The ECMA working group in charge of the Common Language Infrastructure standard has produced released a working draft of the 5th edition. The Common Language Infrastructure represents the subset of Microsoft’s .NET platform that has been placed in the care of Ecma International. Formally known as the European Computer Manufacturers Association, Ecam International both competes with and complements the International Organization for Standardization.
Those keeping track may find it rather odd that the third major version of the standard is being portrayed as the fifth edition. This situation arose from the cross-standardization process between ECMA and ISO. For example, after the third edition was ratified by ECMA in 2006 it entered ISO’s fast-track process. Once ratified there, the resulting document, ISO/IEC 23271:2006, was adopted by EMCA as the 4th edition.
In addition to whatever real or perceived benefits that corporations get, ECMA standards have the advantage over ISO in that they are freely available. The current edition and all previous editions are available on ECMAs website as well as numerous mirrors.
The namespaces that are covered by the standard are well documented, but fairly limited.
System ├───Collections │ ├───Generic │ └───Specialized ├───Diagnostics ├───Globalization ├───IO ├───Net │ └───Sockets ├───Reflection ├───Runtime │ ├───CompilerServices │ └───InteropServices ├───Security │ └───Permissions ├───Text ├───Threading │ └───Parallel └───Xml