DotGNU

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Developer:	Gopal V, Norbert Bollow
Latest release:	0.7.4 / January, 2006
OS:	Linux, BSD, Mac OS X, Solaris Operating Environment, AIX, Microsoft Windows, others
Use:	System platform
License:	GPL and LGPL
Website:	dotgnu.org

DotGNU is a part of the GNU Project that aims to provide a free software replacement for the Microsoft .NET. Other goals of the project includes better support for non-Windows platforms and support for more processors.

The main goal of the DotGNU project and the Microsoft Shared Source CLI (Rotor) code base is to provide a class library that is 100% Common Language Specification compliant. In contrast, the main goal of another free software/open source CLI implementation, the Mono Project, is to provide 100% compatible class libraries for both the CLS specification and with the class library currently released by Microsoft for their proprietary version of .NET, which the DotGNU project claims does not currently fully comply with the CLS specification published by ECMA.^{[citation needed]}

Contents 1 Main development projects 1.1 Portable.NET 1.2 phpGroupWare 1.3 DGEE 2 Framework architecture 3 Free software 4 References 5 External links

[edit] Main development projects

[edit] Portable.NET

DotGNU Portable.NET, an implementation of the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI), includes software to compile and run Visual Basic .NET, C#, and C applications that use the .NET base class libraries, XML, and Windows Forms. Portable.NET claims to support various CPUs including x86, PPC, ARM, and SPARC.

[edit] phpGroupWare

phpGroupWare, a multi-user web-based GroupWare suite, which also serves to provide a collection of webservice components that can be accessed through XML-RPC so that can easily integrate them into webservice applications.

[edit] DGEE

DotGNU Execution Environment (DGEE), a webservice server.

[edit] Framework architecture

The Portable .NET class library seeks to provide facilities for application development. These are primarily written in C#, but because of the Common Language Specification they can be used by any .NET language. Like .NET, the class library is structured into Namespaces and Assemblies.^[1] It has additional top-level namespaces including Accessibility and DotGNU. In a typical operation, the Portable .NET compiler generates a Common Language Specification (CLS) image, as specified in chapter 6 of ECMA-335, and the Portable .NET runtime takes this image and runs it.

[edit] Free software

DotGNU is particularly keen to point out that it is free software, and it sets out to ensure that all aspects of DotGNU minimise dependence on proprietary components, such as calls to Microsoft Windows' GUI code. The concern about being free software is what sets DotGNU apart from Mono, and the avoidance of unmanaged code has made it easier to port to other operating systems.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] References

1. ^ GNU Portable .NET documentation.

[edit] External links

• Project homepage
• DotGNU Wiki (broken link as of 21 December 2006)
• Article '2001 -- The Year When DotGNU Was Born'