Novell’s Mono open-source group had been successful in porting Microsoft’s .Net Framework, but Microsoft is insisting its Avalon and Indigo intellectual property rights requires that any attempt to produce open-source versions of these two will require licensing.
Microsoft Puts OSS Roadblock on Avalon and Indigo
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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By now the only thing going on is “let’s take a look on Indigo”, so I think this article jumped on the gun a bit too fast.
But still, the words “Mono”, “Microsoft” and “intellectual property” might stir yet another hot debate here at OSNews.
The patent system really is patently absurd!!
(well, most of the world is…)
“By now the only thing going on is “let’s take a look on Indigo”, so I think this article jumped on the gun a bit too fast.
”
No. It didnt
Read
“A Microsoft representative confirmed that “while Microsoft is quite open to discussing with Novell the licensing of potentially applicable intellectual property, Novell has not licensed anything or even approached Microsoft on this topic.””
“And, as far as Microsoft is concerned, any attempt to reverse engineer Avalon or Indigo will require a license.
“Intellectual property is something any cloner needs to think about,” said a Microsoft spokesperson. “
Mono under trouble is not a correct title, expecially because original title is “Microsoft Puts Roadblock in Front of Open-Sourcing Avalon and Indigo”. As article clearly states, there’s no complain about MONO by MS. They only complained about Indigo and Avalon.
IMO, this title should be changed because it gives false impression about MONO being under threat. Which is not true at all.
(plus, the fact that MS is defending Indigo and Avalon since the beginning puts under a new light MONO too because MS has never been so noisy about MONO itself.)
Oh, it did:
As for Novell, the company is now claiming that it’s not seriously interested in porting Indigo anyway.
“Miguel and I discussed this a couple of weeks ago, and the answer [is] basically we do not have plans to implement Indigo, so this discussion is more or less moot,” said Kevan Barney, Novell’s senior PR manager.
That isn’t because of Microsoft’s IP stand, though.
“The reasons we wouldn’t do Indigo have to do with its usefulness (or lack thereof)—not because of IP issues,” said Barney.
“”Intellectual property is something any cloner needs to think about,” said a Microsoft spokesperson. ” ”
So headline is not wrong
Atleast he is open and honest about what Microsoft plans to do; “copy the lower stack is ok, but don’t you dare touch the upper layer; thats our IP”. If Novell wishes to get something out of that anti-trust thing, maybe they should request a licence as to allow them to implement those two pieces of technologies.
If MS software is so great, cost of ownership is so small etc., then why the fear of us developing a clone?
Actions speak louder than words.
”
IMO, this title should be changed because it gives false impression about MONO being under threat. Which is not true at all.
”
Mono includes both of these technologies supported by Novell
http://forge.novell.com/modules/xfmod/project/?monoindigo
http://www.mono-project.com/Mono_Hacking_Roadmap#New_components:_Wh…
Could you please change the title of this article. A certain amount of lively debate is necessary for the survival of this site-but blatantly enticing flamewars is just pathetic.
Your article title is simply *wrong*-factually incorrect and misleading. Please change this soon as to preclude another braindead round of accusations and counter-accusations based on heresay and misinformation.
Nowhere in the article does it say what kind of intellectual property Microsoft owns.
Trademarks? Don’t use the names “Avalon” or “Indigo”.
Copyrights? Don’t copy Microsoft code. This is the entire point of Mono, to re-engineer it…
Patents? OK, now we’re getting somewhere. What parts of Avalon or Indigo are novel enough to be granted patents? This is the big question, and it applies to all .NET. As far as I can see, it’s basically a question of Microsoft choosing to enforce its patent library against some but not all of the .NET replacement classes.
The first one was a community project that has been dropped and the other points to a roadmap of planned features. Obviously those won’t be planned features anymore.
Mono includes both of these technologies supported by Novell
If you read the link you provided, you’d notice they aren’t included in Mono at all, although its inclusion is still being considered as certain. Right now, there is no Avalon or Indigo in the official releases.
I remember reading an interview with Miguel a while ago where he clearly stated he was unimpressed with what Indigo provides. I can’t for the life of me find the article though.
I can’t see how MS can patent the APIs in question – they’re just that, APIs. Mono is reverse engineering the underlying code and protocols and only providing a .Net compatible API to mono developers.
Patent law is a joke.
Well, didn’t we all know this will happen sooner or later. And now they even discuss including Mono in Gnome. Way to go
Please RTFA before making your comments. Mono is not under thread, they are only talking about a not even really planned implementation of indigo.
Wouldn’t it be nice if tech companies got back to innovating again rather that patenting the obvious and living off the fat of the broken patent system for decades.
I wonder if and when Congress will ever fix this. My prediction is that it gets so bad, the big players in the industry ultimately end up lobbying to have the system changed.
If the Mono project releases an implementation of Avalon or Indigo, or of both that are called “nolava” and “ogidni” who is going to say they cant do it? Unless that crazy patent system allow Microsoft to patend a specific implementation regadless of the way it is accomplished… Like patenting the roll of a wheel dispite the way a wheel is produced…
Bah! What did you expect MS to say? No, really! This seems to be just a little old MS to Free Software FUD. Many people and corporations are still uneasy about Mono and it’s licensing issues (if there are any). MS just keeps fueling the fire. That’s about it, in my view.
As article clearly states, there’s no complain about MONO by MS. They only complained about Indigo and Avalon.
The headline is not wrong. Mono is quite clearly under threat, and anyone with half a brain cell can see that.
