Peter Galli at Port 25 posted an article yesterday stating that Microsoft will be applying the Community Promise to the ECMA 334 and ECMA 335 specs. After I read the article, I had to click on all the external links, read the descriptions and then go back and read the article a second time. In order to save you the same hassle, I looked up the ECMA specs and Community Promise, summarized them and pasted them below:
ECMA 334 is the international standard that specifies the form and establishes the interpretation of programs written in the C# programming language. The standard outlines the syntax, constraints, semantics and restrictions and limits imposed by the C# language.
ECMA 335 is the International Standard that defines the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) in which applications written in multiple high-level languages can be executed in different system environments without the need to rewrite those applications to take into consideration the unique characteristics of those environments.
The Microsoft Community Promise is a simple and clear way to assure that the broadest audience of developers and customers working with commercial or open source software can implement specifications through a simplified method of sharing of technical assets, while recognizing the legitimacy of intellectual property.
So what does all this mean? Well in a nutshell, it means that Microsoft has officially documented the C# language and will not legally pursue anyone who tries to re-implement C# so it can run in other operating systems. The goal is that if I write a C# application on Windows that I can also run it in Linux and vice-versa. Of course, this is something that the Mono project has been attempting for years but many people shied away from using it because they were afraid of implementing something that could possibly violate intellectual property and patent laws. Now that Microsoft has released the ECMA documents along with the Community Promise there should no longer be any hesitation for people to adopt Mono or other such products.
