Old mono rants

[darkhatter]

Oh pardon me, I thought this was a community-based distribution.

I also though this was a discussion board for this community-based distribution.

Ubuntu is a company owned distribution that is very friendly to the community. Ubuntu is also moving into the server market aka want a piece of Red Hat's share. If Mono is a problem they'll remove it, there is nothing to worry about.

[skymt]

Untrue.

http://www.robert-tolksdorf.de/vmlanguages.html

The following is a list of programming languages for the Java virtual machine aside of Java itself. Currently (spring 2005), it comprises close to 200 different systems. It is a mix of experimental, research oriented implementations and of commercial ones.

Emphasis mine.

http://www.parrotcode.org/languages/

Parrot is in the early phases of its implementation.

I didn't mean .NET/mono is the only technology that's trying to do this. I just meant it's the only one that really has. .NET/mono is the only technology that can do the job well right now, and isn't that what's important?

[DoctorMO]

Ubuntu is a company owned distribution that is very friendly to the community. Ubuntu is also moving into the server market aka want a piece of Red Hat's share. If Mono is a problem they'll remove it, there is nothing to worry about

Erm, no it's not Conical have their own Linux Distro; Ubuntu is a community distro that Conical helps support and organise. not even close to the same thing.

[3rdalbum]

I don't think that Mono is in any way an infringement on anyone's IP or code. Sun couldn't go after the unofficial Java implementations. IBM couldn't go after Qemu for their PowerPC emulation.

Having said that, I think Python is a more appropriate language for the desktop. Mono should really just be for porting existing .NET applications to other platforms.

[Choad]

ok this thread has many pages so its probably already been mentioned, but novell made microsoft promise not to sue any free distribution over patents

http://www.novell.com/linux/microsoft/openletter.html

More importantly, Microsoft announced today that it will not assert its patents against individual, non-commercial developers. Novell has secured an irrevocable promise from Microsoft to allow individual and non-commercial contributors the freedom to continue open source development, free from any concern of Microsoft patent lawsuits. That's right, Microsoft wants you to keep hacking.

[ago]

And where exactly is the clause that says they cannot sue the USERS of such distros, i.e. us?

Not to mention that COMMERCIAL developers/companies can be sued and possibly even NON-COMMERCIAL organizations. I.E. they can sue Red Hat, Canonical, and all their developers, and even Debian is not safe...

So basically, according to MS, you can develop for FOSS provided you make no money out of it (unless you work for Suse), and you distribute your software via Suse ( because the users of such software can be sued)...

So MS is telling us how to write LINUX software and how to distribute it!

How kind!

[T_W]

ok this thread has many pages so its probably already been mentioned, but novell made microsoft promise not to sue any free distribution over patents.

More importantly, Microsoft announced today that it will not assert its patents against individual, non-commercial developers. Novell has secured an irrevocable promise from Microsoft to allow individual and non-commercial contributors the freedom to continue open source development, free from any concern of Microsoft patent lawsuits. That's right, Microsoft wants you to keep hacking.

Good lord, the arrogance of that statement. As if we need Microsoft's pemission to "keep hacking".

1) The text you linked to says "individual, non-commercial developers". I don't see anything about distributions. The Ubuntu community is hardly an individual developer. Canonical is clearly not non-commercial.

2) "That's right, Microsoft wants you to keep hacking".. as long as its in your parent's basement, not in any way organized, and certainly not used in any commercial setting... ever.

Many thanks to Novell/Microsoft for granting me these rights. Will they be "granting" me the right to vote or trial by jury any time soon?

[T_W]

ok this thread has many pages so its probably already been mentioned, but novell made microsoft promise not to sue any free distribution over patents

http://www.novell.com/linux/microsoft/openletter.html

Groklaw on Microsoft's "Patent Pledge for Non-Compensated Developers":

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?s...61109111321376

The patent covenant only applies to software that you develop at home and keep for yourself; the promises don't extend to others when you distribute. You cannot pass the rights to your downstream recipients, even to the maintainers of larger projects on which your contribution is built...

It's worse than useless, as this empty promise can create a false sense of security. Don't be confused by the illusion of a truce; developers are no safer from Microsoft patents now than they were before. Instead, Microsoft has used this patent pledge to indicate that, in their view, the only good Free Software developer is an isolated, uncompensated, unimportant Free Software developer.

[warfly]

Personally, I agree with many other posters who support getting rid of Mono.

But if that is too extreme a move, I'm all for just removing dependency of it from the ubuntu-desktop package and let the users choose.

That way I can happily enjoy using Ubuntu without having to install something I think really objectionable, and others who think otherwise still use their favorite apps built on it.

[jhenager]

After reading the actual "Non-Assertion of Patents Pledge", it appears that if you develop something yourself, you are in the clear, unless you file for patent protection against Microsoft, at which point you lose your protection, backdated to the original grant date. Anyone else that uses it is not ever protected.
One area in which Microsoft excels in is legal doublespeak, and that's what this is.