For those who are interested in C#, there is an open source project known as "mono" which has the compiler and runtime compoents. There is even a visual basic library which some people are using to run VB apps (I don't so I don't know how complete or good it is). Anyway, I contributed the necessary code to support the S390 interfaces (i.e. the "trampoline" code to implement the conventions of Linux on S/390). If you go to "http://www.go-mono.com/download"; you can get the source tar balls (in the latest snapshots). Use the instructions foundat: "http://www.gnome-db.org/~gonzalo/mono/README.building"; to create executables. I'm attempting to build an RPM that will contain a ready-to-run version. The project is only at the 0.16 level so there's still a lot of work to do.
