Mono project.

[Miguel de Icaza <miguel ximian com>]

Hello guys,

   Over the past few months I have been getting more and more excited
about the .NET development platform that Microsoft developed.
Initially because C# was a cute little language, and then because
there were some really promising concepts in there: an environment
where you could pick and choose your favorite programming language,
and reuse classes implemented in any language;  a garbage collection
system for code running in this runtime, and a pretty nice class
library.

   Initially I started writing a C# compiler in C#, to learn the
language.  And the idea was to have the base object be a `GObject' and
use C# as a better tool to write GNOME code, no garbage collection,
but just a nicer language to write code in.  As the project evolved,
and we uncovered more features in .NET it made sense to aim to
implement the whole development framework.

   As of two weeks ago, Ximian decided to tackle this project based on
the code I had been working.  The project was to build a Common
Language Runtime including its JIT engine, finish the C# compiler and
develop the class libraries that would allow us to write GNOME
applications with it.    We called this project mono. 

   Various hackers inside Ximian that were part of the `Ximian Labs'
team have slowly been finishing their current projects and moving on
to work on Mono (Paolo, Dick and Dietmar) and some other members of
the team will be later joining us depending on how it intersects with
their current work.

   This small team can not take on such a project alone, we will need
the help of people who are as excited as we are to bring this major
development upgrade to our platform. 

   If you want to contribute, please take a look at our web site:
http://www.ximian.com/mono (it should actually be www.go-mono.net, but
ahem, long story on problems with the DNS did not let us get this
going last night). 

   Tim O'Reilly and his team at O'Reilly have been very supportive of
the idea, and there is a lot of excitement going on there.

Best wishes,
Miguel.