Microsoft's new C# language won't emerge from beta until next month, but it's already stirring up lots of speculation. My favorite theory, courtesy of a reader who took issue with my recent column on C#, challenges an offhand reference I made referring to the language as "pretty much Windows-only." Instead, reader Jeremy Fischer argues that Microsoft will want not only C#, but the entire .Net Framework, to proliferate across all sorts of non-Windows servers. As Fischer puts it, "If [Microsoft marketeers] want to grow their business, they need to get out of the Windows box."
That idea was intriguing enough for me to pursue it with Steven Lees, product manager for Microsoft .Net. I was aware that Microsoft had submitted to the European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA) both C# and the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI), an OS-independent specification for the C# run-time environment. (Both were approved as ECMA standards last month.) But I had cynically assumed that this was mainly a Microsoft propaganda ploy, since Sun had submitted Java to ECMA in 1999 and got egg on its face by pulling it back a short time later.
So I asked Lees directly: Could Microsoft indeed be laying the groundwork for platform independence? Drawing a comparison between C# and C++, Lees said, "We'd like to see C# succeed on whichever platform people want to use it." To see why that's such a carefully worded statement, remember that Microsoft's submissions to the ECMA were just specs. The CLI spec, for example, describes a subset of the Common Language Runtime (CLR), an actual piece of Microsoft software that--as the container for running C# applications on the Windows platform--contains proprietary, Windows-specific code. So here's the catch: Microsoft's shared-source policy, under which the C# and CLI specifications were submitted to the ECMA, states that Microsoft offers a "fully functional, illustrative implementation that can be used as a basis for noncommercial experimentation."
In other words, those who confuse shared source with open source do so at their own peril. Last summer, Ximian announced its intention to develop an open-source, Linux-based version of .Net, including C# and the CLI based on the ECMA specs. In a similar effort, Halcyon Software is supposed to start testing a Java implementation of .Net this month. That's fine with Microsoft--after all, the company anointed Corel to create a FreeBSD version of .Net last June. Just don't start using those ports for commercial development purposes, or you'll violate Microsoft's shared-source licensing terms.
Whether Microsoft will eventually change its licensing scheme for other platforms is the US$64 million question. I asked several Microsoft partners where Microsoft might decide to go, and got an interesting response from Frederico Zoufaly, vice-president of business development for ArtInSoft, which provides software and consulting to help developers upgrade legacy VB components to Web services.
"I am certainly sure that the .Net platform is an abstraction that is easily adaptable to many devices and that provides a set of functionality on top of which you can build real value," Zoufaly said. "I believe that [Microsoft] understands this and that [it] will attempt to sustain .Net more than Windows if [it ever has] to choose" between the two.
I'm as delighted as the next guy by the irony of .Net running on a Sun Solaris box. But if that ever happens, Microsoft will determine the time and place. C# and the .Net platform promise a viable alternative to the world of J2EE development--particularly if you want to invest in Web services, since the J2EE spec has not yet outlined how that will happen on the Java side. But for the foreseeable future, that means Windows, pal, unless you plan to code for your own entertainment.
Will Microsoft change its stripes? Or will its cutting-edge development environment be shackled to Windows forever?
Eric Knorr is a an award-winning freelance writer and consultant who frequently works with e-business consultancy Envivid Solutions in San Francisco. He is the founding editor of CNET's Computers.com.
