Novell is sponsoring the Mono Project to develop an open source Unix version of the .Net platform Developers of the open source Mono Project, which enables Microsoft .Net applications to run on Linux, Unix, and the Macintosh, have released Mono Tools for Visual Studio to a limited number of developers.In a Web posting Monday, the Mono team described the release as a closed preview cycle. The first release integrates four pieces of functionality into Visual Studio:Mono Migration Analzyer (MoMA), scanning projects for incompatibilities and helping developers work through issues.Run on Mono for Windows, testing against Mono on Windows to help isolate issues arising from differences between Mono and .Net.Run on Mono on Linux, testing against Mono on Linux to work through differences between Windows and Linux.Debug on Mono on Linux, for remote debugging of Mono applications on Linux.[ Read what InfoWorld’s Neil McAllister has to say about “The case for supporting and using Mono.” ] The Mono Project has been sponsored by Novell as an effort to develop an open source Unix version of the .Net platform. “Its objective is to enable Unix developers to build and deploy cross-platform .Net Applications. The project implements various technologies developed by Microsoft that have now been submitted to the ECMA for standardization,” the Mono Web site states. Software Development