[Mono-list] Perplexed and intrigued by ECMA licensing of .Net

[Michael Lambert]

> Reply-To: Bob_Salita@SoftworksLtd.com
> From: "Bob Salita" <bsalita@hotmail.com>
> To: mono-list@ximian.com
> Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 07:04:09 -0500
> Subject: [Mono-list] Perplexed and intrigued by ECMA licensing of .Net
>
> Is it correct that ECMA has not been granted any license for MS .Net
> technologies? What licensing covers ECMA's current;y published
> work (working
> group stuff)? Is it true that ECMA doesn't know what licensing will be
> granted to ECMA for distribution of the ECMA .Net standard?
>
> Bob.
>

I would agree that if this thing is going to work that this would need to be
sorted out in advance.  Is there someone knowledgeable about the ECMA on the
list who could comment on this?  If this is the case then perhaps a few
authors should shed some light on Microsoft's approach to the standards
process.

On another note... A .Net assembly can be signed so simply replacing the MS
System assembly with a FreeSystem assembly could be destined to fail before
it starts.  If the loader checks the sign key as part of loading and the key
is not MS's key then your dead.  MS is already incorporating this technology
in the XP version of Windows. This means that the Mono effort could require
a total rewrite/parallel implementation.

Would our best bet be to just take an open source java implementation and
get that to run on top of the Mono infrastructure?  Focus on system,
collection, sockets, files, etc... the basics.

Michael