
Why was .NET called .NET? - damian2000
http://www.dodgycoder.net/2012/05/why-was-net-called-net.html
======
neilk
I worked at a company that was a sometime-partner of Microsoft in its efforts
to get other languages running on the CLR.

You have to understand that Microsoft had spent most of the 90s being clueless
about the internet. Then actively trying to kill it. But by 2001, their
strategy was to embrace and extend internet protocols and technologies so they
would be forever tied to Microsoft.

My impression was that .NET was a marketing term for a number of unrelated
technologies that all served this overarching goal, that all came out roughly
around 2001. They were saying to big corporations, that your choice wasn't
Microsoft versus the internet, Microsoft WAS the internet. Only better.

C# and the CLR were there to counter Java and the JVM.

Their concept of Web Services was to make web technologies a mere transport
layer for an RPC protocol called SOAP, which you would build with Microsoft
IDEs.

Hailstorm and Passport were an attempt to make Microsoft the centralized
broker for all sensitive information on the internet. Think Facebook Connect,
only imagine it was more corporate and business focused, and knew your credit
card number.

Anyway, Hailstorm/Passport and Web Services are dead, but The ".NET Framework"
lives on in the CLR and C#, which were actually rather good even apart from
Microsoft's strategizing.

~~~
narcissus
It's funny that you should mention their cluelessness of the web at the start.
I remember when .NET was first released, my first question was "wow, how do
they ever expect me to find _that_ in a search engine?!?"

Search engines were a little dumber back then :)

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
"dot net"

~~~
narcissus
... is fine now. It wasn't at the time, for me at least. It truly was
difficult for a lot of people to search for anything on it.

------
leelin
I was Summer intern at Microsoft in 2001 and back then the interns went to
Bill Gates's house for a bbq near the end of the Summer. One of the interns
asked "what other names did you think of before coming up with .NET?"

To the best of my memory, Bill's answer was something like:

    
    
      I didn't actually like the name .NET.  It makes people 
      wonder if we are finally just starting to learn about the
      Internet.  Sadly, the other proposed name was even worse.
      Our mission statement at the time was 'work Anywhere,
      Anytime, on Any device,' so the proposal was AAAWare.

~~~
rubyrescue
i worked on .net before it was .net. we didn't have a name for the runtime, we
(a very large we) just forked the J++ compiler and started hacking, calling
the J++ language "COOL", for Common Object Oriented Language. For a long time
the runtime was only usable by building executable files with the "jvc"
compiler but compiled C#. We started a VB fork that compiled to the "clr". Yet
still no name. At the end of the day it was purely a marketing decision.

~~~
ConstantineXVI
Curious, was the CLR also built off of the Microsoft JVM? And is any of the
original code for either still rattling around inside modern .NET?

~~~
rubyrescue
totally separate people who had never worked on the jvm for legal reasons

------
ecaradec
"The question was deemed to be offtopic for StackOverflow,"

I've stopped using stackoverflow as a contributor, the moderators are really
overzealous. Legit questions are killed way too easily, without any real
recourse to explain or rephrase. Meta doesn't help because the same people are
moderating both, and quickly end discussion there too.

It's really sad because the platform is great.

~~~
ComputerGuru
I have no problem with SO mods closing topics (the quality of new posts has
really gone down as SO gains popularity), but I do have a _huge_ problem with
them permanently deleting closed topics after some time.

Some of the most popular posts on SO with thousands of hits a day linked to
from all over the web have been permanently removed _with no official archived
location_. They're throwing away years and years of community posts and
comments, with some very valuable info and data in there. It's really sad.

~~~
hugh4life
The biggest thing I loath about SO is when they close threads because the
question has been asked before and then link to a thread that nobody has
replied to 3+ years.

SO is becoming less and less useful as time goes on because they actually stop
questions that need to be re-answered from being re-answered.

~~~
middus
We could call this phenomenon the Wikipedia effect.

~~~
chris_wot
Actually, that's a reverse problem to Wikipedia. Wikipedia article quality
increases hugely, then as people fiddle with the article the quality rapidly
decreases. Then it increases again... _ad infinitum_. Sort of like a sine
wave.

------
jiggy2011
I think at one point .Net was going to be the next major brand for all MS
products. At one point MSN Messenger was called ".Net Messenger" before it was
renamed to Windows Live.

I imagine the branding didn't work for consumer products because nobody had
any idea what it meant. Hell , I had no idea what it meant. I remember trying
to figure out what .Net was because I had heard so much about it , but all I
could get from MS' website was jargon and buzzwords about "enterprise web
services".

It wasn't until I started writing C# code that integrated so seemlessly with
old VB code and started being able to do things easily (like sockets ,
databases and GUIs) that I would previously have had to dig through obscure
C++ APIs for that I "got it".

------
0x0
I'm imagining a bunch of suits getting together deciding "Time to start
working on the next generation of COM... COM2!".

And then the first developer gets ready to write some code, and goes
"Explorer->Right click->New folder->COM2".

After a few attempts and some head scratching:

"Uhh.. I think we need another name"

