What is .NET? (was Re: [Nolug] Can IE run on Linux?)

The way you guys are talking about .NET, I'm convinced that
Microsoft's marketing has you fooled.

Microsoft's marketing used .NET as a "theme". It didn't represent a
cohesive set of technologies. It still doesn't. .NET has evolved to
mean the CLR that runs C# and VB7+ (as well as a couple of other
languages that no one cares about).

And, as Friedrich Gurtler pointed out, Mono is working hard to
provide an alternative to Microsoft's CLR. I have friend's who
worked on projects to move from ASP.NET to a Mono-based framework.
They said it was seamless.

Finally, I refer you to something Joel Spolsky, former Microsoft
employee, wrote back in April of 2001 titled "Don't Let Architecture
Astronauts Scare You":

  I'm not saying there's anything wrong with these architectures... by
  no means. They are quite good architectures. What bugs me is the
  stupendous amount of millennial hype that surrounds them. Remember
  the Microsoft Dot Net white paper?

    The next generation of the Windows desktop platform, Windows.NET
    supports productivity, creativity, management, entertainment and
    much more, and is designed to put users in control of their
    digital lives.

  That was about 9 months ago. Last month, we got Microsoft
  Hailstorm. That white paper says:

    People are not in control of the technology that surrounds
    them....HailStorm makes the technology in your life work together
    on your behalf and under your control.

  Oh, good, so now the high tech halogen light in my apartment will
  stop blinking randomly.

  Microsoft is not alone. Here's a quote from a Sun Jini whitepaper:

    These three facts (you are the new sys admin, computers are
    nowhere, the one computer is everywhere) should combine to improve
    the world of using computers as computers -- by making the
    boundaries of computers disappear, by making the computer be
    everywhere, and by making the details of working with the computer
    as simple as putting a DVD into your home theater system.

  And don't even remind me of the fertilizer George Gilder spread
  about Java:

    A fundamental break in the history of technology...

  That's one sure tip-off to the fact that you're being assaulted by
  an Architecture Astronaut: the incredible amount of bombast; the
  heroic, utopian grandiloquence; the boastfulness; the complete lack
  of reality. And people buy it! The business press goes wild!

-- 
A choice between one man and a shovel, or a dozen men with teaspoons
is clear to me, and I'm sure it is clear to you also.
    -- Zimran Ahmed <http://www.winterspeak.com/>

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