Kidding? Maybe, but it seems true

I think I'm confusing copyright with patents.
I'm never quite sure whether software code fall under copyright or patents.

If i'm correct industrial patents hold for 50years.
That means some of those code would be public domain in 2019?

"I think I'm confusing copyright with patents. I'm never quite sure whether software code fall under copyright or patents.

I wouldn't count on stuff like mono and gnome not being affected and being used somehow to restrain software freedom, whether it's Attachmate or MSFT owning it now by proxy.

"I wouldn't count on stuff like mono and gnome not being affected and being used somehow to restrain software freedom, whether it's Attachmate or MSFT owning it now by proxy.

Paging Pamela Jones ... I repeat, paging Pamela Jones.

"Paging Pamela Jones ... I repeat, paging Pamela Jones.

Dude, I don't like mono and I know this isn't true. The 'key parts of .NET' of which you speak are probably the winforms elements and other things that aren't part of the C# standard. Those _are_ free software, but they're not exempt from patent suits, because they're not part of the C# standard. MS extended patent-violation protection to any complete C# implementation. I don't recall if said implementation can or cannot extend the standard (the problem is that their implementation _does_ extend the standard. You can be compliant or compatible). So, over the past week or so, you've been incorrect, vitriolic, and annoyingly persistent. Is there an equivalent to /ignore?

Operating system Microsoft Windows
Type Web application framework
License Proprietary

Operating system Microsoft Windows
Type Software framework
License MS-EULA, BCL under Microsoft Reference License

Of those programs, only one of those doesn't have a >= GTK equivalent: GNOME Do. Probably wouldn't take a year to re-implement it in some other language. Crap, write a mono program that translates to some other language, and use that as a stop-gap. That's just the worst-case scenario: A patent lawsuit happens, MS wins, and there's no more FOSS C#. Whoopdie-shit.

FSpot, Banshee, Tomboy Notes, GNOME Do and Pinta

HAHAH. Yeah, because you can't re-implement libraries. Only official AT&T Unix has libc!

but do you think some WordPerfect IP is worth 2 billion to Microsoft? there must be more to it i have the gut feeling they are planning on going after Android/Linux

I can find no reference as to what happens to OpenSuSe.

"I can find no reference as to what happens to OpenSuSe.

Among the many questions surrounding the deal is what will happen with Novell-back projects such as OpenSUSE, which maintains a popular, open source desktop distro and upstream contributor to SLE. The community-driven OpenSUSE Project is also preparing a MeeGo version of the distro.

They've already re-implemented a large portion of winforms etc... Christ...

I think they are called Attachmate and not attachment. Just wanted to point that out.

Ok, so you're just gonna pretend that you didn't say that those parts of mono were proprietary software? People can look back and see what you typed. You _do_ know that, right? Ah, my favourite activity: shining a light under the bridge. Billy-goats should avoid this thread.

Parts of Mono do not have free software licenses.

Astute readers will point out that Mono contains much more than the ECMA standards, and they will be correct.

In the next few months we will be working towards splitting the jumbo Mono source code that includes ECMA + A lot more into two separate source code distributions. One will be ECMA, the other will contain our implementation of ASP.NET, ADO.NET, Winforms and others.

Again, it's not proprietary. It's patented.

Proprietary software is computer software licensed under exclusive legal right of its owner. The purchaser, or licensee, is given the right to use the software under certain conditions, but restricted from other uses, such as modification, further distribution, or reverse engineering.

Novell and Microsoft’s shared IP history has been tumultuous. Novell, the company behind SuSE Linux, entered a patent-protection deal with Microsoft in 2006. Via that deal, Microsoft agreed to distribute to its customers certificates for Novell’s SuSE Linux, and Novell basically conceded that its implementation of Linux violated Microsoft patents and agreed its customers needed patent-enforcement protection. That pact was designed as a five-year deal (which would expire in 2011). As part of the 2006 arrangement, Microsoft and Novell also agreed to improve interoperability between Windows and Linux.

Proprietary.

