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Of Monopolies and Mono
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| Peter Brown, the Free Software Foundation's executive director, though still
| isn't impressed. Brown said, "It's my understanding that Microsoft has not
| yet announced anything officially, but assuming it follows up on this blog
| post and covers ECMA 334 and 335 under the Community Promise, it will not
| protect free software from the threats we have been discussing That's because
| Mono implements, and Tomboy depends upon, a number of libraries which
| are 'standard' in the sense that they're under C#'s "System" namespace
| (indicating that they're part of the standard library) and provided in
| Microsoft's implementation, but somewhat pointedly excluded from the ECMA
| specifications."
|
| So, Brown continued, "If the question is, should GNU/Linux distributions
| include Mono? Then the community promise from Microsoft covering these two
| specifications clearly isn't sufficient. That they won't sue us for
| infringement of some of their Mono patents is useless if they reserve the
| right to sue us over other Mono patents. If Microsoft really wants to assure
| the free software community that it does not intend to attack applications
| based on Mono in the future, it should issue a patent license to everyone for
| all the patents that are necessarily infringed by the complete implementation
| of Mono, that allows users to use, share, and modify the software as they see
| fit."
|
| [...]
|
| But, Roy Schestowitz, editor of Boycott Novell thinks that focusing on the
| patent issue alone is a mistake. Schestowitz said, "Patents were never the
| sole issue when it comes to Mono." Microsoft doesn't allow deviation from
| the .NET core. "This ensures that Microsoft stays in control. This leads to
| no independence, which Microsoft may describe as 'fragmentation.'"
`----
http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reports/6793/2/
Microsoft Community Promise & MONO
,----[ Quote ]
| So why didn't Microsoft's lawyers include this in the main body? Microsoft's
| lawyers aren't stupid (I know one of them, she's a really smart lady). So why
| did they write it in this confused way?
|
| I don't know. It doesn't make any sense.
`----
http://crankyoldnutcase.blogspot.com/2009/07/microsoft-community-promise-mono.html
Mono promise is nice, Microsoft. What about Linux?
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| Carlo Daffara, an open-source consultant, rightly notes that Microsoft's
| patent promise is not directly on Mono, but rather on these ECMA standards,
| which leaves "most of Mono...encumbered as before (WinForms, ADO.NET, ...)."
`----
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10280924-16.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=TheOpenRoad
I still believe this is a victory for Microsoft!
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| I am already laughing sarcastically when I imagine the faces of those Linux
| developers who, after having told their boss that they know C# and Mono, will
| be assigned to an ASP.NET project… on a Microsoft platform that uses the
| genuine .NET! Because this is what will happen!
|
| And when you think that, after the initial unknown motivation to start
| developing Mono, the whole thing took exposure after some moron wrote Tomboy!
|
| Therefore, believe me or not, my twisted radar tells me that in the long run,
| Tomboy and F-Spot are going to boost the sales of Microsoft Dynamics, which
| is a .NET range of products. Good work, Steve, and good work, Miguel.
`----
http://beranger.org/v3/wordpress/2009/07/07/i-still-believe-this-is-a-victory-for-microsoft/
Does Mono even matter anymore these days?
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| Anyway, who should care about this? Gnome developers mostly. The rest of us
| have gone out of the .Net and Java wars after around 2004 or 2005, and have
| realized that there other realities such as Qt and Python (to name just a
| few), and most of all, there is the Internet, and the POSH (Plain Old Simple
| Html), and that new little Linux distributions launched by Google… And so
| much more.
|
| Mono and .Net is one of the last schemes from an outdated behemoth; both the
| scheme and its inventor will soon fade in blissful irrelevance. It does not
| mean it cannot sting back though….
`----
http://standardsandfreedom.net/index.php/2009/07/08/does-mono-even-matter-anymore-these-days/
Mono: Microsoft community promise inadequate, says RMS
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/26166/1090
The pro-Microsoft Gavin Clarke giving de Icaza exposure, as usual:
Open-source .NET splits for extra Microsoft protection
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/07/mono_splits/
All working to spread .NET everywhere.
Mary Jo Foley too. Oh, how Microsoft loves Mono!
