Intro and Questions...
Coleman Kane
cokane at cokane.org
Fri Apr 18 08:59:52 EDT 2008
On Fri, 2008-04-18 at 01:41 -0400, Bill McGonigle wrote:
> On Apr 16, 2008, at 11:22, Coleman Kane wrote:
>
> > Novell has been the "Sun Micro" to the mono project and seems to be
> > very
> > very good to it.
>
>
> Yeah, if you're doing mono work you better be using a SuSE-based
> distribution, since only Novell has a patent-indemnification pact
> with Microsoft, and mono is likely patent-encumbered by Microsoft,
> and Microsoft has already promised to take action against those it
> feels are abusing the patents it holds which are being used by FLOSS
> software.
I remember there being a large amount of fear surrounding the project.
>From what I can tell, the patent-sensitivity mainly pertains to the
following components:
* ASP.NET
* ADO.NET
* Windows Forms
The community at-large seems to accept that there are probably no
enforceable patent claims on the Base system and the compiler. This is,
for instance, what is used for Gtk# software such as Tomboy and F-Spot.
>
> I'd say running anything non-SuSE would be dangerous, but ask your
> council for a real opinion. :)
I suppose I'd probably need to read up on their agreement to see what
Novell considers a "customer" or a "developer". If I download an install
SLED, am I covered forever? How does this not also cover me if I run the
software on other OSes (as long as I run one SLED install somewhere)?
So the question is, if I can install SLED and become covered, then why
can't I become covered by downloading Mono and installing it?
>
> My non-legal opinion is that this is a good reason to stay away from
> mono; it's a patent trap. It's also, unfortunately why I've been
> moving away from GNOME after more than a decade of using and testing
> (to KDE). If somebody points out to me that mono has gone under
> GPL3, I'll take back everything I said.
>
> -Bill
>
I'll keep reading up on it, thanks for the pointers...
--
Coleman Kane
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