[Mono-devel-list] Can I use Microsoft's DLL's on the Win32 platform?

[Pete Gonzalez]

Alex Chudnovsky wrote:
> Is this referring to .NET's code (dlls and exe's) or .exe and .dll 
> generated by Visual Studio from your own source code?
> Either way I can't see this standing in court and therefore not 
> enforcible: EULAs state many things, but it does not mean they all legit.

Intuitively, I would think usage of a 3rd party JIT constitutes "fair use" 
of Microsoft's DLL's.  A more interesting question is whether a 3rd party 
tool can compile and "statically link" Microsoft's DLL's, which is a 
feature advertised by many obfuscators such as these:

http://thinstall.com/help/index.html?linking_netframework.htm
http://www.xenocode.com/Product-Comparison.aspx
http://dotnetprotector.pvlog.com/Fonctions.aspx
http://www.remotesoft.com/linker/index.html

I asked the RemoteSoft guy about this, and he said:  "About whether linker 
tool violates EULA, I asked MS, they didn't give a firm anwser, but saying 
not unlikely to go after us and our customers."  (I'm assuming the "not 
unlikely" [sic] is the emphatic double-negative, not the logical 
double-negative.  :-) )

Cheers,
-Pete