Although the project has received financial and technical assistance from Microsoft Research, it is controlled and run by the university.

Efforts to offer scripting language support on Microsoft's .Net platform are growing, with projects afoot such as IronPython (http://www.codeplex.com/Wiki/View.aspx?ProjectName=IronPython), which is an implementation of the Python programming language for .Net, and Ruby in Steel (http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/07/13/HNrubyinsteel_1.html), which blends Ruby programming into the Visual Studio 2005 environment.

Also, Microsoft this week introduced a set of tools called XNA Game Studio Express, which are intended for game development on the Xbox 360 console and Windows XP. The tools are based on Visual Studio Express and .Net. A beta release is planned for August 30.