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

[gabor]

On Mon, 2004-03-15 at 16:57, Miguel de Icaza wrote:
> The C# and CLI patents are available under RAND and Royalty Free terms
> as pointed out in the FAQ (the link to Jim's post) which you said you
> read a few times (it seems and you still managed to not find this).
i've also read it i think twice.. and i saw the stuff abour RAND and so
on.
> 
> I have spoked to Jim, I have spoken to the ECMA folks.  If you do not
> believe any of this, pick up the phone and call Microsoft's IP staff to
> discuss RAND and Royalty Free terms.
> 
i usually believe what people say, and i am also more believing if
someone says it who already made a name in the open-source/linux world.

it's not that i don't believe you spoked to Jim or to the ECMA folks.
it's just that it is NOT ENOUGH imho.

i imagine that i would want to persuade the management in my company
about that we should switch to mono, because c# is much better than
java.

they would ask me: we heard that c#/dotnet was originally a microsoft
product. how can we be sure that ms won't stop mono after some time?
my answer: Miguel de Icaza spoke to jim and to the ECMA folks.  they
said it is ok.

i don't think that would be enough for them. they would want to see some
more solid evidence.

but you can't provide any solid evidence, because there is no solid
evidence imho.

but there should be!

please, understand, that i like mono, and i would like to use mono in
the future, and all i want for mono is that the legal stuff becomes more
safe.

i ask again: can't suse/ximian/novell as a commercial company
ask/negotiate with microsoft to produce an announcement or whatever?

as i see novell is investing a lot into mono (simias and so on), so they
think it will be allright. maybe they have some more formal documents
from microsoft but they can't publish them?

i'll say it again: if you don't want to read about
mono-licensing-problems in EVERY mono review, then do something about
it!

and no, the faq is not good enough in that part. read it again. 

and no flames please, the other branch of this thread is reserved for
that :))))

gabor