Certainly not closed-source, but still proprietary.

... and it has changed to a situation where Mono is paid for by an entity funded (at least in part) directly by Microsoft.

This is OK ... exactly how?

*headdesk* "You keep saying that word. I don't think it means what you think it means."

Proprietary software Closed source (not necessarily, anyway).
...
However, such software is still proprietary.

What on earth are you even arguing anymore? Proprietary. Certainly not closed-source, but still proprietary. Mono is 100% open and free software.

Whether or not a 3rd party thinks they have a patent on something does not make it proprietary.[q/]

It certainly does, if someone has to pay a license fee for running it. That alone makes it proprietary.

[q] Microsoft suing TomTom over FAT technology in Linux did not make Linux a proprietary operating system.

Microsoft themselves would argue with you.

" Proprietary software is not Closed source (not necessarily, anyway). ... However, such software is still proprietary.

Computer programs that are exclusive property of their developers or publishers, and cannot be copied or distributed without complying with their licensing agreements. Almost all commercial (shrinkwrapped) software is proprietary, but many excellent new programs (such as Apache web server, Linux operating system, and StarOffice office suite) are non-proprietary (and free).

Proprietary software is computer software licensed under exclusive legal right of its owner. The purchaser, or licensee, is given the right to use the software under certain conditions, but restricted from other uses, such as modification, further distribution, or reverse engineering.

"Microsoft themselves would argue with you.

It is free software if it is under a free license. Lack of promises from Microsoft does not make it unfree - it only makes it potentially unsafe to use (in USA). The rest of us live in countries without software patents and with low risk of ever getting software patents. To us the whole nonsens about mono is just that - nonsens. That said, I strongly prefer solutions created in C, C++ and python (and whatever compiles to native binaries).

This way, if you are running Linux when the BSA or equivalent come cap-in-hand to your company asking for a license fee from you for your alleged use of their members' IP, you can simply say to them that you don't run any software with their IP in it. Tell them you have no Microsoft software, and no contract with Microsoft. If Microsoft hit you with a lawsuit, you can hit them with a countersuit for extortion and harrasment.

The nightmare scenario is that CPTN (with Microsoft at the helm) starts trying to shut down all of the commercial Linux distributors based on some "infringed" patents or copyright. They would leave Novell alone, of course, because a special licensing agreement would have been part of the $450 million deal announced today. Red Hat, Canonical, and all the other commercial vendors would be forced to pay licensing fees which would ultimately slash their already thin revenues, unless they passed that cost to the users--thus negating the big price advantage Linux has over Microsoft products.

CPTN will even be able to knock on Oracle, IBM, and HP's collective door and start asking for licensing fees for their UNIX flavors.

That is very scary stuff, and it would be something to worry about, except for one teeny, tiny thing. A little detail that all the doomsayers seem to have forgotten.

What's the key fact people seem to be forgetting?

It's this: to date, no one has proved Linux infringes on UNIX IP.

That's right. No matter how hard people have tried, no legal action has ever said that Linux had legitimate infringement issues with UNIX.

And oh, how they've tried.

Weren't you arguing that it did? You must be new to trolling, because you're not very good at it.

What he does miss is that MONO is probably one of the best cross platform frameworks ... and people shock horror actually like writing software in C# ... MONO was created because Miguel saw that Microsofts .NET framework was a really nice library.

Besides Miguel has promised us a Legal version of .net only using legally covered bits and not turned up with it. So we are a little bit pissed off. Don't promise something if you don't intend providing it.

I have some good news to announce: Microsoft will be applying the Community Promise to the ECMA 334 and ECMA 335 specs.

ECMA 334 specifies the form and establishes the interpretation of programs written in the C# programming language, while the ECMA 335 standard defines the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) in which applications written in multiple high-level languages can be executed in different system environments without the need to rewrite those applications to take into consideration the unique characteristics of those environments.

"The Community Promise is an excellent vehicle and, in this situation, ensures the best balance of interoperability and flexibility for developers," Scott Guthrie, the Corporate Vice President for the .Net Developer Platform, told me July 6.

