[Mono-list] Web Services and patents

[Pedro Santos Gómez]

Hi David,

Thank for your answer. And, I know, and yes, I worry
more about innovation than about patents :-)

Once said that, in the following map:
http://www.mono-project.com/Image:Monocomponentsmap.png

I see that "Soap Web Clients" and "Soap Web Servers"
have same colour as ADO.NET (which is not the cyan
colour - called "Patent free", neither the green
colour - part of the Mono stack).

I know that even the "Patent free" coloured components
could be using patented code even by third parties,
and I agree that this stuff should not worry as much
as innovation.

But, what I'm wondering is basically that, in the same
way I might use GDA instead of ADO.NET, or GTK#
instead of Windows Forms, there is any component
"safer" (ok, no software is safe, but nobody says that
GTK# could ever be removed from Mono as they do with
Windows Forms -in the worst of worst cases, of
course-, so maybe we can say that gtk# is safer than
windows forms), than the Web Services from ASP.NET.
And, if there is no one, what is the worst case that
could happen?

The fact that Novell itself uses this web services
(for example here):
http://forge.novell.com/modules/xfmod/cvs/cvsbrowse.php/ifolder/gaim-ifolder/src/GaimDomain/#dirlist
gives me some security.

I mean, all what I want is to have a solid answer to
any question my project director could ask. And this
is the point where my doubts are bigger, because I
can't just tell him "dont think about patents" or
"other patents could destroy our project anyway".

Thank you again :)

--- David Waite <dwaite at gmail.com> escribió:
> There is no application of knowledge on a computer
> (including writing
> a "Hello, World" application) which is completely
> safe from US patent
> lawsuit. There is nothing to prevent someone from
> having a patent
> against the concept of SOAP, or for that matter the
> concept of XML, or
> network-based data interchange. Whether or not these
> patents could be
> struck down in court is another matter.
> 
> I suggest you worry less about patents and more
> about innovation.
> Otherwise you will spend so much time learning
> international patent
> law and researching patents that you will never
> produce anything.
> There is no guaranteed safe ground, no matter what
> programming
> language you write your implementation in, or which
> vendor designed
> the API you use. The only sanity comes from not
> letting the problems
> stop you from meeting your potential, and fighting
> tooth and nail the
> problems in the system every chance you get.
> 
> -David Waite
> 


	
	
		
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