Although Microsoft only talks about Indigo and Avalon here it is not clear at all what difference there is between Indigo, Avalon and other parts of .Net, as well as the ECMA stuff. Remember that the ECMA RAND agreement Microsoft has agreed to does not stop the whole .Net stack, from the CLR, ECMA standards right up to the higher level stuff from being Microsoft’s IP. It’s just that Microsoft have provided a very flowery, and quite frankly, amateurish agreement (have a look at the ECMA web site and their documents) to license things reasonably and royalty-free.
It’s a (costly) game open source software just doesn’t need to play at all, and it doesn’t need to. It’s not as if anyone really needs to clone .Net and its APIs, simply because there is absolutely nothing special about any of it. Microsoft may, or may not, act on all of this but people fail to understand that no open source project or any possible dependants (i.e. Gnome) can have this hanging over them and no customer or client will use Mono seriously with this sort of thing kicking around. Microsoft has waged this war before. It’s amusing to see the comments here ranging from “The headline is wrong” to trying to make distinctions between Indigo, Avalon and everything else. There is no difference.
It’s also funny to see Novell and the Mono people state that they have no interest in Indigo when they were actively wanting to use it (the Mainsoft people were having wet dreams over it) as opposed to going down the existing .Net remoting route, which is now defunct Microsoft-wise. It looks as though they’ll have to do what a lot of people have been telling them to do for ages and come up with their own, completely new, implementation of web services and their own different APIs. Even if they do that though, Microsoft will just continue to make thinly veiled threats against APIs and implementations, getting gradually lower down the stack and closer to the ECMA stuff as they go. It’s highly predictable.
1. Create framework like Java but more tighly integrated with Windows (.Net)
2. Integrate support for framework “applets” in Internet Explorer (Avalon)
3. Create server system which the “applets” can easily communite with (Indigo)
4. Make it impossible for anyone else to clone the applet/server framework (Patent minefield)
5. Market the technology aggressively
6. As web developers adopt the framework you soon have growing Windows-only zone in the Internet
when will we see a Mono story on OSNews without trolling?
It’s easy, if you don’t want .NET simply don’t you use it
MS is pushing .NET really hard, the vast majority of developers are using windows and will use it anyways, it will blown any other option in the market anyway, so be real: Mono is the only viable option to have a free .NET platform on a free OS. The other way is a MS platform on a MS OS. Choose.
MS is pushing .NET really hard, the vast majority of developers are using windows and will use it anyways, it will blown any other option in the market anyway, so be real: Mono is the only viable option to have a free .NET platform on a free OS.
Your logic falls apart instantaneously. The point of a free OS is to get people using it, not to clone large parts of Windows, including .Net (yes, .Net is a part of Windows). It is totally out of the question.
The only possible option is to have a good enough non-MS platform on a non-MS OS. Microsoft isn’t compromising, neither should anyone else. Choose.
7. Rant about IP so free implementations are automatically left out by The Community
Yea, that’s because they can. They have the power too, so they may not be bluffing. They can attack Novell/Mono any time they want and I wouldn’t be surprised especially if Novell makes MS really angry. Isn’t Novell suing MS for some type of anti-trust?
how so many people can apparently browse the internet, but not read.
This flaming FUD-war has been going on for too long, and is really getting religious and thus ridiculous.
So for the future, when you see a story about Mono on OSNews, just DON’T COMMENT! If you’re interested in flaming on the subject, see the 1000 other threads here about it.
And yes, Eugenia, you definitely screwed up with the headline! That’s not at all what it says in the article! Quite the opposite, actually, since the Mono people aren’t even getting into implementing Avalon and Indigo, Mono is in absolutely no trouble at this point.
You know a site is a flamewar-spurring kettle when those who comment on the ridiculousness of the flamewars get modded, while the flamewar itself doesn’t…
(yes, this post will probably be modded)
– Simon
The only possible option is to have a good enough non-MS platform on a non-MS OS
you missed the ‘be real’ part: ‘everybody’ is using windows, ‘everybody’ is developing for windows, windows is .NET
even if there are great non-MS OS and there are great non-MS platforms that were here ages before and ‘nobody’ cares
so go fight MS: put a non-MS OS on ‘everybody’s’ computer, put a non-MS platform on ‘everybody’s’ non-MS OS, go punch the floor
We talked too much about this situation so I’m trying not to enter into specific details anymore. Headline is wrong and misleading. Things you say are speculations. Facts are MS doesn’t want to let people implement Indigo or Avalon without a license, as they stated, while they didn’t care that much about .NET itself. Those are facts.
If we wanna enter into speculations I’d add:
1) MS needs to give .NET green light to race with Java. If MS wants to spread .NET, they need to be very liberal about this. Since they don’t want to implement .NET for Unix systems (mostly because of marketing reasons) they need someone to do that.
2) Novell is not a bunch of fools. They know they would need to pay big bucks if you (David) were right. Speculation: they had verbal-only green light from MS. Speculation: they think they can trade this license with other anti-trust legal requests they have in place against MS.
3) MS doesn’t want INDIGO and AVALON suffer the same way MS made Java suffer before agreement with Sun. They don’t want Novell (or anyone else) to mess with compatibility by introducing custom extensions.
As I said, playing speculations game is funny as long as it doesn’t last too much. Facts are MS did nothing to stop MONO as of today… and they had several years to do that. Other than that, it’s just opinions. Which I respect, but I’d prefer to base my business on facts.
Best regards.
given that almost every new .net application is going to use Avalon, mono’s usefulness (being able to run cross platform apps) is next to nothing right now
i don’t think that companies are willing to use gtk# to write windows programs…
So what will happen is they won’t copy those and 40% of developers looking into indigo will say “looks great, but not portable; I’ll live without.”
