Hi, Al.

[snip]
>>You may be referring to singularity, which is a Microsoft Research project, not a product in development, and is oriented to build a whole kernel on managed code. The project is going quite well and has proven a lot of stuff, while it also surfaced a bunch of technical challenges that have to be solved. Truth is that no one wrote a full operating system in any sort of managed environment until now, and Singularity is probably the project that farther in this space.
>
>Hmm, I was aware of Singularity and that it is a research project. Maybe I was thinking of some other major MS product; I can't find any references.
>
>There was the Sun JavaOS ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaOS ) some time ago, which was written mostly in Java. I suppose you have to think about what you call "managed code" and what you call an "OS" :)

Well, the JavaOS was written in Java, but based on a pretty standard microkernel with its own JVM, and then the high level services were written in Java. Singularity is 99% written in managed code, even the device drivers. The 1% unmanaged is the bootstrap and the CLR loader, because no processor can do that, but everything else is managed, and all processes run in complete isolation, with no shared memory. All interprocess communication is done by using channels, what blow up a lot of potential failure assumptions in normal OSs. It is a very interesting experiment.

>>>- There are efforts to make .Net run on platforms other than Windows - both by Microsoft, and others (e.g. Mono by Novell). These efforts are ongoing and a primary focus of development by both Microsoft and others. In contrast, VFP runs only on 32-bit Windows, although this environment can be provided by emulators on 64-bit Windows (i.e. WoW) and (technically) Win32 emulators on Linux (e.g. Wine), although the latter is legally prohibited by the VFP9 EULA.
>>
>>Mono is quite more than an ongoing project. It is widely used by now, and it supports Winforms, Webforms, and most of .NET 2.0, plus a good deal of WCF. It doesn't support WPF which is something very complex and tied to Windows, but they are currently quite advanced in LINQ support and several other pieces of the .NET 3.5 framework.
>
>By "ongoing" I didn't mean to imply "incomplete, but working on it", I used it to mean "actively under development", in contrast to my later comment about VFP where development has ceased. Thanks for the update on Mono status - they seem to be a lot further along than I thought they were. I was under the impression that Miguel & co. had to reverse-engineer everything so they were way behind MS (e.g. maybe only supporting 1.1 when MS was solidly into 2.0). Do you know if Microsoft is helping/collaborating with Novell in furthering Mono development? That would be a good thing.

Well, they certainly rely on the ECMA spec of .NET, and they implemented a few things on their own, but they keep a good relationship with Microsoft. Indeed, the is an agreement for their implementation of Silverlight (called Moonlight), which is very advanced.

>>>I'm sure I'm missing a bunch of other points, and may be outdated or plain wrong on some of the above but it should at least give you an overview.
>>
>>As far as I know, you did an excellent job, and my comments are just clarifications. I hope this thread keep going as good talk like this one.
>
>Just out of interest - haven't seen you around here much, for a while. Can you give us some idea of your responsibilities in your new position with Microsoft?

Well, I´m reading the forums all the time but I don´t post as often. My current role at Microsoft is Enterprise Architect for South Cone. That means I do architecture reviews and advisory for large accounts in the region. It is fun how huge corporations tend to have the same problems as small organization have, but magnified by their sheer size.

Best regards,