Microsoft's .net plan for delivering Web services is set to be no
longer confined to the Windows platform.
While open-source developers scurry to bring .net tools to Linux
and, next in line, Apple Computer's Mac OS X, Microsoft has been
busy developing an alternative version of its .net building blocks
to run on a version of the Unix operating system. Some experts
suggest these efforts could lead to a heterogeneous system for
delivering software and services over the Internet, with
Microsoft's technology at the core.
Following Microsoft's $135m (£94m) investment in software maker
Corel in October 2000, the two companies set off to build an
implementation of Microsoft's .net programming tools that will
allow developers to build XML Web services, based on Microsoft
technology, for a non-Windows operating system.
"Initially, they wanted us to help them port it to Linux," Derek
Burney, president and chief executive officer of Corel said,
referring to a contract Microsoft signed with Corel at the time of
its investment. But as Microsoft heated up its verbal assault on
Linux, and more directly on the software licence that protects it,
called the GNU GPL (General Public License), Microsoft made an
about-face on its decision to port to Linux.
"The licensing terms of the GPL were simply not acceptable to
them," Burney said.
Looking to prove that .net could be ported to a competing operating
system, Microsoft in June ordered Corel to instead implement the
.net building blocks on FreeBSD, a free version of the sturdy Unix
operating system based on code originally developed at the
University of California at Berkeley.
"We didn't care, because at that point we were just hired guns,"
Burney said.
Just a week after Microsoft abandoned its Linux plans for .net, a
similar project called Mono was launched to port the .net building
blocks to the open-source operating system. The lead work comes
from Linux software maker Ximian whose chief technical officer,
Miguel de Icaza, said that only a few key pieces of technology need
to be completed before it recreates .net for Linux.
"We're just waiting to hear from Microsoft on the licensing
details," de Icaza said. Although the open source developers
working on the Mono project are optimistic that Microsoft will
offer pieces of its code as an open-source contributions to the
project, Microsoft's contributions more probably entail paying
royalties, he said.
The implementation under development at Corel will be licensed
under Microsoft's "shared source" philosophy, which says developers
can see it and make changes to it, but not use it for commercial
purposes, according to Tony Goodhew, a Microsoft product manager.
Mainly, it will prove that the underlying technology in the .net
building blocks, called CLI (Common Language Infrastructure) -
which recently won approval from a European standards board - can
facilitate a cross-platform .net, Goodhew said.
"It's a validation that these standards are true," he said.
However, it also has the potential to make .net truly a
cross-platform technology. After all, FreeBSD is not only a
well-regarded flavor of Unix - resembling systems such as Sun
Microsystems.'s Solaris - it is also the basis of Apple's latest
operating system, Mac OS X. Porting .net to either of these other
systems would be "a trivial exercise," according to Ximian's de
Icaza.
Does that mean .net for Mac?
"That is one possibility, isn't it?" said Dan Kusnetzky, an analyst
with IDC.
According to de Icaza, the Mono project has already considered
porting the .net tools to the Mac. "We're planning on supporting
Mac OS X as soon as we're done with the Linux port," he said.
Corel, which has deployed 20 of its engineers to build the FreeBSD
version of the .net framework, would also be a likely candidate to
create .net tools for the Mac operating system, as it is a close
partner of both Microsoft and Apple.
"It's a possibility," Burney said of the idea. "But I ultimately
think it's in Microsoft's best interest to do it on its own."
Microsoft's Goodhew says there are no plans "at this stage" to make
a Mac .net at Microsoft. He did note, in an apparent reference to
Apple's new flat-panel iMac computer, "If I was a company that was
building a set of fashionable machines on a FreeBSD platform, I
might think about doing it."