Microsoft on Thursday said that a technology standards body has endorsed programming tools key to expanding the appeal of the company's .Net Web services plan. Microsoft said the European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA), an international technology standards organisation, has ratified Microsoft's C#, a Java-like programming language, along with a component of its .Net Web services framework called the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI). Microsoft submitted the technology to ECMA last year with the hope that a standardised version of the software -- administered by ECMA -- will be adopted by other software makers for building .Net-compliant programs running on operating systems other than Windows, and thus expanding .Net's popularity. "ECMA's decision to ratify C# and the CLI technology confirms Web services are and are going continue to play an important role in the development of future innovations," Microsoft spokesman Dan Leach said. "Obviously ECMA's endorsement for C# and the CLI program supports Microsoft's vision for .Net and Web services." While in theory, ECMA's blessing of the technology could mean that other software companies adopt C# and the CLI, so far Microsoft has not announced that it is working to deliver commercial implementations of .Net for any other operating system. Microsoft is working on its own version of .Net building blocks for the FreeBSD version of Unix with help from Corel. But that version of the .Net work for FreeBSD will be released under a "shared-source" licence that lets researchers see and modify underlying source code but not use it in commercial projects. Also, analysts said, the ECMA submission from Microsoft only defines a subset of the .Net Framework, the technology underpinnings of .Net. Companies wishing to use the technology would need to add additional programming, such as a user interface component, to make it useful. One software company, Ximian, is working to develop an open source, Linux-based version of .Net development platform, which includes C# and the CLI. The company's project, called Mono, is still in development. Microsoft has in the past made no secret of its intention to upstage Sun Microsystems and its Java programming language, which directly competes with C#. The two companies are also competing to establish Web services programming infrastructures, Microsoft with .Net and Sun with its Sun One and Java 2 Enterprise Edition technology. More than two years ago, Sun said it would turn Java over to the same standards body, but withdrew its proposal on fears that it would lose control of Java's evolution. Java proponents argued that making Java an industry standard would give other companies a much stronger position in defining Java and determining the direction of the software. But Sun executives implied that standardising through ECMA could result in a version of Java that worked differently from Sun's. News.com's Joe Wilcox and Stephen Shankland contributed to this report. ZDNet UK's Developer News Section delivers the latest headlines together with the best UK jobs, right to your browser. Have your say on all developer topics. From j2ee, to C++, from Visual Basic to Javascript plus much more. Share your experience with others on the Developers Forum Let the editors know what you think in the Mailroom. And read other letters.