[Mono-devel-list] Mono and FC

[Daniel Morgan]

It is called a defensive patent to keep companies from suing Microsoft 
with a patent of their own.  I would be more worried about Sun and Java 
because Sun has sued and won over its Java platform.  Or worry about 
companies like SCO and Kodak before I worry about Microsoft.

Kodak has sued both Microsof and Sun over patents.  It was Wang Labs 
(which was later bought by Kodak) and sued Microsoft over OLE.  And 
later Kodak sued Sun over Java.  Well, they were settled, but still, in 
my book that amounts to winning/loosing.  Even though Sun had a ton of 
prior art, they still lost due to a very biased jury.  The jury was 
biased because it was held in Rochester, New York (?).  The same place 
where Kodak is one of the few big employers there.

So, are you still buying products from companies like Kodak and Sun with 
their warchest of patents?  There are plenty of other companies over 
patents all the time.  It is situation that is getting worse.

Every piece of software you write no matter what language or platform 
could be potentially infringing a patent.  Patents are a drain on our 
economy and diminishes our properity.

Note, I wish I could remember where I read about defensive patents.

Paul wrote:

>Hi,
>
>http://web.archive.org/web/20030609164123/http://mailserver.di.unipi.it/pipermail/dotnet-sscli/msg00218.html
>
>Can anyone shed any further light on this? I'm trying to get mono
>adopted into the official Fedora Extras but because of the above, it
>seems there is a lot of negative against it.
>
>TTFN
>
>Paul
>  
>