"Remember when I promised you all that I'd tell you all about the Fedora/Mono decision when I could? Well, now I can. It has to do with a little organization called OIN. Allow me to quote from Mark Webbink's article, 'The Open Invention Network', in the April 2006 edition of Linux Magazine: "The OIN commons is created by having all participants in OIN, whether members or licensees, cross-license any owned patents that affect the Linux kernel, key components in any Linux distribution, and certain key Linux-related applications. The commons forms a large, safe area for development free of patent concerns". And where does Mono fit in?"
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Member since:2006-01-03
as it's fairly probable that Microsoft infringes on patents held by OIN
You have no idea if that is true or not. It is precisely because the specter of MS is hanging over Mono that people don't like it. No matter what you say people are always going to say "Mono is cool, but...".
Member since:2005-11-16
Member since:2006-03-10
This is mentioned a lot, but seems to me to be pure paranoia. Mono is a re-implementation based on a ECMA standard, it is not a hacked .net from MS. MS even released a shared-source implementation of the CLI to assist "People developing their own CLI implementations" (quote from the MS shared source CLI page). I don't see how they can protect the relevant IP in a courtroom when they have so openly given it away with a suggestion for people to make their own versions.
The worst thing I can think of that MS can do is to make changes in the next versions of .net that makes them incompatible with Mono. Which of course doesn't matter at all since Mono stands on it's own and doesn't rely on MS to function. Even if this version of Mono is the last one to be compatible with .net, it is still excellent and can be used to make great appliactions for Linux and other systems.
While some may hesitate, those who don't have given us a surprising amount of very cool software in very short time, I hope that continues.
Member since:2005-11-14
(1) .NET was developed by Microsoft, and everything Microsoft touches is 'teh 3vil' (despite their "touching" HTML, CSS, XML, SOAP, C, C++, and numerous other standards)
Except that you extrapolated the last part of your sentence.
The problem is not that everything MS touches is 'teh 3vil', it's that everything DEVELOPED (or rather invented) by MS is 'teh 3vil'.
Because of undocumented API for example, there are plenty of old and current examples of this in MS history.
Unless of course, chasing the tail of MS seems viable to you.
There is no problem with C# for example, as it was not developed by MS (until they hired/bought the inventor, but it was too late). Nor with any of the other technologies you quoted, as none were invented by MS. Even SMB is fine, but CIFS extensions are not, and are the reason Samba is struggling to interoperate with Windows.
Member since:2005-11-14
Member since:2005-06-29
OIN itself, if it's used much, will be a great argument on the futility and innefficiency of software patents.
If everyone is infringing on everyone, and is hence powerless, no one gains from the patents. We might as well just hire lawyers to twiddle their thumbs, that might cause less damage to society!
Member since:
2005-07-29
There are two significant reasons that people don't like Mono:
(1) .NET was developed by Microsoft, and everything Microsoft touches is 'teh 3vil' (despite their "touching" HTML, CSS, XML, SOAP, C, C++, and numerous other standards).
(2) Patents. Largely because of (1), it was feared that Microsoft would use Patents as a weapon to stop future Mono development. Why use a platform which might not exist in the future?
There isn't much that can be said to alter (1) (but Microsoft is teh 3vil!), but The Open Invention Network serves as a response to (2). Even if there are patents that Mono infringes, OIN provides a way to negotiate with Microsoft, as it's fairly probable that Microsoft infringes on patents held by OIN. This promotes cross-licensing with Microsoft, which could prevent Microsoft from using patents to shut down numerous open-source projects, including Mono.