Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 2nd Aug 2006 06:37 UTC
After all the debate, gtk# will most likely find its way into GNOME. "The release team has completed its second meeting to try to finish the new module decisions. And, after all the long threads on d-d-l and the many discussions amongst ourselves trying to determine community consensus, we finally have the decisions. In summary: orca, alacarte, and gnome-power-manager are in; gtk# and tomboy are in, assuming the issues mentioned are resolved; sticky notes becomes deprecated, assuming tomboy issues are resolved and gets in." Update: Elijah Newren emailed me concerning an important aspect of the current decision, and asked me to highlight it. So, read more!
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Member since:
2005-07-29
No, the threat of a Microsoft lawsuit is not Anti-Microsoft because the Mono folks did implement ADO.NET and ASP.NET even though they knew these technologies were patented.
I'm a contributor to Mono.
I'm not a patent lawyer (but I did sleep at a Holiday Inn last night! ;-).
I haven't heard anything about actual patents on ADO.NET and ASP.NET. I've only heard about the (rediculous) patent application (still not granted) about the design and structure of a class library (too lazy to Google the reference, but everyone had a good laugh at it; it's like trying to patent a VCR interface, rather silly).
Furthermore, patents usually cover implementation, not the public interface. (Though its entirely possible that the public interface may require a particular patented implementation...)
Regardless, not supporting ADO.NET, ASP.NET, and System.Windows.Forms would be a huge mistake. One of the "selling points" of Mono is that code can be easily shared between Linux & .NET. Porting will be required, but (hopefully) such porting would be minimal. ADO.NET and ASP.NET help make that possible.
Without their support, it would require that "porting" be "re-write to this entirely different framework." (See how well the "Abandon System.Windows.Forms and port your existing code to Gtk#" mantra is working for non-Free software.) In short, porting would no longer be an option, removing most of the appeal of Mono to third party vendors.
So given a choice between hand-waving about potential Microsoft patent threats vs. making it substantially easier for existing .NET code to be ported to Mono... What would you choose? You can always avoid ASP.NET, ADO.NET, and System.Windows.Forms for your own code...