We have been asked to look into a fully open source solution for a big project, they want the project be as near to 100% Open Source as possible, mainly because as it's a community project there may be very little money available in the future except for the running of a host. Using OS software saves on licence costs as the server will be managed in house by the existing IT systems team.
One of the suppliers is proposing .net as the makeup of system, which is fine I understand that .net applications can quite rightly be released under open source licences such as the GPL etc.
However as I'm not a .net developer, I'm a little confused when it comes to what powers the .net. Does it HAVE to be a windows server, which of course leads to higher server costs and a tie in to MS products, or is it possible to run .net applications on open source servers such as Linux etc.
Please don't turn this into a MS Vs Linux argument and the benefits or using one or the other. We are just wanting to make sure we are fully informed when it comes to using .net and just how open source it can be. I'm hoping to have my eyes opened.
As others have already, there is Mono, but given it's immaturity, it is not only an extra level of complexity, it is an extra level of risk. Furthermore, the supplier offering a .NET solution is highly unlikely to want to support their application on Apaches + Mono.
So either opt for OSS (Apache + PHP/Perl/Python/Ruby etc) or choose IIS + .NET. There is absolutely nothing wrong with choosing the .NET solution, if it's the best application for the job, but don't try to shoe an application essentially designed for one platform onto another.