From: Norbert Bollow <nb@thinkcoach.com> To: lwn@lwn.net Subject: This week in DotGNU - no 2 Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2001 18:16:21 +0200 This week in DotGNU - no 2 (October 26, 2001) ============================================= CVM - "Converted Virtual Machine" masc - Virtual Identity Project Virtual ID Projects "Horse Race" UDDI/WDSL - Directory of Webservices See http://dotgnu.org for general background information. CVM - "Converted Virtual Machine" ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ DotGNU Portable.NET 0.2.0 has been released which contains a new runtime engine. Instead of interpreting the IL bytecode directly, it is first converted into different bytecode for a more efficient virtual machine, called the "Converted Virtual Machine", or CVM. The engine can now run "Hello World", although that is about the only thing that it can run right now. Rhys Weatherley, the primary author and leader of the DotGNU Portable.NET project, is working on implementing the remainder of the instructions so that other examples can be run too. Web Page: http://www.southern-storm.com.au/portable_net.html Download: http://www.southern-storm.com.au/download/pnet-0.2.0.tar.gz Library: http://www.southern-storm.com.au/download/pnetlib-0.0.4.tar.gz masc - Virtual Identity project ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The masc project http://sf.net/projects/macs has taken the step to get listed on http://dotgnu.org/proposals/active.html . masc aims to be a general purpose authentication, authorization, and user-profiling backend, frontendable by anything. masc developer Mario D. Santana announced a project called macsDG which will integrate macs with DotGNU, by creating macs clients, and extending macs servers, to plug into the Secure Execution Environment daemon (SEE). Virtual ID projects "horse race" ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ DotGNU is not going to endorse just a single approach to deal with authentication/authorisation/virtual-id. In fact there are several reasonable ways to address this set of problems, and at the current stage it is very difficult if not impossible to predict what kind of system the internet's users will want to use. For this reason the DotGNU Steering Committee will not simply choose one good project -- if we did that, chances would be that we'd "bet on the wrong horse". No, it's much better to organize a "horse race" of several promising approaches, and we will "bet on the winning horse" at the end of the race, when one of the competing approaches has gathered significant momentum in terms of involved developers, and users of the system. With other words, DotGNU gives the users the freedom to choose what kind of Virtual ID system (if any) they want to use. This is in direct contrast to Microsoft's approach of trying to force a single system (which is under Microsoft's control) on everyone. Information on how to officially register your project for this "horse race", is available at http://dotgnu.org/proposals/ UDDI/WDSL - Directory of Webservices ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ UDDI/WDSL is a lookup service for webservices. Businesses and services register themselves and then you can search for the service you want and use it. Although no decision in this matter has been made yet, current discussions on the DotGNU developers list seem to indicate that DotGNU will probably use these existing standards instead of doing our own thing. One important consideration in this context is that there is a Free Software implementation (with a GPL-compatible license) available already. UDDI: http://www.uddi.org WDSL: http://www.w3.org/TR/wsdl jUDDI (GPL-compatible Free Software implementation): http://www.juddi.org Greetings, Norbert. "This week in DotGNU" is Copyright (C) 2001 by Norbert Bollow. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire issue is permitted in any medium or format, provided this notice is preserved. ==================================================================END. -- A member of FreeDevelopers and the DotGNU Steering Committee: dotgnu.org Norbert Bollow, Weidlistr.18, CH-8624 Gruet (near Zurich, Switzerland) Tel +41 1 972 20 59 Fax +41 1 972 20 69 http://thinkcoach.com Your own domain with all your Mailman lists: $15/month http://cisto.com