ASP.NET on Linux? (Part 1): ASP Alliance

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ASP.NET on Linux? (Part 1)

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by William Wise
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Mono, Microsoft, and Software Patents

By submitting a large chunk of .NET’s technology architecture to ECMA, an international standards body, Microsoft clearly opened the door for compatible implementations to be devised. Unfortunately, the documents submitted by Microsoft failed to include many of the API’s provided by Microsoft with the .NET SDK. As a result, in addition to the ECMA specifications, Mono also uses Microsoft’s published APIs as a guide to developing those namespaces that were not submitted to ECMA for standardization.

Regarding the issue of software patents, rather trying to explain Mono’s position on this issue I’ve included the relevant FAQ response from their web-site below:

FAQ Question 131:

Could patents be used to completely disable Mono (either submarine patents filed now, or changes made by Microsoft specifically to create patent problems)?

Answer:

First some background information.

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.

The Mono project has gone beyond both of those components and has developed and integrated third party class libraries, the most important being: Debugging APIs, integration with the Gnome platform (Accessibility, Pango rendering, Gdk/Gtk, Glade, GnomeUI), Mozilla, OpenGL, extensive database support (Microsoft only supports a couple of providers out of the box, while Mono has support for 11 different providers), our POSIX integration libraries and finally the embedded API (used to add scripting to applications and host the CLI, or for example as an embedded runtime in Apache).

The core of the .NET Framework, and what has been patented by Microsoft falls under the ECMA/ISO submission. Jim Miller at Microsoft has made a statement on the patents covering ISO/ECMA, (he is one of the inventors listed in the patent): here.

Basically a grant is given to anyone who wants to implement those components for free and for any purpose.

The controversial elements are the ASP.NET, ADO.NET and Windows.Forms subsets. Those are convenient for people who need full compatibility with the Windows platform, but are not required for the open source Mono platform, nor integration with today's Mono's rich support of Linux.

The Mono strategy for dealing with these technologies is as follows: (1) work around the patent by using a different implementation technique that retains the API, but changes the mechanism; if that is not possible, we would (2) remove the pieces of code that were covered by those patents, and also (3) find prior art that would render the patent useless. Not providing a patented capability would weaken the interoperability, but it would still provide the free software / open source software community with good development tools, which is the primary reason for developing Mono.

The patents do not apply in countries where software patents are not allowed.

For Linux server and desktop development, we only need the ECMA components, and things that we have developed (like Gtk#) or Apache integration.

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User Comments

Title: Crime
Name: Akhil Vijayan
Date: 2011-08-16 2:55:34 AM
Comment:
Does Microsoft allow such a project as MOno. Isnt this project breach of intellectual property Rights. Any way Microsoft would not be pleased with people using ASP.net in Linux.

Title: Excellent!
Name: Mark Carson
Date: 2011-04-11 6:50:21 AM
Comment:
There are hundreds of applications designed and developed for PHP and Apache. The majority of these are open-source and more importantly; 'useful'. Apache, MySQL and PHP can be installed and executed quite well on a Windows platform; free of licensing charges...
When this article was written, it was 'fantastic' to believe that the reverse was possible; .NET applications designed and developed for Windows could be installed and used on Linux technologies.
Even now, years on; this article provides some hope that .NET technologies can be fully supported on a 'low-cost' environment with the choices of database, file-system and web technologies that there should be...

Title: Dr
Name: ASP
Date: 2011-03-07 7:17:49 AM
Comment:
Sounds fantastic and would be grate to use with C#

Title: ASP.net / MYSQL
Name: Haneez Haroon
Date: 2011-02-02 1:03:15 PM
Comment:
Most of the web hosting providers support ASP.net now without MSSQL support.

Thanks for the information. Useful stuff.

Title: .net is run in linux
Name: udit trivedi
Date: 2010-10-20 6:58:33 AM
Comment:
it is possible or not i think that's possible because .net is software and is install in different environment

Title: Important Info
Name: Seraju Rahman
Date: 2010-09-05 3:37:04 PM
Comment:
Hi,
It is nice information.But i am not 100% satisfied.
Give us clear Answer.?

Title: info
Name: pankaj
Date: 2010-02-13 3:34:42 AM
Comment:
can we run asp.net programes on linux servers?if yes,then which all facilities will not be available?

Title: Nice info
Name: Aditya G. Jadhav
Date: 2009-12-23 2:05:37 AM
Comment:
hi

got nice information here but not enough. what about redhat linux, i mean there is no packages for RedHat as well as fedora is any migration. plzz give me solution if u so.

with warm regard
J. Aditya

Title: thanks
Name: debanjan sengupta
Date: 2009-07-21 1:34:53 AM
Comment:
i cannot install xsp on my fedora 9 system.i have already installed mono 2.4.2 and monodoc 2.0 but an error message is coming while installing xsp that "you need to install either mono 2.0 orc higher or .net sdk".what should i do?????

