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Why .Net will benefit other platforms

John Carroll ZDNet US

Published: 01 Oct 2002 15:50 BST

As I discussed in my last article, I believe that .Net will grow into a standard development framework that encompasses both Microsoft and non-Microsoft platforms. Before you turn in your keyboard and become a Sherpa guide in the Himalayas, however, consider some of the advantages of a world unified around a common development framework like .Net. Just as .Net has been touted as the saviour of the "little language" (due to its emphasis on multi-language support in .Net), it may also be the technology that raises the fortunes of many non-Microsoft platforms and applications, including Linux.

1. .Net hooks non-Microsoft platforms into the larger Windows development community. This increases the number of developers available to work on those platforms. Miguel de Icaza, founder of Ximian, offered the following as motivations for providing a .Net implementation on Linux:

Windows developers know how to write code for it.

Let's make it easy to bring developers from the Windows world into our platform.

Training materials, tutorials, documentation, tips and tricks are already available in large quantities, let's leverage this.

In other words, if it is easy for Windows developers to write for Linux, then they will write for it. Requiring them to learn an entirely different set of APIs virtually guarantees that they won't bother.

Furthermore, by adopting .Net, other platforms can leverage the billions Microsoft and others spend on .Net reference material and training. Microsoft's documentation is extremely good, as long-time Mac and BeOS developer and author of the "Pepper" text editor Maarten Hekkelman related in a recent interview. Microsoft caters to developers in ways that other companies don't. Leveraging that investment makes business sense, as it is essentially free money from which other platforms can benefit.

In sum, .Net lowers the cost of developing for non-Microsoft platforms. Lower costs and fewer hoops through which Windows developers must jump will lead to more applications. If network effects are the thing that keeps consumers returning to Windows, then hooking into that network will raise the likelihood that consumers will consider platforms such as Linux.