[Mono-list] Shared Source Common Language Infrastructure 1.0 Release

[Jonathan Pryor]

On Fri, 2005-11-04 at 12:57 +0100, Jochen Wezel - CompuMaster GmbH
wrote:
> What is this from MS? A great trick or...?
> 
> http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=3a1c93fa-7462-4
> 7d0-8e56-8dd34c6292f0&displaylang=en
> > This implementation builds and runs on Windows XP, the FreeBSD
> operating system, and Mac OS X 10.2

Where have you been?  That's been out for years (date published:
November 5 2002, so almost 3 years ago).

What is it?  It's an implementation of the ECMA standards based on
the .NET code base.

Is it a trick?  That's debatable.

Should you use it?  Probably not.  From the license:

        You may not use or distribute this Software or any derivative
        works in any form for commercial purposes.

"Commercial purposes" includes selling the software and business
operations.

In short, it's only useful if you don't want to use it in any way to
make money and/or you want to help Microsoft in future developments.

Mono's licenses (MIT/X11 for class libs, LGPL for libraries, GPL for
apps) are far preferable.

It should also be noted that if you read Rotor's source code you
shouldn't contribute to Mono.  (Rotor's license actually states "You may
use any information in intangible form that you remember after accessing
the Software," which implies that you could probably read the source and
still contribute to Mono as long as you don't copy anything, but it's
likely better to be safe than sorry, so please don't contribute to Mono
if you've read Rotor's source.)

 - Jon