[OT] Mono politics [was: Re: Compile Mono]

[Mario Vukelic]

On Thu, 2008-05-15 at 07:44 -0400, Bob McConnell wrote:
> Then why did Novell sign a patent covenant and pay license fees to 
> Microsoft in order to continue to develop and distribute it?

The views on this differ. 

> And who do you think drafted that standard? 

So? Many standards and standard additions were drafted by MS and are
implemented in free software. I don't think that this is enough reason
to dismiss it.

> ECMA is a collection of 
> corporations rubber stamping each others' documentation in an attempt to 
> give it some minimal appearance of respectability. Nothing more, nothing 
> less. It does not require any patent releases for those documents. To 
> the contrary, many of their so called "standards" are encumbered by 
> patents and require both license agreements and royalty payments.

Just like all the other standards bodies, then. I don't think that
standards bodies are the right place to get this fixed. Yes, it would be
nice if a standard required a patent release. Won't happen, though. The
right place to fix this is the law, and jurisdictions without software
patents will prevail in the long run. Tough for the others, sure.

> > And if you are at it, please also remove Samba, OpenOffice, and lots of
> > other stuff.
> 
> Not until reverse engineering is outlawed. Even though the DMCA 
> attempted to do that, it hasn't happened yet.

I hate the DMCA with a passion, but IMHO it did not attempt to do that.
It even contains an explicit provision that reverse engineering for
interoperability is ok. IANAL.

As I said in my other reply, MS claims that the kernel infringes on
patents. So, remove it?

>  The Mono project on the 
> other hand, is now using internal documentation and code from Microsoft, 
> guaranteed to include restrictions that will force them to abandon any 
> OSI approved license. 

Never heard about code. Got a quote for that? Under which license does
this code come?

> If you become dependent on it, you will also be 
> forced to accept Microsoft's conditions to move forward.
> 
> The first thing I did after installing Ubuntu was to remove Mono and 
> everything dependent on it. With the increase in dependency shown by 
> Hardy, I will be looking for a different distribution for the next update.

Whatever floats your boat.