It is important to note that, under the Community Promise, anyone can freely implement these specifications with their technology, code, and solutions.

You do not need to sign a license agreement, or otherwise communicate to Microsoft how you will implement the specifications.

In the next few months we will be working towards splitting the jumbo Mono source code that includes ECMA + A lot more into two separate source code distributions. One will be ECMA, the other will contain our implementation of ASP.NET, ADO.NET, Winforms and others.

Qt hello world

#include

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
QApplication app(argc, argv);
QLabel label("Hello, world!");
label.show();
return app.exec();
}

should have gone with WINix

"Besides Miguel has promised us a Legal version of .net only using legally covered bits and not turned up with it. So we are a little bit pissed off. Don't promise something if you don't intend providing it.

The simple answer is to use anything else. Purge Mono from your machines. Using Qt/QML/Qt designer in conjunction with C++ or Python is as good a choice as any.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_%28framework%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QML
"Qt hello world

#include

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
QApplication app(argc, argv);
QLabel label("Hello, world!");
label.show();
return app.exec();
}

Miguel actually said they will be splitting it into two parts.

"In the next few months we will be working towards splitting the jumbo Mono source code that includes ECMA + a lot more into two separate source code distributions. One will be ECMA, the other will contain our implementation of ASP.NET, ADO.NET, Winforms and others."

So if you are worried about legal issues use the ECMA part. Simple

So if you are worried about legal issues use the ECMA part. Simple

None of those alternatives come anywhere near .NET and Visual Studio in terms of quality.

Qt hello world

#include

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
QApplication app(argc, argv);
QLabel label("Hello, world!");
label.show();
return app.exec();
}

None of those alternatives come anywhere near .NET and Visual Studio in terms of quality.

Eclipse and OpenJDK ... is alright ... but is miles behind VS2010 and .NET, and JSP vs ASP.NET ... ASP.NET is far easier to live with. Maybe Eclipse, OpenJDK and GWT ... but is that even supported?

I only use Eclipse for Android Dev.

KDevelop and GCC on come on ... how am I supposed to do web development on this??

Google Go does not have a fully supported Windows Versions and is essentially a beta language. Oh yes ... where is my IDE?

Qt Creator provides support for building and running Qt applications for desktop environments (Windows, Linux, and Mac OS) and mobile devices (Symbian, Maemo, and MeeGo). Build settings allow you to switch between build targets.

When you build an application for a mobile device target with a device connected to a development PC, Qt Creator generates an installation package, installs in on the device, and executes it.

Qt Quick is a framework that provides a declarative way of building custom, highly dynamic user interfaces with fluid transitions and effects, which are becoming more and more common especially in mobile devices.

Microsoft build better development tools ... I have all 5 versions of the .NET version of visual studio (2002, 2003, 2005, 2008, 2010) on this machine. Each version is better than the last with very nice language improvements and backwards compatibility after .NET 1.1 (which tbh was a beta language anyway).

Microsoft do something the open source community can't do ... improve.

Pfft.

AFAIK you can't do the equivalent of this six-line GUI Hello World program with .NET and Visual Studio:

... and, even if you could, the resulting Hello World GUI program would only run on Windows.

QED.

[q]None of those alternatives come anywhere near .NET and Visual Studio in terms of quality.

Eclipse and OpenJDK ... is alright ... but is miles behind VS2010 and .NET, and JSP vs ASP.NET ... ASP.NET is far easier to live with. Maybe Eclipse, OpenJDK and GWT ... but is that even supported?

I only use Eclipse for Android Dev.

KDevelop and GCC on come on ... how am I supposed to do web development on this??

Google Go does not have a fully supported Windows Versions and is essentially a beta language. Oh yes ... where is my IDE?

Microsoft build better development tools ... I have all 5 versions of the .NET version of visual studio (2002, 2003, 2005, 2008, 2010) on this machine. Each version is better than the last with very nice language improvements and backwards compatibility after .NET 1.1 (which tbh was a beta language anyway).

