[Mono-list] Ask Microsoft: Mono support

[Jonathan Pryor]

On Wed, 2004-10-27 at 05:13, Jonathan Stowe wrote:
> On Wed, 2004-10-27 at 09:04, RoBiK wrote:
> > 
> > http://searchvb.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid8_gci1019210,00.h
> > tml
> 
>         "Mono is an attempt by Novell to reverse engineer parts of
>         Microsoft's .NET Framework."
>
> A wonderful piece of FUD slinging that.

Where's the FUD, exactly?

Parts of .NET are standardized under ECMA, which Mono implements.

Parts of .NET are *not* standardized under ECMA, which Mono also
implements.  (For example, System.Web.UI, System.Windows.Forms,
System.Data, etc.)

How else could Mono implement the non-standardized parts of .NET than by
reverse-engineering?  Hell, we likely needed to reverse-engineer parts
of the standardized portions, in places where the standard wasn't
explicit and we needed to maintain compatibility.

Reverse engineering isn't a bad thing.  It's what allows competition to
exist in many fields.

 - Jon