What about the MS.NET standardization?

Microsoft has secured certification for both C# and CLI from ECMA and ISO/IEC as Industry standards. This is a very important step for Microsoft and .Net platform because this enhances the credibility of the newer .Net platform and allures a larger portion of technology industry into adopting .Net as their development platform. Several companies and government organizations only utilize ISO certified technologies; for example, in Australia anything ISO certified is also considered Australian standard according to the rules of the Australian government. Several academic institutions will now be interested in teaching standard C#. Another major outcome of having an open industry standard specification is .Net platform could be getting ported to other platforms like Linux and UNIX; best example is the Mono Project by Ximian- it is an open source implementation of .Net platform for UNIX and Linux based on ECMA approved Public Domain Specification of C# and CLI.

Microsoft submitted the specifications to ECMA, which in turn fast-tracked them through ISO. In doing so, Microsoft released all intellectual property in the core C#/CLI platform to the public domain. No one needs a license to implement C#/CLI. This will also help everybody in better understanding the implementations of C# and CLI which are at the core of .Net platform. However, the whole of .Net platform is not a Public domain standard- Microsoft still owns complete Intellectual property rights to several class libraries and API within the .Net platform. See

ECMA- http://www.ecma.org

ISO- http://www.iso.ch

Mono Project- http://www.mono-project.com/about/index.html

.Net programming languages

More on ECMA and why Microsoft cares-

The Bill Gates letter to developers and IT Professionals also reveals the Microsoft’s Vision of .NET



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