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Mono Team Tightens Ties To Microsoft


Visual Basic compiler added to environment; .NET components next

By Alex Handy
March 15, 2007 — 
Mono, the open source .NET runtime project run by Novell, has gone back to basics. In February, the Mono team announced that it has added, for the first time, a Visual Basic compiler to the Mono environment. This compiler marks the first of many new advancements planned for the project in 2007, according to Novell.

“We had the ability to run Visual Basic applications in Mono,” said Frank Rego, product manager for Novell’s open platform solutions, “but we did not have the ability to compile Visual Basic applications. That makes a big difference in the area of ASP.NET,” where on-the-fly compilation is necessary.

“Before,” he noted, “we could run programs that didn’t depend on the compiler on the Mono side, [but] we could not run ASP.NET applications written in Visual Basic.”

Rego said that 2007 will see Mono come into line with .NET components. “We’re working toward compatibility with ASP.NET 2.0, ADO.NET 2.0 and Windows Forms 2.0. We ought to have the ASP.NET work done midyear and Windows Forms 2.0 closer to the end of the year,” said Rego.

“Mono offers the means to run .NET technology, which has shown itself to be a credible alternative to Java,” said Andrew Jaquith, analyst and program manager at research firm Yankee Group. “[But] with Java going open source, some of the appeal of Mono—its openness—is going away.”

While Jaquith sees Mono as a useful technology, he doubts that its new Visual Basic compatibility will spur enterprises to consider the project. “I think Mono’s relevance to the enterprise is limited, and running VB applications does little to change that,” said Jaquith. “Most developers who like Microsoft technology will run it on a Microsoft operating system—rather than an alternative platform where things may, or may not, work. Besides, with all of the saber-rattling [Microsoft CEO Steve] Ballmer has been doing about open source and Linux, why enter what Microsoft would have you believe is a legal minefield?”

NO ENTANGLEMENTS
But legal issues related to Microsoft’s intellectual property are no longer an issue for Novell, noted Carlos Montero-Luque, vice president of product management for Linux and open platform solutions at Novell.

He said that initial concerns over the legality of the agreements Novell signed with Microsoft in November have been put to rest. “We have always believed that the agreement was fully in compliance with GPLv2. As it turned out, that’s correct,” said Montero-Luque. “This has been confirmed by the Free Software Foundation.”

Novell’s intellectual property agreements with Microsoft allow for independently developed software donated to the OpenSUSE project to be exempt from issues arising from the infringement of Microsoft’s intellectual property, in the interest of fostering compatibility and interoperability.

Further work on facilitating the interoperability of SUSE Linux and Windows will be arriving later this year. Montero-Luque said that the first of a number of interoperability road maps will be announced this month. This road map will detail the first steps for Novell’s creation of Web services management tools for working with WS-* specifications, in conjunction with Novell’s own Web services offerings.

Later in 2007, details of directory interoperability, as well as virtualization management systems, will be given. Though Novell and Microsoft will be building their own tools for each of these tasks, the companies are still collaborating on the creation of these road maps.


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