Seriously, with M$’s big mess inside windows and its software structure, .NET is even a bigger mess. It simplies uses new design to follow their marketing strategy: M$ monopoly. However, driven by M$ Windoez, how can you expect anything good? The development and user space are both tightly tied together. For businesses that have different OS or systems, their infrastructure or future expansion are LIMITED to this .NET framework even though you can build web services with it. Then I don’t see the good of making open source project based on M$ product especially their architecture behind is just a copy of J2EE + “their plain old NT messy source limitation”.
my 2 cents
> when will we see a Mono story on OSNews without trolling?
Calling everyone who is worried that Mono will become serious problems because of the patents Microsoft has on .NET a troll does not help either. Microsoft has patents on all parts of .NET and they can almost certainly use these patents to bring Mono and all applications using Mono into serious trouble.
Novell could/should clarify this situation and present a patent grant from Microsoft that makes sure that Mono and applications using it are not sued because of patent infringements. As long as they cannot/do not want to do this, it is just irresponsible to use Mono in open source projects.
About the headline… IMHO, it doesn’t match the content/headline of the linked article. The best is use the same headline as the article (something usual in OSNews) and leave the discussion about what they’ve write, and not BOTH (their article and osnews’ news)…
Also, IMHO, the article’s really about MonoIndigo… it’s not Mono (maybe about the “Mono Open source group“, but it’s not clear in the headline), it’s something else that runs under Mono AND MS .Net Framework… Also, it has changed it’s name, it’s called “Amber” [1] and it’s described as “similar to Indigo“, not a “clone”…
It’s good to point that the license is MIT. That probably means less problems with GPL incompatible licenses more adoption by programmers (the ones who seeks cross-plataform).
(Sorry, link missing)
[ 1] http://forge.novell.com/modules/xfmod/project/?amber
IMO, this title should be changed because it gives false impression about MONO being under threat. Which is not true at all.
How naive you are!
This is OSNews, here headlines are twisted so the site gets more hits.
Mono is not in trouble, but the idea of being a complete clone of MS is. Frankly I don’t care, I just want the core .NET anyway – which Mono provides. As for things like WinForms, Avalon and Indigo – I can take it or leave it. GTK# is there and I’m sure we’ll see features like those Avalon and Indigo become available in Mono.
“Mono under trouble is not a correct title, expecially because original title is “Microsoft Puts Roadblock in Front of Open-Sourcing Avalon and Indigo”. As article clearly states, there’s no complain about MONO by MS. They only complained about Indigo and Avalon.
IMO, this title should be changed because it gives false impression about MONO being under threat. Which is not true at all.
(plus, the fact that MS is defending Indigo and Avalon since the beginning puts under a new light MONO too because MS has never been so noisy about MONO itself.)”
This is Eugenia for you…
You know I only read this article (I’m not interested in Mono) cause I thought there was something wrong with that piece of news…. Then I thought “Is she at it again” then “Oh no, how predictable”….
We all should get together and fork OSnews hahahahahha
Novell’s Mono open-source group had been successful in porting Microsoft’s .Net Framework,
Wow, i didn’t realise that M$ provided the source code, or maybe the news article is factually incorrect and the correct wording would be something like cloning, or writing an open source re-implementation.
you missed the ‘be real’ part: ‘everybody’ is using windows, ‘everybody’ is developing for windows, windows is .NET
Totally irrelevant. If your enemy and rival has an-all-or-nothing attitude then you need to have the same. If you try and clone everything they’re doing, especially if they have a monopoly on desktop development, then you’re simply never going to be in control. It’s a tactic that has totally extinguished every Microsoft competitor in the past. Everyone wants to be nice and interoparate besides Microsoft. The only interoperability you should be doing are code conversion programs and applications that convert Windows and .Net code to run on your platform, in the same way Microsoft has things like J# for Java to .Net. You stick at it until your competitor has worn down and everyone is not using their technology. That is real.
I can see that people still don’t get this after all these years.
even if there are great non-MS OS and there are great non-MS platforms that were here ages before and ‘nobody’ cares
Nobody cares because everyone is using MS technology on the desktop. You’re not going to get anywhere by cloning it verbatim and entrenching Microsoft’s software and technology further. Microsoft can also extinguish you any time they want through changing the direction of the technology they control and making it close to impossible to reproduce.
so go fight MS: put a non-MS OS on ‘everybody’s’ computer, put a non-MS platform on ‘everybody’s’ non-MS OS, go punch the floor
Not necessary. What you need is a clear strategy, determination and patience. Cloning what Microsoft does as a stop-gap measure is not an option. You don’t get anywhere by being weak-minded.
Why do we need people who try to organise FUD? Every time again words are mispresented causing lots of needless confusion and anger.
If I recall correctly, Avalon is simply XUL with the tags renamed and a small handful of new attributes added. Simply applying the proper XSLT to XUL will give you the Avalon equivalent, and vice-versa.
That said, there’s probably no defensible patent ground in Avalon — itself a rip-off of a mature and well-deployed technology. Indigo is probably similar, but I’m not so familiar with that.
How about “Microsoft Protects Vaporware”?
Not sure who came up with the title for this piece, but it is clearly misleading and flamebait. Mono can exist quite well without Avalon and Indigo.
Facts are MS doesn’t want to let people implement Indigo or Avalon without a license, as they stated, while they didn’t care that much about .NET itself. Those are facts.