Microsoft removes a hurdle for Mono
http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=3242
Recent:
Stallman says "Don't depend on Mono"
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| The debate over Mono has simmered ever since the Mono C# implementation was
| announced. The suspicion has been that Microsoft have patents that are
| relevant to C# and are just waiting for Linux developers to become
| comfortable with Mono so they can pull the rug out from under Linux. Mono's
| defenders point out that Mono itself is an implementation of the ECMA
| standard for C# and that the patents that are usually referred to belong to
| the higher .Net layers which run on C# based systems, but aren't implemented
| as a core part of Mono. Microsoft made a statement in 2003 saying the patents
| which are relevant to the ECMA/ISO standard are "royalty-free and otherwise
| RAND"; a somewhat confusing statement without saying which technology falls
| under the royalty free and which is under RAND terms (Reasonable And Non
| Discriminatory).
|
| In some ways though, the worries about Mono are of the Mono project's own
| making. By having the project implement both the ECMA/ISO covered elements
| and the more obviously patented ASP.NET, ADO.NET and Windows.Forms
| components, the lines have been blurred for many as to what is or is not
| patent safe. Stallman's statement says that all C# implementations are
| potentially unsafe from a patent attack from Microsoft.
`----
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/141254
Linux is being tamed.
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| Assuming Mono gets shoved into Linux and gains acceptance, then Linux
| is "tamed." Even without the patent threat, even if C# is some sort
| of "standard," Microsoft still defines .NET and everything about it. From
| past behavior it's quite evident that they know how to walk the fine line of
| bending "standards" to their will and marketplace benefit. Mono gives
| Microsoft power over a major Linux Desktop API, and the ability to make sure
| it's always the "second platform", always a day late and a dollar short.
|
| The other interesting thing about Mono is that nobody is asking for it.
`----
http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2009-06-27-009-39-OP-DB-MS-0004
Ubuntu tech board plays down Mono IP concerns
http://osdir.com/Article10305.phtml
Hands off the Gimp
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| How to I scale an image in f-spot ? If there’s a way, I have not been able to
| find it (same for red eyes). How do I annotate an image (putting text
| somewhere) ?
|
| Yet people ask “Gimp is cool but.. should it belong to LiveCD?” I’ll give you
| a better question: what should belong to the LiveCD ?
|
| Removing GIMP from the LiveCd fully defeats the showing off purpouse of the
| LiveCd and lives you without any handy tool to perform basic manipulation on
| images. Now, it can be just me, but I can’t find anything useful in that
| regard inside Jaunty’s f-spot.
`----
http://www.stefanoforenza.com/hands-off-the-gimp/
The elusive, royalty-free patent licence for Mono
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| How difficult or easy is it to obtain one of the much-touted "royalty-free,
| reasonable and non-discriminatory" licences for Microsoft patents that are
| part of a technology like Mono?
|
| Judging by the frequency with which references are made to such licences by
| those who back Novell vice-president Miguel de Icaza's bid to create an open
| source clone of Microsoft's .NET development environment, it's surprising
| that no-one has ever ventured to test this claim.
|
| The idea of trying to find out what was involved arose after reading a nearly
| nine-month old, well-written post defending the use of Mono and mocking its
| detractors. The author, Jo Shields, is a Debian developer and works for
| Oxford University.
|
| [...]
|
| He replied two days later, pointing out, "Ecma does not have anything to do
| with possible licensing of .NET. But Microsoft is one of our members, so I
| have asked them whom to contact there – if anything is needed, what I just do
| not know."
|
| Dr Sebestyn added: "My contact at Microsoft said that you should contact
| Peggy Moloney there, who would be able to help you."
|
| I wrote to Ms Moloney on April 28, asking for the same information: "I
| understand that the terms of the licences to the patents which Microsoft
| holds on the .NET development platform permit people to obtain a
| royalty-free, reasonable and non-discriminatory licence to use them. I would
| be grateful if you let me know exactly how one obtains such a licence."
|
| I also asked her about the variance in the terms for the licensing of
| Moonlight, a clone of Microsoft's Silverlight, using which the company hopes
| to capture the market that is dominated by Adobe's Flash. De Icaza is behind
| this project as well.
|
|
| [...]
|
| There's a been a deafening silence since then. There the matter stands after
| nearly a month. You would think that's a decent period for anyone to think
| things through and respond - if the intention of doing so exists.
|
| To me, it looks this licence is as real as the unicorn. Or maybe Santa Claus.
| I think Mono fans need to think of a fresh defence when people talk about the
| dangers of patent suits arising over this technology. The licence talk has
| worn more than a little thin.
`----
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/25215/1090/
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