Win32 Open Source or free .NET integration?

[Joe Mason]

In article <RSJu8.3093$MM2.1226076 at news1.news.adelphia.net>,
Michael Kelly  <mkelly2002 at adelphia.net> wrote:
>I haven't used .NET myself yet but another programmer
>using it raves about the back end integration among
>the languages.  Also I noticed ActiveState is doing
>a Visual Python that's supposed to integrate fully
>into .NET.  I know there are some open source project
>for .NET for Linux/unix but I was wondering if anyone
>has heard of a free Win32 implementation in the works?

The *nix versions (Mono's the only one I know about, but I think I recall
hearing of at least one other targetting BSD) will probably work under cygwin,
and might even be portable to Windows native.  Probably better to wait until 
they're close to being stable, or at least a fair ways along, to avoid
duplicating a lot of work.

Also, if anyone implements a clone of the .NET basic libraries, they should
be usable on the original .NET VM, no?  And the VM is probably the easiest
part due to the volume of the libraries.  So if there's another free VM
with core libraries, it shouldn't be too hard to get a completely free
version for Windows.  (Unless the libraries use a lot of native code, which
is possible.  I don't even know how/if .NET allows calls outside the VM.)

Joe