Did they state that they didn’t care about .Net as a whole? No, they didn’t. What is their attitude on Mono?
http://searchvb.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid8_gci101…
“No, Microsoft does not support the Mono product, nor has it licensed anything to Novell/Ximian. Mono is an attempt by Novell to reverse engineer parts of Microsoft’s .NET Framework. It is not an extension of the .NET Framework and it should not be considered as such.”
Therefore everything is in the same boat as Indigo and Avalon and nothing has changed. No, I’m afraid it isn’t speculation.
MS needs to give .NET green light to race with Java. If MS wants to spread .NET, they need to be very liberal about this. Since they don’t want to implement .NET for Unix systems (mostly because of marketing reasons) they need someone to do that.
I hardly think Microsoft believes it will supplant Java by using Mono on other platforms because it simply isn’t up to the job. If Microsoft really wanted that they would have put resources into it. It hasn’t happened now after several years and it never will. Even if that were the case though, it doesn’t mean Mono has any kind of a future. Microsoft has made its position extremely clear – they do not want Microsoft technology ported to non-Windows applications. That is a fact.
2) Novell is not a bunch of fools. They know they would need to pay big bucks if you (David) were right.
Novell are a bunch of fools, and have consistently proved it over the years in their fall from grace. Besides, Mono is not a Novell product nor something they’ve totally committed to supporting and using in their core products. It is a Novell-sponsored project, not a product, and that’s a crucial difference in language:
http://www.mono-project.com/About_Mono
No one from Novell or Mono has clarified the licensing/IP position with respect to what Microsoft is saying, and Novell will not need to pay big bucks at all. They haven’t done themselves any favours by talking about non-existant letters from Microsoft and HP amongst other things. All Novell will do is disassociate themselves with Mono and drop it from any products that include it (there certainly aren’t many) if and when the going gets tough. It’s not as if the company depends on it.
3) MS doesn’t want INDIGO and AVALON suffer the same way MS made Java suffer before agreement with Sun.
There is no difference whatsoever between Indigo, Avalon and the rest of the .Net and Mono frameworks. As to why, that was described above. You also have to remember that Microsoft did what they did to Java from a position of a monopoly on desktop technology and development tools. They could unhinge Java. The fact that you’ve compared them both to what Microsoft did to Java (a whole language, environment and framework) is a silly comparison. They’re all in the same boat so you can stop making that distinction.
As I said, playing speculations game is funny as long as it doesn’t last too much.
I’m afraid it isn’t speculation. This has happened before in the past, and it will happen again, and it has been adquately explained why a distinction between Avalon and Indigo and the rest of .Net and Mono’s implementations is ludicrous.
Facts are MS did nothing to stop MONO as of today… and they had several years to do that.
Microsoft isn’t in it for the first few, several, years. They’re in it for the long-haul. Look at Microsoft’s history and how they’ve conducted themselves over everything else.
Other than that, it’s just opinions. Which I respect, but I’d prefer to base my business on facts.
I’m afraid people wish they were just opinions, but everyone knows they’re not for the reasons stated. Besides, no business is going to base themselves on a cloned MS technology with this flying around. In that sense, those are the only facts they need to know. At the first wiff of a threat, Mono will be out of the Window.
By retro cat (IP: —.com) – Posted on 2005-06-22 10:49:36
Wouldn’t it be nice if tech companies got back to innovating again rather that patenting the obvious and living off the fat of the broken patent system for decades.
Yeah.
So,
Wouldn’t it be nice if opensource projects got back to innovating again rather that copying the idea of other people stuffs ?
http://poly9.com/images/19788490_a28a007a66_o.png
You should know software patents doesn’t exist in a lot of countries developing open source software.
And i’m not calling troll to people worried about that. I’m worried about that.
David, I can understand your point but, as I said, most of your considerations are speculations (no pun). I agree: Novell is wrong not to clarify about this, but that doesn’t mean MONO is under threat. Most likely, they still don’t exactly know how to use MONO to get major advantages.
As I said, to me facts matter since we’re talking about this issue since soooo long. Facts:
1) Novell acquired Ximian and thus it’s legally responsible for it.
2) Microsoft is PERFECTLY aware about MONO existence. MS knows that MONO aims (and declares) a broad .NET compatibility. MS knows that people is using such technology for both OS and commercial application. MS refers to MONO on its own websites, didn’t deny that MONO team had discussions with .NET team and there’s more. I’m not a lawyer, but to me such behaviour could be relevant in courts. Microsoft NEVER asked any company using MONO (nor MONO itself) to stop or desist. It’s been years now and that matters.
3) When Microsoft heard something it didn’t like, they quickly moved in denying that MONO team could implement Avalon and/or Indigo the same way they did with .NET. Such move has not been done with .NET (and I guess this is relevant in courts too).
4) MS learned anti-trust lessons. Notice that it didn’t stated that Novell cannot have Indigo / Avalon. It just said that they NEED to license them (that could even be for free like new Office file formats). That means MS is not seeing its technologies ported to Unix-like systems like a threat.
5) As far as I know, Microsoft never sued anyone (except for one case, which was related to a possibly-misleading domain name). So there’s no history of MS suing other companies.
End of facts. I’m stripping any other considerations because, as you emphasized, I have my own opinions about that too. However, keeping on telling that MONO in under threat looks unrealistic. In the end, that’s up to company / individuals to decide. Personally, I did it.
Best regards.
If the proprietary Microseft system doesn’t want to allow open source programmers to make a free implementation of Indigo they can take it and shove it up their ass. Mono has supported Gtk# for a while, and this will become the de facto standard for mono GUI software.
Java is already consolidated on the server side, if Sun was wise they’d free it, like they’ve done with open solaris and kill Microseft’s .NET strategy once and for all.
