Mono is the name of an open source project led by Novell (formely Ximian) to create an ECMA Standard compliant (Ecma-334 and Ecma-335), .NET compatible set of tools, including a C# compiler, a Common Language Runtime, and more, all to run on GNU/Linux, UNIX, Mac OS X, and Windows based computers.

While Microsoft made a version of .NET available for FreeBSD called Rotor, Microsoft's shared source license is not really Free Software and is insufficient for the needs of the community (it explicitly forbids commercial use).

A lot of discussion has taken place about whether Microsoft could destroy the Mono project with patents. The Mono team has acknowledged this problem in their FAQ:

"The .NET Framework is divided in two parts: the ECMA/ISO covered technologies and the other technologies developed on top of it like ADO.NET, ASP.NET and Windows.Forms.

Mono implements the ECMA/ISO covered parts, as well as being a project that aims to implement the higher level blocks like ASP.NET, ADO.NET and Windows.Forms."

For more information on their patent position, see mono-project.com/about/licensing.html.

Version 1.0 of Mono was released on June 30, 2004.

The Mono VM contains JIT engines for a number of processors: x86, SPARC, PowerPC (in 32 bit mode) and x86-64 and SPARC for 64 bit modes. The VM can just-in-time compile or it can pre-compile the code to native code. For other systems not listed, an interpreter is used.

A similar project, called Portable.NET, is part of the DotGNU project.

Sub-projects

Numerous sub-projects have been created to allow developers to use Mono in their development environment. For example, gtk# (http://gtk-sharp.sourceforge.net/) are bindings which tie the Mono framework into the Gtk libraries.

See also

• IKVM

External links

• Mono homepage (http://www.mono-project.com/)
• The Mono Community (http://www.gotmono.com)
• Mono Wiki (http://www.nullenvoid.com/mono/wiki/)
• Ecma-335 (http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-335.htm)
• Ecma-334 (http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-334.htm)
• Running .NET on Linux or Windows (http://bdn.borland.com/article/0,1410,32056,00.html)
• MonoBrasil A Brazilian Mono WebSite (http://monobrasil.softwarelivre.org)

de:Mono-Projekt ru:Mono