[Mono-list] On Mono and Patents ... again

[Ralf Reiterer]

Jonathan, thanks for your constructive post and clearing up 
the patent issue. In my opinion that shows that the .NET API 
patent is not a bigger threat than any other patent, which 
might be an important message especially for companies 
thinking about to use Mono but are scared by the .NET patent.

As the patent question comes up regularly, it might be a good 
idea to modify the Licensing FAQ a bit in that direction so 
that potential users get a clear statement. Especially the 
circumstance that the .NET patent is defacto a toothless 
tiger (as many prior art exists in that context) might be an 
important information. By the way the Licensing FAQ seems no 
longer to be directly linked from the FAQ page. Is there a 
special reason for that?

Maybe you can shed some light into another issue as well. The 
Licensing FAQ states: "Basically a grant is given to anyone 
who want to implement those [ECMA/ISO] components for free 
and for any purpose. The controversial elements are the 
ASP.NET, ADO.NET and Windows.Forms subsets. Those are 
convenient [...] for people who need full compatibility with 
the Windows platform, but are not required for the open 
source Mono platform, nor integration with today's Mono's 
rich support of Linux."

Exactly the last two sentences astonish me a bit because the 
inference from this statement is that the whole Mono API 
Stack like Gtk# or Mono.Unix will sit directly on top of the 
CLI API. However that is very hard to believe as I'm sure 
even Gtk# and Mono.Unix need more functionality that the CLI 
actually provides. For example the 
System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal class is not part of 
the CLI API. The CLI CultureInfo class does not contain any 
methods or properties (but the strange notice "Reserved for 
future use. This class is provided in order to implement the 
abstract methods that require it in the reflection 
library."). Also other CLI classes like Exception have a 
reduced set of methods - just look at the XML file that 
contains the CLI API.

Therefore my conclusion is that any serious .NET application 
or library will (almost) always need more than the CLI API 
actually provides. However nobody seems to care about that 
fine detail and believe that when the CLI can be used for 
free, (at least) the Mono Stack is safe which is (*in my 
opinion*) not the case.

Did I overlook some important information like that *the 
whole .NET base library* is actually part of CLI (which is 
not the case AFAIK)? It would be fine if you or someone else 
could shed some light into that issue. Thanks in advance.

Ralf