“A company works hard to build a platform…opensource guys with no design capabilities steal the system and you think the company should not react? ”
Name one product that MS made that was not a copy of someone elses product. Windows, Office, ADS, .NET, MSSQL were all copied from something else. So I agree with you, MS also has no design capabilites! Nobody wants to sue MS exept for Novell because they have deep pockets. Apple sued them for stealing copywrited material and they got made into Applesauce. Perhaps they will settle this .net issue out of court because of some of the MS Monopoly behavior from their past, when their office product was replicating the efforts of others Word Perfect, and Lotus 123 et cetra. Perhaps Novell will drop their class action lawsuit if MS chooses not to file theirs?
Here is a great quote: “If the Linux community is a bunch of thieves because they try to imitate windows programs, then the Windows community is built on organized crime.” -Richard Adams
Personally there are several things I would love to see. An automobile, a hybrid vehicle, that runs on ethynol and electricity. A world not filled with religious nut-jobs in power that kill one another. A society based upon reason and humanism. A higher paying job so I can do more. Humans landing on Mars ato colonize it. Etc.
This argument between two corporations has so little to do with my “real” life or my use of open-source software.
The original goal of Mono was to develop an environment for quick development of Gnome apps. The funny thing is that this goal has been forgotten.
Why hasn’t Novell developed their own database APIs and Web services APIs instead of copying the Microsoft patented ones (ADO.NET and ASP.NET)? I think that Novell really should get their act together.
“Wouldn’t it be nice if tech companies got back to innovating again rather that patenting the obvious and living off the fat of the broken patent system for decades.”
Exactly what “innovations” can tech companies come up with in the digital domain that someone can’t simply copy, and undercut? Pulling the “innovate” mantra is like saying we need world peace. Yeah! Now what?
“I wonder if and when Congress will ever fix this. My prediction is that it gets so bad, the big players in the industry ultimately end up lobbying to have the system changed.”
It’s already happening although companies have one tool that open source doesn’t have. Cross-licensing.
Its good to see OSS using M$ tactics against them.
Mono is Embrace and Extend in reverse!
What a surprise !
Or is it?
So thank you to all who promoted Mono for free on behalf of Microsoft and who helped convert developers to the .NET platform for free. Microsoft is really laughing now.
In order to give even the appearance of substance to your various speculations about Mono infringing MS IP, two things are required: 1) a USPTO patent #, and 2) a reference to the piece of code within Mono which purportedly infringes upon MS patents. Absent either of the above, your speculations are groundless.
Also, you’ve repeatedly claimed that MS has patents on all of .NET and that consequently Avalon and Indigo cannot be adequately distinguished from the core of .Net (presumably CIL and the C# interpreter). Sorry but this only demonstrates that you don’t have a very good grasp of how patent law actually works. No matter how crazy the USPTO has gotten–and they’ve long since gone off the deep end IMHO–with respect to granting fundamentally vague and overly broad patents, patents still must cover a very specific technology claim and the scope of that claim is ultimately something that only a court of law with competent jurisdiction can determine. It is simply not possible that MS has somehow patented all of .Net.
For extra credit you could please cite those patents owned by MS which are necessary to implement the ECMA specs covering the C# compiler and the CIL.
Or is frantic handwaving all you’ve got in store?
This eWeek article is “pulp-fiction”. Anyone can send emails to the [Mono-devel-list]. Anyone can go to Novell Forge and create a project and call it “MonoSomething”.
There are no file available for download, there are no publicly accessible source control repositories. And there are only two(2) developers in the project.
There is a lot of fuss over literally nothing.
What is amusing is watching people get angry because they are powerless to stop you from using Mono. They are angry because Mono was even started and can do nothing about it. Their hatred towards Microsoft trumps any rational arguments of the technical merits. Nothing would make them happier then to see Microsoft file a lawsuit against Novell for patent infringement.
This is what the Mono project *thinks* it’s doing, but in reality, MS is making them think they are doing that, while laughing behind their backs. Like a good chess player, MS is thinking many moves ahead, while it’s absolutely clear to me that Miguel and the Mono team think about one, if that. They got excited about the technology, but completely disregarded social and business issues. You have to have a very level head about the technology in order to be a proper technologist.
Basically Mono has amounted to and will continue to amount to a wolf in sheep’s clothes. It’s unfortunate, but that’s the way it is. Microsoft has an all-or-nothing attitude and a very severe “if your’re not with us completely you are against us completely” attitude. As such, there is no chance to collaborate with them.
This is a hard lesson for people to learn in life. It’s why women go back to the same man that kicked her teeth in a week before. It’s why some people never get off welfare despite millions of dollars and thousands of hours of devoted and dedicated community service. At some point, people need to come to the conclusion that the offending member of “society” will not change. This is what people need to realize about MS instead of giving them “yet one more chance”. They were supposed to start playing fair and cooperating a long time ago. Same result. They have shown well beyond a reasonable doubt that they cannot be trusted and that they are not mature and responsible over and over again. People should strive for the absolute minimum level of involvement, and Mono and it’s stated goals do not represent such in the least.
You know, they way the patent system works now, if they had used that when the computer revolution started. the computer industry would have been destroyed.
imagine if ibm had patented the bios software. and it was illegal to even reverse engineer it, or write competing bios’s.
Nah, I think the null hypothesis is that MS has patents covering parts all the API’s. It is up to you to go through Mono code line by line and look at all MS patents.
Its really simple, Mono has implemented the above API’s therefore patents on the CIL etc are not relevant. If people build large apps in the coming years they are at risk because Mono is at great risk if successful.
