Thanks to Lennie de Villiers for the tip off. As well as Silverlight 3 which came out today, there's another .NET framework with a very small CLR; that's the .NET Micro Framework. The SDK for it (a whopping 10.8 MB in size!) SDK supports development of code, including device I/O, in the C# language using a subset of the .NET libraries, and is fully integrated with the Microsoft Visual Studio development environment. It's for developing small embedded systems.

This appears to work with Visual C# 2008 Express. I say appears because although I downloaded it, it wouldn't install as I don't have SP 1 for Visual C# 2008 Express. To be honest, my installs are in a state of flux as I have the Silverlight 3 Beta tools, SP 1 For Visual Studio 2008 etc. I need an hour or two to fix everything! I can't even install Silverlight 3 until the beta tools are removed!

I think sometimes it would be nice if all the development tools stayed stable and static for 2-3 years with no new versions of software but that's not the real world with competition and commercial pressure etc. I can dream!

• Link to C# Tutorials
• Link to Download and Install Microsoft Visual C# 2008 Express Edition

Tracking bugs is one of those things that computers do very well. If you're developing software commercially, or even open source or for yourself then you should be using one. They do make managing the software, and improving the quality significantly easier, as you can usually prioritize the bugs and see what issues are outstanding.

There's a lot of bug-tracking software about, much of it web based using scripting languages such as php. However there are a couple of ASP.NET implementations that I know of plus the C based Fossil and the C++ Webissues. If you know of any other's (just the C, C++, C# and ASP.NET ones) that aren't listed on the new open source bug-tracking page, do let me know! Emails to cplus.guide@about.com.

• Link to Bug Tracking Systems in Open Source

Not that there's ever been acrimony but Mono of course is from the other side of the tracks and there's always been an assumed threat hanging over its head that it'll get run out of town if it gets too big for its boots. Given Microsoft's past with regard to open source that's understandable. Richard M Stallman said that much last week. But that was old Microsoft which didn't like Linux. Things have changed and this announcement shows they mean it.

It shows it in that the open source community at Microsoft have their own blog. In an entry posted yesterday, it was announced by the Microsoft community manager Peter Galli that Microsoft will be applying the Community Promise to the ECMA 334 (C#) and ECMA 335 (Common Language Infrastructure) specs.

What this means is that Microsoft will not sue you or your customers if you implement C# or the CLI or use Mono. The Community Promise legally binds Microsoft not to assert its patents against people who implement certain Microsoft standards and technologies. Though you should pay attention to the word certain. It doesn't cover certain proprietary Microsoft technologies such as Winforms, ADO.NET and ASP.NET. The founder of Mono, Miguel de Icaza said that Mono will be splitting into two source code downloads. ECMA stuff (C#, CLI) and the rest in the not too distant future.

• Link to Linux Programming Tools and Utilities

Software Piracy is a problem for software sellers though I doubt that the figures bandied about for revenues lost are that accurate. I've seen people copy software, games over the years and many applications are copied because it's easy. If it wasn't they wouldn't pay for it. That's not an excuse to pirate, just pointing out that a pirated copy doesn't equate to a lost sale.

But when you run software to provide a service; think of Facebook applications for example, there's nothing to pirate. That's not a great example as applications are generally free on Facebook. The Internet has made this possible but I'm not keen on purely web applications, even if they use a whizzy interface in Flash or Silverlight. I was without Internet access tonight until 20 minutes ago; it's most frustrating!

So I think that if applications are tailored to work locally but use a server for perhaps saving, or interaction with other users, you get away from it being a pure application that can be pirated. The hard bit is splitting the functionality between server and client so it can run off-line locally but not be easily pirated.