I’m blogging today from the MTS2006 (Microsoft Technology Summit 2006). This year we have internet in the room, so hopefully I’ll be able to send out updates quickly rather than spatting out information in the evenings after a couple of drinks.
Anyways, Jim Hugunin is back this year talking about IronPython 1.0, which is close to release. He made a quick comment and got a cease and desist order from his boss in the corner. Talking about GTK on Windows, Linux and OSX and how IronPython hooks into it he said that GTK and IronPython work well on Linux and OSX currently and decent on Windows and then added the additional statement of “for now”. An interesting statement. The CLR/IL is an open standard and mono is out there. IronPython is also targeting .Net and Mono. In fact, Jim mentioned that the Mono folks are leveraging IronPython to work on their 2.0 release and stay up-to-date within 2-3 days of each IronPython release. Jim also mentioned that they are not working with Mono, but do release their tests, which are helping the Mono project considerably. So, what’s the secret? Are they working on solid ports for Mono and GTK on Linux and OSX or helping develop Mono 2.0 or planning on providing a .Net complie on other systems with GTK? No clue, but that slip more than likely means something’s coming and from what I could get from Jim, it could be a free or open source release of .Net for Linux and OSX sometime in the future, which would probably use GTK for the graphics engine.
Invert your Mind 
It’s a real pity that MS aren’t more open with IronPython. I think it would be a great win for .NET and Python. As I understand it for cross-platform development the Mono project doesn’t recommend that you use IronPython because the new license isn’t really compatible with free software. Instead the recommendation for an agile language is Boo.
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I know that the Mono project is using the IronPython tests to verify their 2.0 support, but I was not aware of any license issues. Perhaps this was something else that Jim is working on – getting the license to allow IronPython to run on Mono without any restrictions. I’ve never heard of Boo, I’ll have to give it a look.
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