– MS has hired hundreds of patent lawyers
– MS has drastically increased its patents recently
– MS has definitely patented large portions of .Net API’s.
– In the past MS has behaved ruthelessly
– MS has the same top leadership as in the past.
There is a high probability that should Mono succeed in the market place it will come into direct competition with MS. At that point MS will react. Timing is everything.
Given these facts, basic risk management would necessitate using something other than a clone of .Net. Its just safer in the long run.
People scream FUD! Well when it comes to MS you had better have some doubt.
Since I never got a response on this from any of the mono supporters the last time this discussion came around, I’ll repost:
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-984052.html
>.Net patent could stifle standards effort
>
>Microsoft is in the process of applying for a wide-ranging
>patent that covers a variety of functions related to its >.Net initiative.
>
>Microsoft declined to elaborate on its plans for the
>patent, but intellectual property attorneys said that if
>it’s granted, the company could dictate how, or whether,
>developers of software and devices can link to the .Net
>initiative.
>
>”It looks pretty broad,” said Jeff E. Schwartz, a partner
>with McKenna Long & Aldridge. “It could be fairly
>significant.”
The article references this patent application:
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=
HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.html&r=1&
f=G&l=50&s1=’20030028685′.PGNR.&OS=DN/20030028685&RS=DN/20030028685
“Application program interface for network software platform”
Forget Indigo, Avalon, all those bleeding edge features, and please focus on a kick-ass, or at least decent IDE for Mono on Linux…Monodevelop has a long way to go to convince anyone to develop professionally on Linux with Mono.
@Andrewg –
An API cannot be directly patented. Although, in theory, it is possible that a technology required to implement an API can be patented. In any case, the onus is upon the one making the claim (MS not you necessarily) and only a court of law is empowered to make that determination. At best, we can try to anticipate how a court will decide based upon the law and precedent, but in order to do so I’ll need a patent number and the supposedly infringing code (or a demonstration that implementing the API necessarily infringes).
@HH –
Microsoft can apply for whatever it wants, doesn’t mean that they be issued a patent in the form they’ve submitted for. Even if they are granted that patent as applied for, there’s no guarantee that a court would uphold it (and if they did it would affect software well beyond implementations of ECMA standards). And that puts Mono in precisely the position every piece of software (FOSS or otherwise) is in. I’ve seen no compelling demonstration that Mono is potentially infringing any more so that is, say, Samba (which probably is infringing on various patents that have never been tested in court).
Any assessment of MS’s chances of having its patents upheld by a court must also take into consideration that to pursue an infringement claim against a sole competitor (true of both Mono and Samba) would again raise the specter of anti-trust violations, which is can of worms MS is most likely loathe to reopen. Further, pusuing such claims would attract retaliatory actions from variety of other patent holders and, contray to what seems popular opinion here, MS just simply is not a big player in the high tech patent game. They hold relatively few patents when compared to say AT&T, Bell Labs, and IBM (the 8000 pound gorrilla of the patent world), all of whom hold innumerable patents of questionable merit which MS is likely infringing and are currently invested in seeing Linux and FOSS prosper as competitor to MS.
Consider also, again contrary to what seems popular wisdom among some crowds, that MS has never in its past been aggressive in pursuing patent infringement claims. In fact the reality is just the opposite: MS has likely been the biggest victim of the insane US patent system. Anything is possible, but its not as though MS has a history of using patents to shut down competitors. They do have a history of FUD though, and spreading the seeds of doubt in the media with regard to a competitor’s possible patent infrigement is classic example of that tactic.
David, I can understand your point but, as I said, most of your considerations are speculations (no pun).
Where? I’m afraid you’re going to have to itemise them as I’ve done, because saying it won’t make it go away.
1) Novell acquired Ximian and thus it’s legally responsible for it.
They’re not responsible for Mono because it’s not licensed in a way they can control. That’s just bizarre.
Microsoft NEVER asked any company using MONO (nor MONO itself) to stop or desist. It’s been years now and that matters.
.Net is not big enough yet, and Mono certainly isn’t. Besides, Microsoft does not ask anyone to stop and desist. They generate a fair amount of fear and uncertainty, companies get scared, and their competitors disappear. That’s how they operate.
When Microsoft heard something it didn’t like, they quickly moved in denying that MONO team could implement Avalon and/or Indigo the same way they did with .NET.
They don’t like any of it. Read their views on Mono. As far as they’re concerned it is an advertisement for .Net, and a nice academic project, but certainly nothing that any software developers should be using.
MS learned anti-trust lessons.
Have they really? A well known saying inside Microsoft is “If you think that’s anti-competitive….” Anyone who thinks that is incredibly naive and wears rose-tinted glasses permanently. I can’t believe anyone seriously thinks that.
As far as I know, Microsoft never sued anyone (except for one case, which was related to a possibly-misleading domain name). So there’s no history of MS suing other companies.
Well done. The fear, thinly veiled threats, intimidation and goal-post shifting on technology is more than enough. Patents and IP is just another weapon to load into that barrel. Learn how Microsoft operates.
So at least now you acknowledge there is a patent risk. I’m shocked you didn’t include a link to the standard Mono FAQ item which can be paraphrased as “don’t worry… be happy”.
Well, MS has a patent app in. The ECMA code of conduct says an implementor of the spec would need a RAND license for that patent. Does Novell have one? Is it transferrable to other users of the technology? Are the licensing terms compatible with the GPL?
Of course there is the possibility of infringement. Every single piece of software written today is possibly in infringement and, given the insanity of the USPTO’s behavior, likely is–given, of course, that the courts would prove equally as insane by upholding the validity of every patent as issued.