Title: Thank you
Name: Okari
Date: 2009-05-31 2:43:22 PM
Comment:
Thanks a lot... I'm a new graduate from university trying to set up a webserver for a small business, I studied mainly asp.net and started worrying cause the introductory classes clearly started that asp.net belongs to that other OS makers...

Thanks a lot

Title: What web server??
Name: Anthony Estrada
Date: 2009-04-29 11:29:26 PM
Comment:
What web server for mono.net??? i have develop ang asp.net application in mono but im wondering how could i implement it.

Title: Positioning of Mono
Name: David Maeder
Date: 2009-04-23 3:49:05 AM
Comment:
Excellent introduction to Mono, giving an independent warts and all view of this project.

Title: Game Dev
Name: GasDeveloper
Date: 2009-03-03 2:15:10 PM
Comment:
Does Mono have any support for 3D Graphic libraries, Or is it able to use any Libraries that support .NET. And can mono be used for GUI Applications?

Title: Mono
Name: edcon
Date: 2008-08-06 2:58:59 PM
Comment:
do you think mono supports Ajax, Silverlight and MS SQL database? Not sure if I'm asking a right question.

Title: Great Idea
Name: metalisa
Date: 2008-07-24 9:00:16 AM
Comment:
it will be a great feature to be able to run asp/net applications on linux

Title: Thanks
Name: Jagadish
Date: 2008-07-14 11:24:24 AM
Comment:
Thanks it is a good article.

Title: Crystal Reports on Ubuntu
Name: Zahid Khan kakar
Date: 2008-06-13 6:54:23 AM
Comment:
Please also tell me about Crystal reports with mono. Thanks

Title: Thakur
Name: Pankaj Kr.
Date: 2008-05-19 8:25:42 AM
Comment:
The article was of great interest to the developers like us who has the expertise of developing an application in .Net and wish to port the same across different platform.

Do continue to write similar articles but also test some .Net application on Mono. Because there is still some ????????s on the compatibility of the two.

Pankaj Kr. Thakur
Chief Executive
Renuka Associates Pvt. Ltd.
New Delhi, India.
Email: pkt@limsys.net

Title: VB Asp.net hosting on Linux (Ubuntu)
Name: busnetdown
Date: 2008-05-13 10:06:47 AM
Comment:
There is a good tutorial at DoTheWeb.net about setting up your Ubuntu server to host Asp.net applications. Also information about Vb Asp.net pages.

Title: Nice
Name: Marvin
Date: 2008-04-24 3:45:12 AM
Comment:
Nice one on MONO . I just hope it will live up to its promises . I love open source and linux but in my job i use .Net so MONO is a great welcome.

Title: hi
Name: pampa
Date: 2007-06-08 2:38:22 AM
Comment:
Now that you understand that Mono’s implementation of .NET is still a work-in-progress it’s important to reflect on how much has been accomplished by the talented programmers contributing to this effort. A good example of the progress Mono has made toward providing a viable cross platform ASP.NET implementation is found in the fact that a number of Microsoft’s sample applications including IBuySpy work unmodified on Mono. As for performance, although Microsoft’s C# compiler generates more performant code is currently more performant than that produced by mono’s C# compiler the gap is closing rapidly. In addition, Mono’s support for Visual Basic.NET is shaping up quite nicely.

Title: Hosting providers
Name: Eric Windisch
Date: 2007-03-24 6:24:32 PM
Comment:
The provider that is listed there has gone out of business. However, there are other providers now. At least one of which has been in business for over 5 years...

For the latest list of providers supporting Mono:
http://www.mono-project.com/FAQ:_ASP.NET#Who_provides_Mono-based_hosting_of_applications.3F

Title: I loved this one
Name: Rahul
Date: 2006-09-18 5:30:47 AM
Comment:
praveen , I do not agree , There are so many indian companies that use dotnet may be willing to switch to *nix . Mono will be a blessing .

Title: how long will it survive
Name: praveen
Date: 2006-08-27 11:53:46 PM
Comment:
well, here in india, java runs in large, so i dont think so it wud survive in future with this new tech...!...?

Title: Really Nice information
Name: Vijay Kumar Mateti
Date: 2006-07-20 11:45:34 AM
Comment:
You really saved me. I'm a GNU supporter, I fell in love with linux but most of my work is on .NET platform so i'm forced to work on this environment. This article really cleared the clouds regarding implimentation of mono on linux. Expecting more Technical article on mono....

Title: MONO
Name: Sarvesh Dhiman
Date: 2006-04-05 2:24:11 AM
Comment:
The article about mono is too good. But is it possible to port ASP.Net application or windiw application on Unix platform using Mono. If it is possible then will it be great sucess then we possible to use COM Components on Unix Platform. and will run all aplication on linux

Title: Niks
Name: Niks
Date: 2005-08-29 2:04:50 AM
Comment:
The article is too cool. But is it possible to port ASP.Net application on Unix platform using Mono. If it is possible then will it be possible to use COM Components (Like Excel Workesheet, Excel Chart Objects, VB DLLs, etc.) on Unix Platform?

waiting for your reply. U can mail me at nikhil.brahmankar@3i-infotech.com.

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