Ximian, a Boston company that works on the Gnome user interface for Linux, is scheduled to announce Monday a software project called "Mono" intended to compete against Microsoft.Net, according to sources familiar with the plan.
The move, if successful, could increase the importance and popularity of the Microsoft.Net software-as-a-service strategy while undermining Microsoft's control over the software itself. But analysts caution that .Net is a nascent technology, and any attempts to clone it are likely to be even more immature.
Red Hat, the top seller of Linux and one of Microsoft's most ardent foes, declined to comment on Ximian's plans. But in an interview, Chief Technology Officer Michael Tiemann expressed support for efforts to prevent Microsoft from gaining exclusive control over the computing world--as Red Hat has by backing the Gnome user interface and the Samba software that lets a Linux machine share files like a Windows computer.
"We're not about cloning systems for the sake of cloning; we're about making sure that the future of computing doesn't implode around a monopoly," Tiemann said.
Red Hat doesn't need to create a .Net alternative of its own, Tiemann said, "but I think we would be happy to support it in the way we've supported a lot of other initiatives to support choice."
Ximian declined to comment on the project, but in earlier interviews with CNET News.com, Chief Technology Officer Miguel de Icaza indicated his company's direction includes its own version of .Net. Last week, de Icaza said he's researched .Net extensively, likes it and believes having a version of .Net for Linux would be "good for Linux and Microsoft."
In February, de Icaza said his company's "long-term plans are along the lines of providing services for the Linux platform and integrating services into the desktop."
And in May, Ximian released SOUP, a version of software that's part of .Net and now also an industry standard.
Caldera International, another Linux seller, also is interested in producing a version of .Net for Linux, said Chief Technology Officer Drew Spencer. Because customers will inevitably use both .Net and Caldera software, it would be good to be able to mix the two on the same system. "We are very interested in wanting to...provide that kind of capability," Spencer said.
Major challenge
It's not surprising that the open-source movement--currently on the receiving end of a Microsoft campaign against the legal underpinnings of its shared programming methods--would "try to fight off the Microsoft cornering strategy," Technology Business Research analyst Bob Sutherland said. But he predicts any open-source alternative will be slow to catch on.
"I would guess that it would take several years before you're going to see sizable market development for it," he said.
Microsoft.Net is a broad strategy to offer services such as e-commerce and address books online, converting Microsoft's dominance in desktop computer software into dominance on the Internet as well. Microsoft.Net is built on foundations that are standard components, but .Net includes features beyond that standard. Microsoft hopes to make money by selling services--collected under the project name HailStorm--that are based on .Net.
While .Net is unquestionably a Microsoft project--executives say they've bet the company on the strategy--the general idea isn't unique to Microsoft. Others pursuing similar plans, loosely referred to under the term "Web services," include IBM, Sun Microsystems, Oracle and Hewlett-Packard.
Microsoft itself has no objection to widespread use of the foundations of .Net. Indeed, it's trying to foster that very outcome in several ways.
