The open source Mono Project, which is sponsored in part by Novell, Inc. announced today that it has developed a Visual Basic compiler which allows software written in Microsoft's most widely used application programming language to be compiled and run on any platform which Mono supports. Until this announcement, Visual Basic applications could only be run on the Microsoft Windows family of operating systems. "The ability to write software that runs easily across multiple platforms has long been a holy grail for developers," says Mono Project founder and VP of developer platforms for Novell, Miguel de Icaza, "The Mono Visual Basic compiler is a milestone step forward in this direction. Using the software skills they already know, developers can now reach a much broader audience, creating applications that run without modification on all the major operating system platforms."
It isn't de Icaza we have to thank for the Linux VB compiler, at least not in full. Google's Summer of Code project in 2006 brought Raulf Jarve, a Norwegian student programmer who now lives in Spain, to the project. Jarve finished the compiler and has since been hired by Novell.
