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

[Stefan Arentz]

On Tue, Jul 10, 2001 at 02:54:08PM -0400, Michael  Lambert wrote:

...

> 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.

I'm not completely familiar with the .net framework (yet!), but ...

Why would it fail. We write the loader, so we can check the signature and
make sure compatibility is ok. There might be a problem with importing
certificates with Microsoft's signature though.

> 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.

You're not the first to suggest Java. The goal however is to implement
the CLI and do it from scratch :-) Inheriting some Java implementation
brings up a lot of unwanted issues .. license, code maintenance, etc.

 Stefan