[mono-packagers] Disabling moonlight extensions

[Andrew Jorgensen]

On Tue, 2008-10-21 at 00:11 +0100, Paul wrote:
> Whoa! What knee-jerk reaction are you on about? My questions was can the
> support be disabled through a script option - I've made no assumptions
> or anything like that (and for a change not gone into the politics
> surrounding moonlight and Fedora!).

Sorry Paul, it's not so much your knee-jerk reaction as it is Fedora's.
We're all still a little confused at the lengths Fedora seems to want
you to go to to avoid a possible patent violation*.  Every time it gets
mentioned the confusion is relived.

For what it's worth we want MS to extend the patent covenant to all
users of moonlight regardless of the (re)distributor.  It's not exactly
up to us though.  I do understand Fedora's concern given their goal of
being 100% redistributable.

It might be worth your while to push back a bit on Fedora legal.  Tell
them what we've told you about how these bits don't actually contain any
moonlight bits so there's no real risk.  See if they aren't level-headed
enough to admit that there's no good reason for you to spin your wheels.
I don't think they'll give on moonlight itself unless MS extends the
covenant but they might agree with us that stripping stuff out of mono
and MD is not needed.

I could talk to them myself if it would help but I think it will sound
better coming from one of their own.

- Andrew

* All software carries this risk.  All.  Software.  Ever.  Always.
Software patents suck.