Verily I say unto thee, that Mart van de Wege spake thusly:
> Irrelevant. Miguel, Erik, and you keep insisting that Microsoft is
> licensing any CLI and C# patents RAND and royalty-free.
Smith and Fuddie are correct, although they are also being evasive,
primarily because they are just as ignorant as everyone else about the
specifics of .NET patents (presumably).
This single, vague yet far reaching example, is as much as I personally
have been able to discover:
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1='20030028685'.PGNR.&OS=DN/20030028685&RS=DN/20030028685
The ECMA declaration is indeed just a statement of intent.
However, the substantive point is that .NET is Microsoft technology, and
as such you can be sure they have it patented up to the hilt, and one
way or another Microsoft /will/ use those patents as a weapon against
its enemies. It would be extremely naive (in fact dangerous) to assume
otherwise, because Microsoft have a violent history of aggression in
their crusade to protect their racketeering operation.
The problem is that, outside of Redmond HQ (and presumably UPSTO),
nobody has the faintest clue as to what these patents might be, if any,
and of course Microsoft have so far remained silent on the issue (much
like the infamous "Linux violates 235 Microsoft patents" scandal, except
this time the intent is initially somewhat more subtle and subversive,
rather than being a more obvious and aggressive FUD attack). This also
begs the question of how de Icaza and friends intend to "work around"
non-ECMA covered patents, if he doesn't have the first clue as to what
exactly is, or is not, patented, and by the time he eventually finds
out, it may be too late (assuming he isn't already privy to Microsoft's
darkest secrets).
The best case scenario might be that Mono developers find themselves
having to abandon whole projects, or at least significant parts of them,
in order to "work around" the problem. The /worst/ case scenario is that
Microsoft begins an all-out frontal attack (just like they did with TomTom).
Naturally Microsoft finds this situation very useful, since it enables
them to poison Free Software in a subversive fashion, and with little
resistance, especially as they have pacified certain key developers with
"RAND" assurances. The problem is that the ECMA RAND only pertains to
certain parts of the .NET framework, and moreover the "RAND" itself only
refers to /price/ (i.e. a fair and reasonable price). This doesn't
actually prevent Microsoft from suing those who implement that
technology without a license, and the /private/ (i.e. unofficial)
assurances they've given regarding "royalty free" are, at this stage,
nothing more than hot air (i.e. dependent on implicit trust, rather than
being legally binding). To be legally binding, every GNU/Linux distro
would require an explicit *patent grant* from Microsoft, which is /not/
what either the ECMA RAND nor the so-called "covenant" are. Novell
presumably has such a grant, as part of their agreement, others don't.
Exactly what sinister implications entering into such an agreement
entails, is anyone's guess, since they are (like everything else
Microsoft does) yet another dark secret (Memorandum of Understanding),
but you can be sure it isn't good, or at least it is very good for
Microsoft, which means it will inevitably be very bad for everyone else.
IOW it's all a big mystery, and /deliberately/ so (patent pending).
Then again, maybe not.
After all, this is /Microsoft/ we're talking about, and there's very
little mystery about /their/ motives, is there? So do we actually even
/need/ to know the details? We should all know /more/ than enough about
the history of these gangsters, to steer well clear of /anything/
tainted by them.
Here's a shortlist of things we can safely assume Microsoft considers to
be their "enemy":
. Competing operating systems
. Interoperability (i.e. anything which enables operation on the above)
. Open Standards (ditto)
. Free Software (ditto)
. Any company which distributes or primarily utilises any of the above
And here's a few key facts about Microsoft:
. They have a global software monopoly
. They abuse that monopoly to suppress competition
. They use highly unethical, and often illegal, tactics in the above
. They are only motivated by power and greed, to attain domination
. They essentially operate like gangsters
Now study those two lists, then give me one good reason why /anyone/
should implicitly trust Microsoft to:
a) Do anything that helps GNU/Linux
b) Keep their legally non-binding "royalty free" promise
c) Keep their "covenant to not sue" promise (hint: TomTom)
d) Not launch a submarine patent attack against Mono projects
e) Not abuse the confusion over Mono as leverage for cross-licensing
"deals", to pervert the GNU/Linux distro landscape into an extension
of Microsoft's portfolio of rotting carcases
Seems pretty simple to me, but then I am allegedly rather "monochromatic".
Ultimately, one only needs to ask oneself this single question, to
determine whether or not they should have anything to do with Mono,
either as users or developers:
Do you trust, and therefore wish to help, the self-declared
enemy of Free Software, Microsoft, a company which inhibits
all competition using immoral and criminal methods, similar
to gangsters running a racketeering operation?
My answer: No.
I really don't need to know any more.
Case closed.
--
K.
http://slated.org
.----
| "The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which
| the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf
| denounces him for the same act, as the destroyer of liberty.
| Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of
| the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails today
| among human creatures." ~ Abraham Lincoln
`----
Fedora release 8 (Werewolf) on sky, running kernel 2.6.26.8-57.fc8
02:48:36 up 24 days, 6:46, 4 users, load average: 8.46, 6.77, 6.10
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