Reimplementing .net? You wish. (Score 1)

All this talk of reverse engineering .net is all very well, but very few people seem to understand what .net is or in-fact which parts of it could be usefully ported to another OS.

Do you want to implement a JIT/ Virtual machine for MSIL (.net framework version of Java byte code)? Do you want a compiler to generate MSIL?

Most of what I've seen of .net so far (as far as developers are concerned) is the RAD abilities of the new languages (specifically C#) and developer tools and the web services (ability to call methods remotely, via SOAP, on another machine). RAD tools are already available for other OS's the only advantage is the new C# language, which is sufficiently like Java to consider a Java to MSIL compiler and a MSIL Virtual machine or just a MSIL to Java byte code converter. Writing SOAP services is already available using Java (I think).

At the end of the day any thought of re-implementing .net (any part of it) needs to be considered in the context of that you want to achieve and what is realistically achievable by an open source team.