First of all today, we found out that the new Zune Mp3 Player, will be updated to support all the Zune 2, Microsofts next mp3 player, features. Which is awesome. Highly unexpected move.

However I found out something even better. As a developer who utilizes the .NET Framework, Microsoft just did one of the best things I can possibly imagine. They are going to release the source code for the .NET Framework 3.5 libraries when it is finished. You may be wondering, "Why does this matter?". It's not so much the debugging aspect that I care about. It's something more. It's called MONO.

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/10/03/releasing-the-source-code-for-the-net-framework-libraries.aspx

MONO is an open source project that is pretty much the .NET Framework. You see .NET is an open-specification-framework, in other words: Almost all specifications have been released under the ECMA. MONO uses these specifications to write there own program that does the exact same thing as the .NET Framework. MONO is mutli-platform (Linux, Mac Os X, Windows, Unix, etc..). With MONO the .NET Framework has the same cross-platform as Java. However Microsoft never released the specifications for many windows-specific libraries. MONO Developers had to guess and figure out how to do them on there own. When this is released, Mono Developers are going to be able to have access to every .NET Library allowing the project to be completed at a much quicker pace.

I am absolutely amazed that Microsoft would do this. It's a huge move that really puts my faith back into Microsoft. I think no one ever expected Microsoft to even think about this.

Bravo Microsoft. Bravo.

I lol'd.

Well, Cole seems to be an advertising account of Microsoft. I'm surprised to hear that Microsoft did this, but this is nothing that earns Microsoft my respect, since when you are doing cross-platform stuff, Open Source should be mandatory (Closed Source stuff for something that is ALSO inteded to be for Linux?).

Agreed