[FSFE PR][EN] GNU ANNOUNCES TWO FREE SOFTWARE PROJECTS TO REPLACE MICROSOFT .NET

[Bradley M. Kuhn]

UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL MONDAY, JULY 9, 2001

Media Contact: Free Software Foundation
               Bradley M. Kuhn <pr at 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.