[DotGNU]DotGNU and Portable.NET - two years on

[Rhys Weatherley]

July 27, 2001 marked the day that Portable.NET first joined the GNU Project to 
help DotGNU build a compelling alternative to Microsoft's .NET initiative, 
based on the work that I had done in the previous six months.

One year ago, the current version of Portable.NET was 0.4.2 and pnetlib 0.2.6 
(this was before the great renumbering in November 2002).  Back then, the C# 
compiler still wasn't able to build pnetlib.  That all changed in October 
2002 when, through the herculean efforts of Gopal V and Jonathan Springer, 
the compiler finally turned the corner.

It's been full steam ahead since then.  The pnetlib library is moving ahead by 
leaps and bounds - who would have thought a year ago that we would be doing 
System.Windows.Forms by now!  The pnet suite is also going from strength to 
strength, with ilrun become more solid by the day, and the compiler branching 
out to encompass C, Java, VB, and the ever-important BF.

The community has also grown during the last year, with regular contributors 
to both pnet and pnetlib.  And the contributions are becoming more 
significant - things that really scared me in the compiler and runtime engine 
have been picked up by new contributors, who have thrived on the challenge.

So, please join me in celebrating the two year anniversay of our 
collaboration.  There are more good things to come.

Cheers,

Rhys.