Microsoft certainly has developed for other platforms in the past, but they've greatly reduced that activity.

Keep in mind that one of the key aspects of Zentity is its integration with Microsoft desktop products.  If the goal is to get faculty to deposit their own content -- simplifying their workflows by allowing them to deposit files from the applications they use to produce some of their content -- then Microsoft has done its market research.  Watching their live demo in May 2009 at Open Repositories was eye-opening in that regard.  Their add-ons for Office support linking of Creative Commons licenses, ontology management, deposit to Zentity (and any other repo that supports SWORD) should be of interest to many.  Sometimes I think we all forget that the first goal is to get faculty content INTO IRs.   We're going to be managing empty IRs if there aren't easy deposit tools.

As to American universities not running Microsoft servers, I have personally worked at major research universities (and research libraries) that do run them alongside their unix environment, usually because there is some aspect of the business operations that requires it.  And many smaller colleges and cultural heritage organizations absolutely do run Microsoft.  And every time I'm on a search panel for a programmer I see lots of applicants with .NET and ASP skills.

Leslie

-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ethan Gruber
Sent: Wednesday, April 28, 2010 11:03 AM
To: Johnston, Leslie; Code for Libraries
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Microsoft Zentity

David is right that Microsoft would never develop for multiple platforms because that would undermine their business model, which is of course, to duplicate efforts and reject international standards (or make Microsoft the standard for everything).  Fortunately, Microsoft is losing its grip on that strategy.

Back to the topic of Zentity, perhaps it would run in Mono, but then you are caught in a situation where you are reliant on Novell also.  However, I think tools should be chosen largely to fit the skillsets of staff.  If an institution has a staffing of .NET developers, it makes sense.  I can't think of a single person with ASP, .NET experience here, so Zentity *should* never be considered an option at my institution.

Ethan

On Wed, Apr 28, 2010 at 10:48 AM, David Kane <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> So what?
>
> On 28 April 2010 15:37, Cowles, Esme <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > On Apr 28, 2010, at 10:25 AM, David Kane wrote:
> >
> > > Why would they write software
> > > for a non-microsoft platform?
> >
> > I'll just point out that other OS vendors (Apple, Sun, Ubuntu, etc.)
> write
> > software for other platforms.
> >
> > -Esme
> > --
> > Esme Cowles <[log in to unmask]>
> >
> > "Men feared witches and burnt women."
> >  -- Louis Brandeis, Whitney v.  California, concurring
> >
>
>
>
> --
> David Kane
> Systems Librarian
> Waterford Institute of Technology
> Ireland
> http://library.wit.ie/
> [log in to unmask]
> T: ++353.51302838
> M: ++353.876693212
>