C#, CLI Under Community Promise, Mono Split in Half
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 7th Jul 2009 08:51 UTC, submitted by PLan
Mono Project We've already seen some heavy discussion on Mono and C# here on OSNews the past few weeks, as it became clear the patent situation regarding the ECMA parts of Mono was anything but faith inspiring. This issue seems to be resolved now: Microsoft has made a legally binding promise not to sue anyone who uses or distributes implementations of said ECMA standards. Following this news, Mono will be split in two; the ECMA standard parts, and the rest.
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RE: Broken implementations
by TBPrince on Tue 7th Jul 2009 11:23 UTC in reply to "Broken implementations"
TBPrince
Member since:
2005-07-06

One thing that bothers me about the Promise is that it only covers those implementations that implement all required portions of a specification; partial implementations are not covered. I'm not entirely sure what this means in practice, but it does raise a few questions. This means that you can't ship broken implementations. I'm not entirely fond of that limitation, but i'm not bothered by it either.


And don't forget that shipping broken implementation could be done by purpose to fragment or to lead to confusion and problems or to counter technologies that could harm your own stuff by removing that threat from your implementation (even if this is unlikely in specs which only cover language implementations).

Microsoft knows this tactic very well ;-)

Reply Parent Score: 3

RE[2]: Broken implementations
by arpan on Tue 7th Jul 2009 11:34 in reply to "RE: Broken implementations"
arpan Member since:
2006-07-30

Well, what if Microsoft updates C# and doesn't get the standard updated.

Then Mono would need to be updated to remain compatible, but the updated Mono would not be compatible with the standard specification and hence would not be covered under this promise.

Reply Parent Score: 2

TBPrince Member since:
2005-07-06

Well, what if Microsoft updates C# and doesn't get the standard updated. Then Mono would need to be updated to remain compatible, but the updated Mono would not be compatible with the standard specification and hence would not be covered under this promise.


Actually, that's not needed. MONO could just delivery compatibility with latest version covered by that promise. Then, anyone interested in achieving compatibility with MONO would use that version.

Reply Parent Score: 2