I never cease to be amazed at the willingness of people to let themselves be screwed by Microsoft. You can write all the clients and applications you want for .NET but the whole thing is controlled by Microsoft through Hailstorm. Once you have helped get everyone to submit all there personal information to Microsoft, and encouraged net service provides to required Hailstorm authentication, then you have made the internet into Bill Gates personal playground. If you want to do anything on the internet, then you pay Microsoft.
Why am I not impressed.. folks look at the bigger picture besides writing another C+ client.!!
The key to .NET is centralized authentication through one souce, Microsoft and they will control all companies who want access to it . If you truly want an "open aource" .NET then you have to provide a robust secure authentication service as a complement to whatever client server structure you use. I believe that authentication should be decentralized, i.e. my personal information stays on MY server, not Microsofts and I have some registered encryption key which a online vendor can authenticate my information with.
So before you run off and help Bill Gates build yet another software Gulag like Windows, build a real open source system which protects our rights as individuals and developes and independent software companies
