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Considerations on Patents that Read on Language Infrastructure
,----[ Quote ]
| In an essay last Friday entitled Why free software shouldn't depend on Mono
| or C#, RMS argued a key point that I agree with: the software freedom
| community should minimize its use of programming language infrastructure that
| comes primarily from anti-software-freedom companies, notwithstanding FaiF
| (Free as in Freedom) implementations. I've been thinking about an extension
| of that argument: that language infrastructure created in a community process
| is likely more resilient against attacks from proprietary software companies.
`----
http://www.softwarefreedom.org/blog/2009/jun/29/language-patents/
Discouraging FOSS
,----[ Quote ]
| I think it is interesting that he thinks that it is the “‘best technology’
| Linux camp” that is the camp that offers the greatest threat to Microsoft. I
| can understand why some may think that this is true since this camp is
| creating flashy and very useful products and features that increase the
| appeal of Linux. However, mono is not the only tool that the “‘best
| technology’ Linux camp” has at its disposal. Many view the use of the Qt
| toolkit as a better alternative, and one that does not have the risk
| associated with mono. Furthermore, I do not agree with the thought
| that “‘best technology’ Linux camp” is the one that Microsoft feels most
| threatened by. I think Microsoft is only threatened by the combination of
| both camps.
|
| I view mono as a distraction for FOSS developers. Yes, there are some
| practical advantages in its use, but there are a lot of questions surrounding
| it. It has the potential of dividing the two mayor camps of Linux
| contributors. It will be interesting to see what comes out of this
| controversy.
`----
http://temporaryland.wordpress.com/2009/06/29/discouraging-foss/
Should Qt and KDE apps written in C# be considered Free Software?
http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/3992
Stallman: open-source .NET "danger" for Debian
,----[ Quote ]
| Although Stallman frequently speaks about the dangers of software patents on
| open-source, trust for Microsoft has run particularly thin recently because
| of the company's legal attack on TomTom over a FAT patent dispute.
|
| Stallman urged the community to instead distribute and recommend non-C#
| applications whenever possible to avoid Redmond lawyers from being able to
| disable major OS functions on a whim.
`----
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/29/richard_stallman_cautions_against_mono_in_free_software/
How to Completely Remove Mono on Ubuntu
http://www.learningubuntu.com/articles/how-completely-remove-mono-ubuntu
Will Microsoft threaten open source C# implementations?
,----[ Quote ]
| If Microsoft is threatening patents against .NET, it would seem to me that
| the Novell/Microsoft relationship didn’t really work out all that well. And
| now Microsoft is back to their old tricks. And what should the Linux and open
| source community do about this? Should another deal with Microsoft be made?
| Is the seamless communication between Linux and Windows worth making a deal
| with a partner that is only going to turn around and stab you in the back
| again and again and again?
`----
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/opensource/?p=716
Recent:
Why free software shouldn't depend on Mono or C#
,----[ Quote ]
| Debian's decision to include Mono in the default installation, for the sake
| of Tomboy which is an application written in C#, leads the community in a
| risky direction. It is dangerous to depend on C#, so we need to discourage
| its use.
|
| The problem is not unique to Mono; any free implementation of C# would raise
| the same issue. The danger is that Microsoft is probably planning to force
| all free C# implementations underground some day using software patents. (See
| http://swpat.org and http://progfree.org.) This is a serious danger, and only
| fools would ignore it until the day it actually happens. We need to take
| precautions now to protect ourselves from this future danger.
|
| This is not to say that implementing C# is a bad thing. Free C#
| implementations permit users to run their C# programs on free platforms,
| which is good. (The GNU Project has an implementation of C# also, called
| Portable.NET.) Ideally we want to provide free implementations for all
| languages that programmers have used.
|
| The problem is not in the C# implementations, but rather in Tomboy and other
| applications written in C#. If we lose the use of C#, we will lose them too.
| That doesn't make them unethical, but it means that writing them and using
| them is taking a gratuitous risk.
|
| We should systematically arrange to depend on the free C# implementations as
| little as possible. In other words, we should discourage people from writing
| programs in C#. Therefore, we should not include C# implementations in the
| default installation of GNU/Linux distributions, and we should distribute and
| recommend non-C# applications rather than comparable C# applications whenever
| possible.
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http://www.fsf.org/news/dont-depend-on-mono
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