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DotGNU is a part of the GNU Project
GNU Project

The GNU Project is a free software, mass collaboration project, announced on September 27 1983 by Richard Stallman. It initiated the GNU operating system, software development for which began in January 1984....
 that aims to provide a free software
Free software

Free Software or software libre is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with minimal restrictions only to ensure that further recipients can also do these things and to prevent consumer-facing hardware...
 replacement for Microsoft
Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is a multinational corporation computer technology corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of computer software products for computing devices....
's .NET Framework
.NET Framework

The Microsoft .NET Framework is a software framework that is available with several Microsoft Windows operating systems. It includes a large Library of coded solutions to prevent common programming problems and a virtual machine that manages the execution of programs written specifically for the Software framework....
. Other goals of the project are better support for non-Windows
Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of software operating systems and graphical user interfaces produced by Microsoft. Microsoft first introduced an operating environment named Windows in November 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces ....
 platforms and support for more processors.

The main goal of the DotGNU project and the Microsoft Shared Source CLI (Rotor)
Shared Source Common Language Infrastructure

The Shared Source Common Language Infrastructure , previously codenamed Rotor, is Microsoft's shared source implementation of the Common Language Infrastructure, the core of Microsoft .NET....
 code base is to provide a class library that is 100% Common Language Specification
Common Language Infrastructure

The Common Language Infrastructure is an open specification developed by Microsoft that describes the executable code and runtime environment that form the core of a number of runtimes including the .NET Framework, Mono , and Portable.NET....
 compliant. In contrast, the main goal of another free software/open source
Open source

Open source is an approach to design, development, and distribution offering practical accessibility to a product's source . Some consider open source as one of various possible design approaches, while others consider it a critical Strategy element of their business operations....
 CLI implementation, the Mono Project, is to provide 100% compatible class libraries for both the CLS specification and with the class library currently released by Microsoft for their other proprietary
Proprietary software

Proprietary software is a term coined by advocates of the free software movement to describe computer software which is the legal property of one party....
 version of .NET, which the DotGNU project claims is not currently fully ECMA
ECMA

Ecma or ECMA may refer to one of the following:Ecma is short for*Ecma International , formerly : the European Computer Manufacturers Association , an international standards organization for Information Communication Technology and Consumer Electronics ...
 CLS compliant.






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Encyclopedia


DotGNU is a part of the GNU Project
GNU Project

The GNU Project is a free software, mass collaboration project, announced on September 27 1983 by Richard Stallman. It initiated the GNU operating system, software development for which began in January 1984....
 that aims to provide a free software
Free software

Free Software or software libre is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with minimal restrictions only to ensure that further recipients can also do these things and to prevent consumer-facing hardware...
 replacement for Microsoft
Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is a multinational corporation computer technology corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of computer software products for computing devices....
's .NET Framework
.NET Framework

The Microsoft .NET Framework is a software framework that is available with several Microsoft Windows operating systems. It includes a large Library of coded solutions to prevent common programming problems and a virtual machine that manages the execution of programs written specifically for the Software framework....
. Other goals of the project are better support for non-Windows
Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of software operating systems and graphical user interfaces produced by Microsoft. Microsoft first introduced an operating environment named Windows in November 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces ....
 platforms and support for more processors.

The main goal of the DotGNU project and the Microsoft Shared Source CLI (Rotor)
Shared Source Common Language Infrastructure

The Shared Source Common Language Infrastructure , previously codenamed Rotor, is Microsoft's shared source implementation of the Common Language Infrastructure, the core of Microsoft .NET....
 code base is to provide a class library that is 100% Common Language Specification
Common Language Infrastructure

The Common Language Infrastructure is an open specification developed by Microsoft that describes the executable code and runtime environment that form the core of a number of runtimes including the .NET Framework, Mono , and Portable.NET....
 compliant. In contrast, the main goal of another free software/open source
Open source

Open source is an approach to design, development, and distribution offering practical accessibility to a product's source . Some consider open source as one of various possible design approaches, while others consider it a critical Strategy element of their business operations....
 CLI implementation, the Mono Project, is to provide 100% compatible class libraries for both the CLS specification and with the class library currently released by Microsoft for their other proprietary
Proprietary software

Proprietary software is a term coined by advocates of the free software movement to describe computer software which is the legal property of one party....
 version of .NET, which the DotGNU project claims is not currently fully ECMA
ECMA

Ecma or ECMA may refer to one of the following:Ecma is short for*Ecma International , formerly : the European Computer Manufacturers Association , an international standards organization for Information Communication Technology and Consumer Electronics ...
 CLS compliant.