Microsoft do something the open source community can't do ... improve.

Pfft. That is a beauty. An absolute doozy.

The 'key parts of .NET' of which you speak are probably the winforms elements and other things that aren't part of the C# standard.

"The 'key parts of .NET' of which you speak are probably the winforms elements and other things that aren't part of the C# standard.

I said these things.

Why are you correcting me when I agree with you?

Those _are_ free software, but they're not exempt from patent suits, because they're not part of the C# standard.

what in "You can be compliant or compatible" confused you?

Damn it, ever since you pointed out the original poster's reading mistake, now I keep reading the company name as Attachment! Before then, I always read it correctly. Now I keep thinking for a couple seconds after reading the name, "wait, there's something wrong..." and then have to correct myself.

I think you confused yourself. The purpose of the ECMA specification is that if you're compliant then you are compatible and you are covered and that's what people misunderstand every time about this.

He was claiming that the portions beyond the standard which Microsoft uses and have been re-implemented in Mono are proprietary. They're not. They're patented, and not covered by the patent protection 'promise'.

I like that this got voted down, probably because I said that there are alternatives. That wasn't always the case, and... it's true. I'm just relaying information, so you don't freak out should MS destroy Mono. You're welcome.

And Linux and BSD are unlicensed reimplementations of Unix. What's your point?

POSIX or "Portable Operating System Interface [for Unix]" is the name of a family of related standards specified by the IEEE to define the application programming interface (API), along with shell and utilities interfaces for software compatible with variants of the Unix operating system, although the standard can apply to any operating system.

Stop trying to re-define proprietary.

along with a $10,000us 'filing fee'

ECMA is just a standards body, dude. It's not a standard in-and-of itself.

Compliant is sticking to nothing but the ECMA C# standard, which does not include winforms et al.

You're being angry at me for things I didn't say, and _trying_ to twist my words.

These are simply facts.

The winforms library et al which has been re-implemented by Mono is not part of the standard.
Without those libraries you are not 100% compatible with .NET. Those libraries are patented.

The patent protection promise does not cover anything but the C# standard.

If you are compatible, you are not under protection from a patent suit. This is basic logic.

"Paging Pamela Jones ... I repeat, paging Pamela Jones.

but do you think some WordPerfect IP is worth 2 billion to Microsoft?

You are literally the only person(?) I've seen try to say that free software is proprietary because someone not directly involved claimed to have had the idea first.

There is no such thing as a 'C# standard'.

This International Standard specifies the form and establishes the interpretation of programs written in the C# programming language.
It specifies:
The representation of C# programs;
The syntax and constraints of the C# language;
The semantic rules for interpreting C# programs;
The restrictions and limits imposed by a conforming implementation of C#.

So you just not only admitted that you think linux infringes and is proprietary software(which you denied earlier) but you just admitted that you're for microsoft using patents to destroy competition. This reminds me of the time a guy my friends and I hung out with sometimes suddenly started going off about how "the jews control the government, seriously". Real buzzkill.

I know it didn't.
I didn't say it did or does.

I summerised your post, and compared it to when someone I used to hang with openly admitted to being an anti-semite.

Could you turn down the crazy, and turn up the logic?

Both Red Hat and Google have cause for concern, adds Enderle. "Red Hat should be concerned because they fought off Microsoft's first attempt to get them to license from them, and the next attempt will likely be vastly more aggressive now."

The C# specification itself is not important here.

Kidding? Maybe, but it seems true

The problem with the above depends on how many applications on your platform depend on the Mono infrastructure part to be able to run. If it is a grand total of 5 major ones with ample alternatives; who cares. If Mono is the driving part of more than 60% of the platforms applications, it becomes really painful to lose the Mono foundation on which they run.

Even if the loss would only be in area's where software patents exist. Why would you want to write Free Software that in the future could become unavailable to a large portion of your sub-licensees? Why not avoid this specific risk altogether?

