[DotGNU]This week in DotGNU - no 2

[Norbert Bollow]

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.

-- 
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Norbert Bollow, Weidlistr.18, CH-8624 Gruet   (near Zurich, Switzerland)
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