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

[Alan McGovern]

The only good response to that email is summarised pretty well by this
blogpost.

http://www.jprl.com/Blog/archive/development/mono/2009/Jan-19.html

The only addition I'll make is to ask this question: Have you ever
created/distributed a CD which contains a hyperlink? If so, you've just
infringed a patent!

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070417/112812.shtml

If something so trivial can be patented, than I think it's safe enough to
assume that if your application is more than 1000 LOC, you've unwittingly
infringed on at least one patent. So if you really are worried about
patents, then you really should not be a software developer.

Alan.

On Sun, Feb 8, 2009 at 8:45 PM, BGB <cr88192 at hotmail.com> wrote:

>
> ----- 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...
>
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>
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