David Berlind: This week marked a crucial milestone in in the open source community's question for Linux-based version of Microsoft's .Net.  Yesterday, Novell, which through its acquisition of Ximian inherited the Mono project that's devoted to that cause, announced the availability of the first test release of the open source project.  The release supports development of .Net applications in the C#  language, which, up until now, were of little use outside of Windows.  Availability to more platforms than Windows could help to level the playing field between .Net and Java.   As Mono draws closer to a ship date, it may pressure Microsoft to do one of two things: try to slow it down from a legal perspective on the basis of patent or copyright infringement or, it may release Linux and Unix compatibile versions under its own brand.  Much the same way Intel kept its response  (Yamhill) to AMD's 32/64-bit Opeteron a secret, my guess is that there's a Microsoft-endorsed Unix/Linux-based .Net skunkworks project going on somewhere.  That somewhere could be in one of Microsoft's many R&D labs or it could at Sun as a result of the recent detente between the two companies.