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

[gabor]

On Sun, 2004-03-14 at 20:35, Miguel de Icaza wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> > does that mean thay you/mono-devel-team doesn't know the answer to my
> > (original) question?
> 
> We have gone through this too many times, to the point that we have
> added this to the FAQ.
> 
> It means you are just very late asking that question, and most people
> are bored to death with the subject who has been answered in the FAQ.

i have read the faq.

i assume you refer the following:
==============================
Question 131: Could patents be used to completely disable Mono (either
submarine patents filed now, or changes made by Microsoft specifically
to create patent problems)?
=============================
(the problem (in a very short way) is that the next line in the faq
should be "Answer 131: No.", but it is not)

there you're saying that some part of mono are ximian-implemented (those
are ok), some are ecma, and some are window-specific (problematic).

then, to prove that the ecma-stuff is ok, the faq says:
"
The core of the .NET Framework, and what has been patented by Microsoft
falls under the ECMA/ISO submission. Jim Miller at Microsoft has made a
statement on the patents covering ISO/ECMA, (he is one of the inventors
listed in the patent): here.

Basically a grant is given to anyone who want to implement those
components for free and for any purpose.
"

that's the part which is not good enough imho.

becasue RAND can also mean that's it is allowed to use for a very cheap
price, which would of course mean a stop to mono, but Jim Miller writes:
"
But Microsoft (and our co-sponsors, Intel and Hewlett-Packard) went
further and have agreed that our patents essential to implementing C#
and CLI will be available on a "royalty-free and otherwise RAND" basis
for this purpose.
"

the problem is (for me), that these companies "agreed" that it will be
royalty-free and so on. Jim Miller says it. but is there anywhere a more
formal announcement about this? 
because if i understant it correctly, this mail is the only argument for
that microsoft allows mono to exist on a royalty-free basis.
i have also read in the faq, that "but engineers who work on .NET or the
ECMA groups have been very friendly". but it only means what i wrote,
that the safety of mono seems-to-be-ok.

so i still think that my original question holds:
yes, mono seems to be safe from microsoft. but it is not 100% safe (and
i know that you can be never safe for 100%, but i think you understand
what i mean).

couldn't ximian/suse/novell (because they're "normal" commercial
companies) talk/work with microsoft, and make them make a formal
announcement, or something like that?

i understand it's annoying that everyone only talks about the
patent/copyright when they talk about mono, but if you could just say in
the faq:"no, there can be no problems, see microsoft's announcement at
http://www.microsoft.com/x/y/z.html".

if i still don't understand this, please help me to understand it :)


thanks,
gabor