[Mono-list] Mono control and licenceing questions/concerns based on the FAQ

[Pavlica, Nick]

All,
  While discussing Mono with some co-workers, I was pressed with various
questions regarding various licensing and technology control issues.  I
directed them to the Mono FAQ, and received a reply with comments on
some of the FAQ topics.  I was wounding if anyone here would review this
message and reply to the questions and concerns that were brought up.

Thanks!
Nick Pavlica

#### Message ####################################################
Nick, here are some comments I've got about the Mono FAQ.  I've put the
text 
from the FAQ in quotes  

"Question 41: Do you fear that Microsoft will change the spec and render
Mono 
useless?

No. Microsoft proved with the CLI and the C# language that it was
possible to 
create a powerful foundation for many languages to inter-operate. We
will 
always have that.

Even if changes happened in the platform which were undocumented, the
existing 
platform would a value on its own. "

My comment:  This statement only covers the issue of "will our code be
taken 
away from us?".  It does not address the more important issue of "will
our 
code be allowed to be useful to society in general?".  For your (our)
use of 
Mono, the first question may be the only important one.  My concern is
more 
with the second question, and that depends on whether Microsoft gains a 
dominant market share in the .net market space and then uses their
market 
power to "extend" the standard in a way that forces Mono to be
incompatible.  
Interestingly, see the next question below for what the FAQ itself says
about 
"embrace and extend".

          ..........................................

"Question 106: Do you plan to Embrace and Extend .NET?

Embracing a good technology is good. Extending technologies in
incompatible 
ways is bad for the users, so we do not plan on extending the
technologies."

          .........................................

"The Mono strategy for dealing with these technologies is as follows:
(1) work 
around the patent by using a different implementation technique that
retains 
the API, but changes the mechanism; if that is not possible, we would
(2) 
remove the pieces of code that were covered by those patents, and also
(3) 
find prior art that would render the patent useless. Not providing a
patented 
capability would weaken the interoperability, but it would still provide
the 
free software / open source software community with good development
tools, 
which is the primary reason for developing Mono."

My comment:  This vulnerability is shared by all Open Source software,
so I 
can't hold it against Mono.  It is potentially a serious problem,
though.


My conclusion:  If we are using Mono for internal systems only (in other
words, we don't rely significantly on external .net sites) then Mono
could be 
a good thing.  Otherwise, using it is a non-trivial risk.


On Tuesday 30 September 2003 09:36, Nick Pavlica wrote:
> This FAQ covers many of the topics that we were discussing earlier.
>
> http://www.go-mono.org/faq.html