DotGNU, the GNU project's Free Software alternative to .NET, has come a
long way in the last 2.5 years, and it is now possible to use DotGNU to
implement application programs and web services in C#, running them in
the DGEE webservice server, and integrating them with the phpGroupWare
web-based GroupWare suite.
DotGNU addresses the risk of monopolistic .NET platform vendor lock-in,
since now you can compile and run C# and C applications that use the
base class libraries, XML, and System.Windows.Forms under multiple
operating systems, such as GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, MS Windows,
and more!
DotGNU currently consists of three main development projects (further
components will be added over time):
* DotGNU Portable.NET, which contains an implementation of the
Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) - more commonly referred to
as ".NET". This component contains a very portable runtime engine,
compilers for C# and C, a C# class library, and related development
tools. More languages (particularly Java and VB.NET) are in progress.
* phpGroupWare, a multi-user web-based GroupWare suite, which also
serves to provide a good collection of webservice components,
all of which can be accessed through XML-RPC so that you can
easily integrate them into webservice applications of your own.
* The DGEE webservice server provides the functionality of accepting,
validating and satisfying web service requests. It is implemented
on top of a highly scalable distributed middleware called "Goldwater".
The DotGNU 0.1 CD-ROM is available from commercial vendors such as
CheapBytes.com which sells it at
http://cart.cheapbytes.com/cgi-bin/cart/0070010950.html
or you can download it as a gzip'ed iso image (219 MB) via BitTorrent
from
http://download.freedom.biz/dotgnu/dotgnu-0.1-cdrom.iso.gz.torrent
(BitTorrent is a Free Software P2P system that allows many users to
download a file, even when the download link is being slashdotted,
without harm to the server which offers the file. You can download a
BitTorrent client here: http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/download.html )
Since DotGNU is Free Software, it can be freely shared. If you don't
have a CD burner, ask a friend to burn a copy for you!
For more information about the DotGNU project and how you can
contribute, please refer to http://www.gnu.org/projects/dotgnu/ or
http://dotgnu.org
The DotGNU project's irc channel is #dotgnu on irc.freenode.net.
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article are permitted in any medium or format, provided this notice is preserved.
This page is maintained by Norbert Bollow <nb@SoftwareEconomics.biz> with support from the DotGNU Developers mailing list.