[Mono-list] Mono licence

[A Rafael D Teixeira]

On Sun, 2005-03-20 at 07:33, Paul wrote:

Just to get it straight. Have you read the first direct response from
Miguel?

You are confusing things. 

Licenses are for distribution of some creation, and it is upon the
(whole chain of) creators the choices for how to do so: they are
automatically entitled.

Patent is some limited-time exclusivity granted for the use/exploration
of some innovative artifact. The creator must prove it was the first
think of it, and apply for the grant.

In USA, were corporations heartlessly rule, they extended the reach of
patents to software, and even simple generic ideas.

The whole heart of the issue is that someone may patent things he/she
created that someone else independently created before, during or even
after the patent was applied/granted. This multiplicity of similar, or
even functionally identical, creations can't be prevented, and more, in
the field of software development it is highly common, as everybody
strives for the best possible designs and solutions, and borrow from the
same base of knowledge. 

That is why software patents is such a bad idea. A single patent may
take a small but fundamental piece of good design out of reach of the
whole industry/community preventing everybody from achieving good
performance or having a clean design, or even from being able to comply
with standards.

Well, but in practicality what we are saying is: the parts of mono we
have chosen to license as GPL, we can rightly do so as we are the
authors of it. I don't have any patents of my own directly affecting it,
and if I have, obviously I would grant royalty-free access to it, to
make it compatible with what GPL says, and I think Novell and other core
developers of Mono are also in the same situation.

What we can't do is be sure that no one has been granted any patent that
would affect mono, or do anything about it preventively. Period.

We are as sure as possible of our "cleanroomness", and prefer to deal
with possible patent cases as they effectively appear. That is sensible
even for a big company as Novell, as all this patent crap costs a lot of
money and time...

So please Paul don't mix things again,

Have fun,

-- 
Rafael "Monoman" Teixeira 
Mono Hacker since 16 Jul 2001 - http://www.go-mono.org/
Mono Brasil Founding Member - http://monobrasil.redesolbrasil.org/
English Blog: http://monoblog.blogspot.com/
Brazilian Portuguese Blog: http://monoblog.weblogger.terra.com.br/