December 09, 2004

Follow-up to a "Call-to-Arms" for the Mono Project by Edd Dumbill

In a recent post to his blog Edd Dumbill has made somewhat of a "Call-to-Arms" for the open source community to pick up projects like IronPython, bring them to the Mono project, and get them fixed so that the support for dynamic languages such as Python will be available to developers on the .NET platform. Coming from a very strong Microsoft/.NET development background into the Open Source community has definitely been an eye opener in making an attempt to understand so many technologies that have Unix/Linux roots in which I have simply never had a chance to learn and therefore understand. The Mono project definitely was something I took great interest in, especially as of late, given that it brought .NET further into the Open Source limelight and opened its doors to a wealth of developers who would have otherwise had no interest. It has also helped in my personal transition to this community as it has given me the opportunity to learn about things like GTK using a language syntax I was more used to in C# (via the GTK# project.)

A few months back I created a project and site design for MonoNucleus.com which I had earmarked as a place for developers like you and I to come together and learn, discuss, enrich, extend, and publish information in regards to the Mono platform. However I haven't done a lot with it since then for the simple reason that my priorities have been with other projects. I have made note on that site that if you are interested in helping me get this site started to please contact me as such. I think having a central place in which we can all come together and work as a team on various projects building, blogging, and documenting the processes as we go could be a fantastic way to take projects like IronPython and bring them into a reality for the .NET platform via the Mono project. I have had every intention of taking MonoNucleus to where it needs to be when the time was right. Maybe that time is now?!

The other portion of MonoNucleus.com is MonoBlogs.com which was conceived to be exactly as it sounds. I just checked and it seems I never updated the zone files after I registered the domain so its still pointing at the GoDaddy parked page. I've made the change to point it to one of my servers and if there is enough interest I will be more than happy to get it set-up such that those interested in developing a blog that is directly related to the Mono platform can do so, free of charge. I have no plan nor desire to try and fund either of these projects via any source other than my own wallet as bandwidth and server space is quite cheap these days. So if you have an interest in either of these projects you can rest assured that you're not going to wake up one day and suddenly find that your blog has become a dynamic corporate billboard for something totally and completey different. In addition, and maybe even more appropriately, if you would like to have a third-tier domain like mdavid.monoblogs.com point to a specific IP or redirected to a different URL I would be more than happy to update the zonefile to something of your interest. This would of course allow existing Mono-based blogs to have a MonoBlogs.com based URI without having to move or make any changes to your existing blog. These, of course, are just ideas and I am open to hearing any others that you might have.

If you do have interest in helping me get MonoNucleus up and running or you would like to create a Mono related blog on MonoBlogs.com please contact me directly to let me know. Thanks for the kick in the butt Edd!

Cheers!

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