There are been several mentions in articles and comments about .NET smart cards and about Multos. It seems that comparisons between these systems are often expected. The latest request is for a comparison between Java Card and .NET.
I will start by the cruel part: As of today, no open smart card technology compares to Java Card, just like no PC operating systems compares to Windows. Java Card is not necessarily technically better, but it dominates the market, in particular in the wireless telephony market.
I don’t know enough about .NET smart cards to have a real opinion about them, and I will refrain from giving any. The .NET system includes a few more sophisticated features than Java Card, but this can be expected because it is more recent. Still, the basic stuff remains the same, with a VM, some basic APIs, and not much more. If we look toward the future, the .NET card is strongly tainted with .NET technology. This may be an advantage in a PC world, but not really in a mobile wireless world. On the other hand, future Java Card technology, with its generic server technology, sounds more general, and may not be as tied to a particular framework.
With Multos, things are slightly different. Many years ago, I participated to a comparison between Java Card, Multos, and Windows for Smart Cards. On purely technical merits, Multos was our favorite, mostly because it was well adapted to the smart cards at that time. A few years later, Java Card is well adapted, and this argument does not hold very well any more. As we are getting ready to move to the next generation of Java Card, the contrast with Multos will be striking. Maybe this is why StepNexus (supporter of Multos) bought Hive Minded (supporter of .NET).
It has been a long time since we had an in-depth debate about the relative merits of these open systems; it may be time to have one, as we get ready to move to a new generation of systems.
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