So you just suck at reading and/or logic, because this is what I've been saying from the start. You just get hung up on the new definitions of words you're trying to push and decide that I must be for what you are against, because I use the accepted definitions... I greatly dislike you, and hope many bad things happen to you in the future.

Certainly Microsoft's PR and legal department would want you to believe that you can't re-implement libraries replicating Microsoft proprietary technologies without a paid-for license from Microsoft.

Who am I to argue?

But, more to the point ... why argue? Why not simply shun Mono and use decent alternative applications that are readily available and at least as functional? Much simpler.

Only time will tell but in all the years it has been since Mono was introduced and people started frothing at the mouth about its connections to MS I haven't once been prevented by MS from using Mono software. "Ah but what about the future" they say. We'll see. I'm not too worried.

I'm sorry that I assumed people on an OS-dedicated site would have enough of a grasp of reality to understand that software patents MAKE NO SENSE.

"I'm sorry that I assumed people on an OS-dedicated site would have enough of a grasp of reality to understand that software patents MAKE NO SENSE.

Suppose you got paid for time put in on an hourly basis before you started working, rather than working for a while, then assuming that you should get paid for that work whether or not another developer actually used your code (and thus your work).

Society doesn't exist to put money onto the hands of anyone who think they should have it for something the do.

Patents exist to get innovation into the hands of the public

rather than tied up in trade secrets.

Software patents _only_ stifle real innovation and are really more restrictive than trade secrets, as they prevent the use of the concept

whether not the idea is independently discovered.

It's math.
Math is only useful when applied.

Restricting the application of math simply restricts innovation and hurts society.

The vast bulk of discovery of software algorithms was done with the early mainframes. It was then that operating systems such as Unix and VMS were designed, as well as concepts like NUMA, SMP, sockets, protocols, compilers, high-level languages, hyperlinking, codecs, WIMP GUIs, mass storage hard disk filesystems, etc, etc, etc were invented.

Without the benefit of patents.

dont know where you live, but here developers are usually paid on a timely (hourly or monthly basis) or when the work is delivered (sometimes a combination of the two), but hardly in advance...

anyway, for a paid developer that would simply move the problem from the individual developer to his employer (the actual owner of the IP that developer creates), wouldnt solve it;

you'll most likely want to make life as hard as possible for competitors, as long as you plan to remain in that market field (if you move to another field, maybe you wont care anymore - yet again you may keep caring)

i create something, you want to use it, i set a price, you pay me if you deem it reasonable, or go look elsewhere otherwise.
demand and offer.
what's wrong with this?

no.
the reason for patents to exist is to let inventors profit from their inventions (either from them being sold to users or used by other parties - with the intentional effect of putting individual inventors/developers and larger companies on equal terms) and second, to foster innovation (exactly by imposing royalties, thus forcing competitors to explore alternate solutions to avoid paying them )

patent is by definition not a trade secret - in fact an invention shall be published and filed in a database for everyone else to see, in order to be granted a patent
it's quite different, from, say, the coca cola recipe...

the only thing they prevent is "free" (as in gratis) exploitation of someone else's inventions,

but it's not like if an application of an implementation (say, hw optimized) of a mathematic method (say, the fourier transform) is patented, then ANY AND ALL applications of that method are patented then unusable in normal life...

moreover, society doesnt generally use applied math (except maybe for homeworks and university thesis),

You didn't create the algorithm. You just decided to use it. Math is a natural phenomenon.

You can't patent physics, why should you be able to patent mathematics?

You can't invent math. You can only discover it.

The fact that you didn't realise that we use applied maths every day is disgraceful

So most people are lazy. Why does this mean you should get to prevent them from doing things with math?

and you shouldn't touch technology.

If this continues, eventually everything that can be done with software will be patented and no one will be able to write their own software, or will be forced to write it for only themselves.

They do not make sense, and harm society.

Read a little history about how and why copyright and patents came into being.

You've truly missed the point, and obviously voted in some of the republicans this term, or would have if perhaps you just think like the worst of America, but aren't a citizen.

History fail, computing fail, moral fail.

who ARE you to tell me what i should or shouldnt do?