Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 6th Oct 2008 10:37 UTC, submitted by John Mills
The Mono project has released Mono 2.0. As most of you will know, Mono is an open-source implementation of Microsoft's .NET framework for Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, and other operating systems. The 2.0 release comes packed with new features, the main ones being the compiler upgrade to C# 3.0 with support for LINQ, as well as the inclusion of ADO.NET 2.0, ASP.NET 2.0 and System.Windows.Forms 2.0. The release notes detail all the changes and new features.
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Member since:2007-02-17
You are downright trolling about this stuff lemur.
"Interestingly, Microsoft has made available much of the source code for the .NET Framework Base Class Library (including ASP.NET, ADO.NET and Windows Presentation Foundation) under the shared source Microsoft Reference License.
"Interestingly, Microsoft has made available much of the source code for the .NET Framework Base Class Library (including ASP.NET, ADO.NET and Windows Presentation Foundation) under the shared source Microsoft Reference License.
...
Since Mono 2.0 includes Systems.Windows.Forms 2.0, ASP.NET 2.0 and ADO.NET 2.0 I'd say pretty much that anyone who installs Mono 2.0 on their Linux system has what Steve Ballmer refers to as an "undisclosed liability" to Microsoft right there.
You would have a great point, except that the mono team requires that all contributers have never read BCL or ROTOR source, and that they wrote all three implementations years before ms released their source. "
To violate a patent, you don't have to copy the source.
Copyright law protects the expression of an idea. If a copy of the actual text of the code that MS released under the shared source Microsoft Reference License appeared in Mono, that would be a copyright violation.
Patent law is not copyright law. Patents protect the idea itself, and not just the expression of it in source code.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent
ASP.NET, ADO.NET and Windows Presentation Foundation are protected (I believe) by patents. If so, it doesn't matter one whit if Mono contributors have never read BCL or ROTOR source, or that they wrote all three implementations years before ms released their source. They would still be in violation of Microsoft IP if they do not have a license from Microsoft to use the protected IP.
I believe that Mono Project developers (on Novell's staff) may in fact have such a license, as part of the Microsoft/Novell deal.
This however does not mean that anyone else (downstream) can use the Mono Project source code, as THEY certainly do not have such a license.
PS: Thankyou for admitting that I have a point.
Edited 2008-10-08 08:54 UTC
Member since:2006-02-05
ASP.NET, ADO.NET and Windows Presentation Foundation are protected (I believe) by patents. If so, it doesn't matter one whit if Mono contributors have never read BCL or ROTOR source, or that they wrote all three implementations years before ms released their source. They would still be in violation of Microsoft IP if they do not have a license from Microsoft to use the protected IP.
Reverse engineering is a specific exception to this. If it weren't for that, smb and ms office format compatibility would have been illegal until they were opened/licensed, and wine would still be illegal.
It is definitely a sort of grey area though, and one that could go to court. The thing is that the worst thing that could happen to mono is forcing them to stop distributing ASP/ADO/Winforms. That is a pain, but its not something that would in any way effect linux mono apps, since its only the high level stuff that gets questionable.
The low level stuff (CLR/C#) is under an open specification, and the linux mono APIs (like GTK#) are completely patent free.
The mono team understands the issues, and from day one has been real careful to keep the dangerous stuff seperate from the safe stuff. I would agree that nobody should base their business on the mono implementations of the .net stack (just like I would caution anyone to base their business on wine), but mono is a great platform that integrates very well into existing linux APIs.
Member since:
2006-02-05
You are downright trolling about this stuff lemur.
...
Since Mono 2.0 includes Systems.Windows.Forms 2.0, ASP.NET 2.0 and ADO.NET 2.0 I'd say pretty much that anyone who installs Mono 2.0 on their Linux system has what Steve Ballmer refers to as an "undisclosed liability" to Microsoft right there.
You would have a great point, except that the mono team requires that all contributers have never read BCL or ROTOR source, and that they wrote all three implementations years before ms released their source.