operating system on which the GNOME class
libraries are available), and then deploy it on either Linux or on
Microsoft platforms. And this is what has current open source
advocates so concerned. In a world where Microsoft invests billions
of dollars to optimize the .NET Framework for their .NET Operating
System, many in the open source camp think that Mono will turn into
an easy path for GPL developers to deploy their applications on
Microsoft platforms at the expense of Java and Linux. They're also
concerned that Microsoft will create hard links to their HailStorm
services (like Passport) that will force companies that start
development on Mono to move their applications to a Windows-only
environment in order for them to operate properly. Of course, most
of those advocating this position think that anything that helps
Microsoft has to be bad for open source (customers be damned)."
