ECMA and the Common Language Infrastructure

In an apparent effort to make the .NET Framework a standard for application development, Microsoft has submitted the C# (pronounced “C-sharp”) language and the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI), which is based on the .NET Framework, to the European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA), an international standards group. Microsoft and Corel recently announced that they would work together and use these standards to create an implementation of C# and the CLI for FreeBSD and offer this implementation under Microsoft’s Shared Source Code license. Ximian, an open-source developer of the GNOME environment for Linux, has also announced that it will use the same ECMA specification to implement the .NET Framework on Linux.

Limited Support for Class Libraries

The information submitted to ECMA for standardization includes elements that appear to map to the .NET Framework, including the Common Type System (CTS), the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI), and a virtual execution environment (the Common Language Runtime, or CLR).