[Mono-list] Mono and Patents....

[Miguel de Icaza]

Hello,

> example:
> 
> python.
> 
> if i check the webpage, i know they are gpl-compatible, have a quite
> open development model and so on. i simply can be sure that if i use it,
> there will be no license problems.
> 
> now:
> 
> can you show me a webpage or link or whatever where Microsoft (as the
> company, not just one of their developers) declares, than all CLI and
> dot-net stuff(runtime,core-classes and xml to be specific) is free to
> implement for anyone?

You are confused.

Patents are different than copyrights.  

The GPL license is a copyright license, but it can not grant rights of
things it does not own.   

So if you infringe a patent, lets say there is an imaginary "Doofy Co"
that has a patent on "XML-based filesystem", it does not matter if you
use .NET, Java, Python, GCC or GNU Emacs.  You will still violate the
patent.

So your question needs to be restated with the above in mind. Copyright
infringement is different than patent infringement and different from
trademark infringement.  Now, the major problem is that we have a lot
of people that do not understand the difference between those ones
arguing on the lists. 

Until this point, very few people know what they are talking about in
this matter, and it is hard to have a discussion when the most basic
principles are just miss-understood.

Miguel.