[Mono-list] Ask Microsoft: Mono support

[George Birbilis]

I don't consider viewing an assembly's publicly exposed methods/fields etc. 
to be reverse engineering
If you decompile though and copy/paste code parts etc. then it is reverse 
engineering and could potentially cause problems similar to the Linux-SCO 
stuff

>> >
>> > 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.