One thing I've wondered about with the .NET platform is that it sounds like it was designed to be a lot like Java - A runtime that the software runs within, which can be developed for multiple platforms, so that a .NET application could potentially run on any platform that has the .NET runtime. However, Microsoft has only developed the .NET runtime for their various versions of Windows. There is no official Microsoft .NET runtime for Linux or Mac OS X, for example. There is the Mono project, which has implemented the .NET runtime for OS X and Linux (and I believe Windows too), but Mono is developed by a 3rd party and is a step or two behind Microsoft. Additionally, I read something not too long ago that said Microsoft might implement steps to prevent 3rd parties such as Mono from being able to implement a .NET runtime for other platforms.

This confuses me a bit. Why make a technology to allow software to
potentially run on multiple platforms but only implement it for one major OS? I can see how Microsoft is financially interested in developing .NET only for Windows, so that makes me wonder why Microsoft bothered with the concept at all.

Nightfox

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