The claim on the ECMA spec isn’t specific enough to demonstrate that any patents cover methods required to implement the spec. It’s just a standard boilerplate claim which MS hasn’t even bothered flesh out with something as specific as a particular patent.
MS learned anti-trust lessons.
Really? Why should they? They got away with that pretty much unscarred…
This is always the same discussion, and the truth is it does not matter if Mono is really in danger or not. What matters is that as long as there is this level of uncertainty many people will not even want to touch Mono, despite it being a nice technology. It’s sad, but it’s true.
>Every single piece of software written today is possibly in
>infringement
Thats a little like saying “I might as well take a vacation to Iraq, after all I could get killed anywhere I travel to”.
Sorry but:
1) We know MS has a a fairly broad patent application in for .NET
2) We know ECMA provides no shield against the demands of OSS incompatible licensing terms for that patent (if approved)
3) We know MS views OSS as it #1 enemy and would love to find a way to stop its progress.
Now, why again should we be basing the future of Gnome on Mono?
The difference between ECMA/ISO C# and CLI and Avalon/Indigo is like the C++ language and standard libraries and Win32.
The language and standard libraries are available for anyone to implement, but neither Avalon/Indigo are part of that standard library just the Win32 libraries are not part of the C++ standard library simply because they were implemented in C++.
Just because the technology is built using the standard does not make the technology part of the standard. Avalon/Indigo, like the Win32 libraries, are proprietary components, not to mention core OS APIs. Expecting MS to allow these to be freely reimplemented is like expecting them to give everyone a free license to clone Windows.
In a non-Windows example, does anyone expect a free license from Apple to OS X’s APIs?
1) We know MS has a a fairly broad patent application in for .NET
The same is true for their entensions to the SMB protocol.
We know ECMA provides no shield against the demands of OSS incompatible licensing terms for that patent (if approved)
Neither do the various RFCs outlining the SMB protocol provide that kind of sheild. Not to mention that no such sheild is provided for the MS extensions to the SMB protocol which Samba has reverse engineered and reimplemented.
3) We know MS views OSS as it #1 enemy and would love to find a way to stop its progress.
And we know that Samba competes with MS in one of the segments of the overall server market where it makes most of it server based revenue, the the edge file/print server with CALS for every windows client on large coprorate LANs, yet it has never done anything except spread similar FUD with regard to Samba’s infringement of MS patents.
Now, why again should we be basing the future of Gnome on Mono?
Personally, I think KDE has much brighter than future than does Gnome, but that is for reasons that have nothing to do with Mono. In any case Gnome itself it rather impervious to patent attack, like all FOSS software. At best, individual users (including distributers and large installations) could be targeted, but that is rather unlikely course of events (witness SCO’s mangled attempt at taking this tact).
_In a non-Windows example, does anyone expect a free license from Apple to OS X’s APIs?_
Uhm, that horse left the barn a long, long time ago when Next released the OpenStep specification.
In order to give even the appearance of substance to your various speculations about Mono infringing MS IP, two things are required: 1) a USPTO patent #,
My God, you’re not that clueless are you? I’ll start off with the big one first of all, but keep in mind that a USPTO entry is not the end of it as far as Microsoft is concerned (it is simply a means to an end):
This is the web service (well, it says that) biggie, but there’s a lot hidden in here in terms of the APIs and using the CLR specifically (ECMA – read Mono) implementation itself:
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&…‘20030028685’.PGNR.&OS=DN/20030028685&RS=DN/20030028685
http://swpat.ffii.org/players/microsoft/:
‘Responding to questions about the opening-up of the .NET framework, Ballmer announced that there would certainly be a “Common Language Runtime Implementation” for Unix, but then explained that this development would be limited to a subset, which was “intended only for academic use”. Ballmer rejected speculations about support for free .NET implementationens such as Mono: “We have invested so many millions in .NET, we have so many patents on .NET, which we want to cultivate.”‘
Notice that all the language in these patent descriptions are specific to .Net and using the CLR 😉 (that’s the ticket). In many cases that’s going to be more than specific enough. Search through the USPTO document above for ‘ECMA’ and ‘Framework 132’ in particular. You’ll find that it is extremely specific having read it. Because all of what they’re describing could be implemented with another technology and not be subject to this at all it doesn’t make Mono look good at all. By adhering to the ECMA standards Mono are subjecting themselves tightly to this patent and others like it, and that’s what’s so silly about it. Can they deny they’re not adhering to the CLR/CLS specs? If you read through this patent text then you realise that Microsoft is right.
…and 2) a reference to the piece of code within Mono which purportedly infringes upon MS patents.
You don’t actually need any code from Mono to prove all of this, but a simple proof that they’re adhering to the ECMA specs and they’re using the CLR as it stands is enough to cover them with this. That’s the catch-all. I’d hazard a guess that this is why we’ve got a long silence from the Novell people, legally speaking, on all of this.
No matter how crazy the USPTO has gotten–and they’ve long since gone off the deep end IMHO–
Microsoft knows that, which is why they’ve gone about it in the way they have, particularly with respect to .Net.
…patents still must cover a very specific technology claim and the scope of that claim is ultimately something that only a court of law with competent jurisdiction can determine.
See above for specifics. And as to whether a court of law can only determine the validity of any of this, do you honestly think any company or open source project is going to wait for that?! That’s all part of the game – moaning about USPTO numbers, proof and competent jurisdiction won’t help you. Your users, clients and customers will have long since scarpered, and that’s the whole point.
It is simply not possible that MS has somehow patented all of .Net.
Microsoft isn’t listening.
