.ORG for Linux

Hey people, All this hype about dotnet scares me. Microsoft haven't got their traditional platform to work properly yet...and they're losing face because of it. Now, faced with the unthinkable (that people are waking up en masse to the fact that their software just doesn't work), Microsoft are trying a new ploy to dominate the market. Rather than "Everyone must use NT," they now want "Everyone must use .NET" Which is far worse, because .NET isn't just a network server platform. It's a network server platform and an application framework all mixed together to make the ultimate distributed software library...which probably won't work. Rather than writing our own functionality that runs *on a platform, they want us to write code that uses the functionalility already built in to their platform. Thus all programs would just be extensions of the mother MS code base. (Yuk.) Why can't we make something similar for Linux? (".ORG" ?) We could make a standard set of services that are exposed by one of the many RPC mechanisms available. We could incorporate not only traditional network services (ie HTTP serving) but also add a standard set of functional modules (excuse the buzzing) that could be used by any web-or-other application to quickly build working software. This is not a new idea. This may not even be a good idea. But Microsoft is trying to strangle the market (as usual) by making some big fancy distributed component base that IT managers will love, because it's *A Nice Concept.* They won't be able to resist it...I can see it now... "Let's make a .NET enable website!!" Shudder. With so many different initiatives to standardise Linux services (ie LSB, Linuxconf) and a plethora of standard C++ libraries for Linux, couldn't we leverage some of that existing wealth to make a .ORG for Linux? Even if just to show the world that whatever they can do, Linux and the Open Source Community can do better. Much better. (Wasn't that emotive? ;) Regards, Tyson Lloyd Thwaites I.T.&e Ltd