[Mono-dev] idea summary: Swing in Mono?...

[BGB]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Chris Toshok" <toshok at gmail.com>
To: "BGB" <cr88192 at hotmail.com>
Cc: "Michael Hutchinson" <m.j.hutchinson at gmail.com>; "Stefanos A." 
<stapostol at gmail.com>; <mono-devel-list at lists.ximian.com>
Sent: Monday, February 09, 2009 6:35 AM
Subject: Re: [Mono-dev] idea summary: Swing in Mono?...


> what legal risks?  without specifics it's impossible to discount this
> claim, and if it's just the usual vague threat of software patents,
> you'll run into that regardless of the path you choose.
>

MS patents nearly everything, and without them clearly making it free for 
everyone (as they had done with CIL and C# via ECMA-334 and 335), I am not 
so inclined to mess with it...

(this is actually for a long time I had not looked much into Mono...).

so, my usual approach is if there is a risk of patents, I will usually look 
for something else which serves my purposes, or design something clean (and 
working hard to avoid any patented designs I am aware of...).

luckily, for most things, the implementation can be made generic and a thin 
wrapper can be provided for any patented APIs, such that one can easily 
remove it if any "cease and desist" orders show up...

(although, sadly, there are far too many SW patents to be aware of all of 
them, or when certain ones expire, ...).

but, yes, to me upholding copyrights and patents is an issue much like that 
of maintaining clean and modular code.

messy code is bad;
interdependencies and/or external dependencies are bad;
uncertain copyrights are bad;
possible patent violations are bad;
..


or such...