Main development projects


Portable.NET

DotGNU Portable.NET
Portable.NET

Part of the DotGNU project, Portable.NET is a free software and open source software initiative aiming to build a portability toolchain and runtime for Common Language Infrastructure applications....
, an implementation of the Common Language Infrastructure
Common Language Infrastructure

The Common Language Infrastructure is an open specification developed by Microsoft that describes the executable code and runtime environment that form the core of a number of runtimes including the .NET Framework, Mono , and Portable.NET....
 (CLI), includes software to compile and run Visual Basic .NET
Visual Basic .NET

Visual Basic , formerly called Visual Basic .NET , is an object-oriented programming computer language that can be viewed as an evolution of Microsoft Visual Basic implemented on the .NET Framework....
, C#, and C
C (programming language)

C is a general-purpose computer programming language originally developed in 1972 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories to implement the Unix operating system....
 applications that use the .NET base class libraries, XML, and Windows Forms
Windows Forms

Windows Forms is the name given to the graphical user interface application programming interface included as a part of Microsoft .NET Framework, providing access to the native Microsoft Windows interface elements by wrapping the existing Windows API in managed code....
. Portable.NET claims to support various instruction set architectures including x86, PPC
PowerPC

PowerPC is a RISC instruction set architecture created by the 1991 Apple Inc.?IBM?Motorola alliance, known as AIM alliance. Originally intended for personal computers, PowerPC CPUs have since become popular embedded system and high-performance processors....
, ARM, and SPARC
SPARC

SPARC is a Reduced Instruction Set Computer microprocessor instruction set Computer architecture originally designed in 1985 by Sun Microsystems....
.

phpGroupWare

phpGroupWare
PhpGroupWare

phpGroupWare, formerly known as webdistro, is a multi-user groupware suite written in PHP and part of the DotGNU project. It provides about 50 web-based applications including a Calendar, Addressbook, an advanced Projects manager, Time management, Email, and File manager....
, a multi-user web-based GroupWare suite, which also serves to provide a collection of webservice components that can be accessed through XML-RPC so that can easily integrate them into webservice applications.

DGEE

DotGNU Execution Environment
DotGNU Execution Environment

The DotGNU Execution Environment provides the core web service component of DotGNU and provides the functionality of accepting, validating, and satisfying web service requests....
 (DGEE), a webservice server.

Framework architecture


The Portable .NET class library seeks to provide facilities for application development. These are primarily written in C#, but because of the Common Language Specification they can be used by any .NET language. Like .NET, the class library is structured into Namespaces and Assemblies. It has additional top-level namespaces including Accessibility and DotGNU. In a typical operation, the Portable .NET compiler generates a Common Language Specification
Common Language Specification

The Common Language Specification is a set of base rules to which any language targeting the Common Language Infrastructure should conform in order to interoperate with other CLS-compliant languages....
 (CLS) image, as specified in chapter 6 of ECMA-335, and the Portable .NET runtime takes this image and runs it.

Free software


DotGNU is particularly keen to point out that it is free software, and it sets out to ensure that all aspects of DotGNU minimize dependence on proprietary components, such as calls to Microsoft Windows' GUI code. DotGNU was one of the High Priority Free Software Projects as of 2008-02-13, however it is no longer on that list as of 2008-10-05.

See also

  • .NET Framework
    .NET Framework

    The Microsoft .NET Framework is a software framework that is available with several Microsoft Windows operating systems. It includes a large Library of coded solutions to prevent common programming problems and a virtual machine that manages the execution of programs written specifically for the Software framework....
  • Mono
    Mono (software)

    Mono is a project led by Novell to create an Ecma International standard compliant, .NET Framework-compatible set of tools, including among others a C Sharp compiler and a Common Language Runtime....
    - A popular Free Software implementation of Microsoft's .NET
  • Rotor- Microsoft's shared source implementation of .NET
  • Common Language Runtime
    Common Language Runtime

    The Common Language Runtime is a core component of Microsoft .NET Framework initiative. It is Microsoft's implementation of the Common Language Infrastructure standard, which defines an execution environment for program code....


External links