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:2005-07-12
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.
If Mono did not reimplement the patented parts, Mono would be much safer and the community would not have strong arguments against it.
Saying that this attiude is anti-Microsoft because other implementations of patented stuff is not mentioned is not valid.
However, it is true that people have a tendency to cite the patents issue more when Mono is involved that when Python is involved. This is double standards at work.
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...
Member since:2005-12-23
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:
2005-07-29
Can you explain how the threat of MS litigation is an anti-MS issue please?
For one thing, Microsoft hasn't actually threatened a lawsuit against Mono. They've had very little to say about Mono, one way or the other, actually.
For another, the liklihood of Microsoft suing Mono is low, historically, as Microsoft is typically the defendant of lawsuits, not the plaintiff. (Search for STAC, Internet Explorer, SQL Server...)
Of course, past behavior is not a predictor for future behavior, just like the stock market.
Finally, nothing stops Microsoft from suing everything else in Linux, from the Linux kernel (http://www.networkworld.com/news/2004/0802linuxstu.html) to Samba to Wine to Python to Gnome to...
That's what makes patents so damaging, they can be used to target everything. Plus, lawsuits are freaking expensive, so even if there's no case they can still be damaging...
Then there's the non-Microsoft patent holders -- do you think FireFox is permanently exempt from the 'no embedding items' patent? Or the patents of search engines? Or the patents on XOR? JPEG? ...
And do you think Sun's Java is any better? Remember the lawsuit they lost against Kodak? (http://news.com.com/Sun+settles+Kodaks+Java+suit+for+92+million/210...)
What's to stop Kodak from suing GCJ, Mono, Python, or anything that makes use of an RPC-like mechanism?
In short, patents are a problem for everyone; Mono isn't a special target in this regard.
So the "threat of a Microsoft lawsuit" is anti-Microsoft because it's short-sighted. Microsoft may bring a lawsuit in the future; they may not. But assuming that they're the only source of lawsuits is wrong, and leads to thinking like "Mono is the only unsafe technology, and we'll all be safer sticking with C, Java, Python, Perl, Ruby..." which, as shown above, is wrong.
Make sure you see the forest (patents covering everything) for the trees (a currently non-existant threat from Microsoft).