~~~
chris_wot
That's interesting. But try creating a folder called .NET in Windows
explorer... :-) Hint - you can't!

~~~
steverb
Sure you can.

Create a folder.

Rename it to ".Net.". The dot at the end of the folder name is important.

~~~
chris_wot
Interesting. But they didn't call it dot-net-dot :-)

~~~
Dylan16807
Explorer silently strips the trailing dot and is tricked into doing the right
thing.

------
pygy_
Waaayback link to the deleted Stack Overflow Q&A referenced in the article.
2010/08

[http://web.archive.org/web/20100812155534/http://stackoverfl...](http://web.archive.org/web/20100812155534/http://stackoverflow.com/questions/628145/why-
was-net-called-net)

------
blumentopf
The new name ".NET" for NGWS was unveiled June 22, 2000. (Source:
<http://heise.de/-26825> \-- in German)

In the months leading up to the announcement, Microsoft had registered a truck
load of domains including: dot-in-the-dot.com, dot-in-the-dot-com.org, dot-in-
the-dot-com.net, dot-in-the-dot-com.com, dot-in-the-dot.net, dot-in-the-
dot.org, dot-truth.org und dot-truth.net. (Source: <http://heise.de/-27004>
\-- in German)

So clearly the name .NET was a play on Sun's "we're the dot in .com" stategy.
They noticed Sun's success with Java and the JVM in enterprise software
development and started their Xeroxes as usual.

By the way -- Loved Sun's ad campaign back then:
<http://www.bevinceengel.com/SUN-MICROSYSTEMS-THE-DOT>

------
thought_alarm
"Microsoft .NET, Microsoft's XML-based Web services platform, comprises four
major pillars: 1) the .NET Framework and the Visual Studio® .NET suite of
developer tools; 2) the .NET Enterprise Servers, which provide a robust
infrastructure for Web services; 3) .NET devices and experiences; and 4) .NET
services."

From a 2001 press release announcing "Hailstorm".

[http://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/news/press/2001/Mar01/03-19Ha...](http://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/news/press/2001/Mar01/03-19HailstormPR.aspx)

~~~
damian2000
interesting link - had to laugh at this bit ...

> "HailStorm" -based solutions allow users to manage and protect their
> personal information, as opposed to today's world in which it is scattered
> across the technology landscape, with no ability to control the privacy of
> their information.

If anything, things are worse now than they were back then.

------
jacktoole1
I keep a list of my favorite (vaguely) CS-related quotes. At some point I
stumbled upon this: "I think Microsoft named .NET so it wouldn't show up in a
Unix directory listing."

(It was attributed to "Oktal", and I believe it was from the StackOverflow
page linked by the article, which no longer exists.)

~~~
bashzor
I was about to post the same quote :)

------
thebluesky
"Why was .NET called .NET?" Because they couldn't call it Java:
[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/30/asp_net_java_project...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/30/asp_net_java_project_cool/)

------
bztzt
I always figured it was a pun on COM.

~~~
cek
There's actually some truth to this.

------
joejohnson
What's with the deletionism at Stack Overflow. Do they really feel that these
"off topic" posts detract from the overall quality of the site?

------
rmason
Can't help you on why it's called .Net but it came very close to being called
Microsoft ColdFusion

[http://www.sargeway.com/blog/index.cfm?mode=cat&catid=6D...](http://www.sargeway.com/blog/index.cfm?mode=cat&catid=6DB4A0CE-C29F-05EC-85F8D2889411C818)

~~~
daeken
While interesting, you're conflating .NET with ASP. One is a broad stack for
application dev, another is an unrelated technology for web dev.

------
andrewtbham
It certainly wasn't where it would be an easy distinct name to search.

------
grandpoobah
They were going to call it WinFX if I recall correctly

~~~
damian2000
Yeah I remember WinFX as well, but I think that was around 2005 - it was the
codename for the set of .NET 3.0 technologies later known as WPF, WCF and WF
... there's something here about it -
<http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ianm/archive/2006/04/19/578851.aspx>

