UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL MONDAY, JULY 9, 2001
Media Contact: Free Software Foundation Bradley M. Kuhn pr@gnu.org Phone: +1-617-542-5942
GNU ANNOUNCES TWO FREE SOFTWARE PROJECTS TO REPLACE MICROSOFT .NET
Boston, Massachusetts, USA - UNDER EMBARGO - The Free Software Foundation announced today the launch of two Free Software projects, DotGNU and GNU Mono, that will replace Microsoft's .NET system. The DotGNU and Mono projects will cooperate to build a full Free Software solution.
DotGNU will be led by David Sugar, who current maintains Bayonne, the GNU telephony system. Sugar, who co-founded OST, a service company for GNU Bayonne, was also recently named the CTO of FreeDevelopers, a democratic community-based company started by Tony Stanco. Many developers of DotGNU are associated with FreeDevelopers, but work on DotGNU is centered at Savannah, the GNU developer collaboration site.
GNU Mono will be led by Miguel de Icaza, who has already led GNU's GNOME desktop environment to great successes. de Icaza is president of the GNOME Foundation and CTO of Ximian, a Free Software company based in Boston. Work on GNU Mono will be centered at Ximian.
Richard M. Stallman, founder of the GNU project and president of the Free Software Foundation, said: "With Mono and DotGNU, we hope to provide a good alternative to all of .NET, one that will respect your freedom, and your privacy. You will be able to use the facilities of Mono and DotGNU either with, or without, the Internet, and using servers of your choice."
Sugar noted that DotGNU will avoid the centralization of services threatened by .NET, saying: "We see no technological reason to have services hosted and deployed from a single service provider. DotGNU will scale so that anyone can develop and deploy network services, whether they be an individual, large corporation or small business. Distributed authentication can assure users' freedom and privacy, as well as the privacy and integrity for commercial organizations."
A key component of .NET is its C# language and Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) for programming language interoperability. "Unfortunately, while C# and CLI have been submitted to the ECMA and W3C standards bodies, the limitations of the 'shared source' license impede the development and deployment of commercial applications on other platforms," said de Icaza. These two GNU efforts will insure that both commercial and non-commercial users will have equal freedom to innovate with these new technologies.
Stallman added: "GNU Mono and DotGNU will enable you to run your C# programs on the free GNU/Linux operating system using exclusively free software. With DotGNU and Mono, you will be able to use C# if you wish, without surrendering your freedom to study, share, change, and generally control all the software that you use."
About GNU:
GNU is a Free Software Unix-like operating system. Development of GNU began in 1984.
GNU/Linux is the integrated combination of the GNU operating system with the kernel, Linux, written by Linus Torvalds in 1991. The various versions of GNU/Linux have an estimated 20 million users.
Some people call the GNU/Linux system "Linux", but this misnomer leads to confusion (people cannot tell whether you mean the whole system or the kernel, one part), and spreads an inaccurate picture of how, when and where the system was developed. Making a consistent distinction between GNU/Linux, the whole operating system, and Linux, the kernel, is the best way to clear up the confusion.
About Savannah:
Savannah is a development collaboration site that provides features similar to SourceForge. Developed by GNU volunteers, Savannah is used for collaboration and cooperation among developers and provides CVS servers, ToDo lists, mailing lists, and web site services. Savannah can be found at http://savannah.gnu.org/.
About the Free Software Foundation:
The Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985, is dedicated to promoting computer users' right to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and use of free (as in freedom) software---particularly the GNU operating system and its GNU/Linux variants---and free documentation for free software. The FSF also helps to spread awareness of the ethical and political issues of freedom in the use of software. Their web site, located at http://www.gnu.org, is an important source of information about GNU/Linux. They are headquartered in Boston, MA, USA.