2003-04-23 12:10:00

Just in case anyone at Microsoft is listening...

I want .NET on Linux, Solaris and MacOS X.  We need non-Windows clients for SourceGear Vault.  We know how to write good cross-platform C++ code, but now that we've had a taste of C#, we don't want to do that anymore.  It would be much easier if you would just make our managed code portable.

To be more specific:

• From our perspective, the client is the only part that needs to be cross-platform.  We're happy running the server forever on Windows 2000/2003/2008.
• I would settle for a subset of the Framework if that makes the decision easier.  Even if you left out Windows Forms, it would be very useful.
• Yes, we would be willing to pay money.  If we linked the .NET runtime into our app, we could just pay a royalty for every copy we sold.

Even better, why not license the .NET runtime to other OS vendors the same way you license Windows to PC vendors?  You get $100 or so for every Windows license, right?  If you can get that same $100 from a Linux or MacOS user who wants to run .NET apps, why not?

PS.  Yes, I know about Rotor.  The problem is that I can't ship Rotor with my app.  I'm not personally interested in research or studying the way the CLR functions.  I just want to ship a cross-platform product and I want .NET to be my cross-platform solution.

PPS.  Yes, I know about Java.  Don't get me started. 

PPPS.  Yes, I know about Mono.  This solution looks promising, but it's not mature enough yet to run even the Vault command-line client.  Not yet.