Also, you’ve repeatedly claimed that MS has patents on all of .NET and that consequently Avalon and Indigo cannot be adequately distinguished from the core of .Net (presumably CIL and the C# interpreter).
See above.
Having said all that though, the thing people can’t quite get their head around here is that they believe patents is all about going out and suing companies right, left and centre. It isn’t. As Microsoft has so successfully done in the past, simply having some patents and casting grave doubt on anything it doesn’t approve of is enough. No open source project can take that risk, and no business of any size can take that risk either.
Patents are something Microsoft will use in the same manner it’s always done with everything else, and they can always take out some loose change and take the odd helpless company to court who can’t afford it just to scare people some more if they feel like it. They probably won’t though. No one can take that risk, whether there is anything fundamental in their patents or not, and it’s always a nice money earner if you can get people to license your technology. If you don’t have to sue everybody to do this then your strategy is working nicely. Microsoft think through these things quite well.
Or is frantic handwaving all you’ve got in store?
Well, I’d call what you’ve written outright desperation. Hook your brain up to the cluestick in future and look at what’s going on, OK? Learn how Microsoft operate.
Regarding your SMB argument, when we hear someone say that we should throw out NIS, NFS, etc. and switch to DEPENDING on samba as the only way to do filesharing and setting up groups of boxes under a domain concept, then I think people would look alot harder at the risks.
Right now samba is really on the periphery of a Linux setup and only exists to allow interop with Windows. Its like Wine in that respect. People seem to want to integrate mono into Gnome (or at the very least build significant standard applications with it). Thats the risk.
If you want to use mono as another Wine, go right ahead. Run you System.Windows.Forms apps all you want. No one will miss them if they have to be removed.
You’d better get Miguel and the Ximian crew on board though.
God, I hate those URLs. Get to it from here:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/02/11/0048208&mode=thread…
And no, don’t read the Slashdot comments – read the actual patent application itself from top to bottom. And:
http://swpat.ffii.org/players/microsoft/
Which mysteriously got a colon put on it…
RULES. good job. and thanks.
I’ve looked over the patents in the past, and no, simply implementing the ECMA spec isn’t prima facie evidence of having infringed upon a MS patent. Specific details of the implementation would have to be cited to demonstrate such. So I ask again: show me the infringing code.
In any case, you can wave those hands about wildly and call names all you like, but it won’t change the fact that there are numerous actual experts on patent law who’ve arrived at the opinion that MS is on very shaky ground with respect to their claims. Other experts disagree. Only a court can decide.
As to the damage to FOSS with a court battle. A FOSS project can’t be directly attacked for patent infringement. Novel could be sued, but they’ve already assumed that responsibilty. Theoretically individual users could be targeted for an infringement suit, but that’s exceedingly unlikely due to the high cost and low chance of recouping those expenses through licensing.
FOSS projects should simply proceed as if patents didn’t exist at all, and if threatened the official response should be along the lines of “F**K OFF! You parasitic shyster!.” Rarely will a patent holder decide it’s worthwhile to pursue litigation.
As Microsoft has so successfully done in the past, simply having some patents and casting grave doubt on anything it doesn’t approve of is enough. No open source project can take that risk, and no business of any size can take that risk either.
The appropriate response then is to disregard the FUD. And the widespread deployment of Samba demonstrates that quite a few very, very large companies (as well as innumerable small ones) have decided that the FUD is in fact FUD, and patent arsenals are largely paper tigers.
So once again there is no serious refutation of the patent risk other than the standard “don’t worry, be happy”.
Now, WHY DO PEOPLE WANT TO USE THIS TECHNOLOGY?
Right now samba is really on the periphery of a Linux setup and only exists to allow interop with Windows.
Rubbish. The world over, Apache and Samba represent the bulk of Linux server installs (desktop presence is so miniscule so as to be non-existent).
So once again there is no serious refutation of the patent risk
That isn’t how the law works. It’s not anything like predicate calculus, in that you can’t refute a legal theory, you can only speculate as to the liklihood of how a court will see it.
So do you have a link to an IP lawyers assesment that the previosly mentioned patent is invalid?
A link? Nope, but I’m sure a google search would ferret something out (although lawyers are whores for hire and you can therefore be assured of finding one who’ll say anything). What I do have is personal correspondence with a patent lawyer and the rather safe assumption that Novell’s in house council, along with presumably the consultations they recieved from outside council, judged MS claims to be shaky enough that Novell’s relationship to Mono would not put them in position of extreme risk.
This from the same people who apparently feel its ok to write their own version of bittorrent. I quess its legal if the person with the ip rights is too small to sue you. Sort of like a school – your lunch money belongd to the bisggesy asshole on class. Long live greed – so sorry I mean microsoft
OpenStep doesn’t give you free license to implement Cocoa, the “Core” APIs (CoreImage/Data/etc.) or Aqua/Quicktime/etc.
What I do have is personal correspondence with a patent lawyer and the rather safe assumption that Novell’s in house council, along with presumably the consultations they recieved from outside council, judged MS claims to be shaky enough that Novell’s relationship to Mono would not put them in position of extreme risk.
If this is true, why does Novell not tell its (potential) customers that Mono does not infringe any .NET patents? The fear and uncertainty about this is keeping lots and lots of people away from Mono (a potentially very useful technology). This could all be cleared up by an official statement of Novell that their lawyers have studied the .NET patents and that Mono does not infringe them.
My assumption is, that it is just not the case that Mono does not infringe any .NET related patents, because otherwise they would say so.
Let us go straight to the horse’s mouth, and get a big cheesy grin from said horse, one Bill Gates, Microsoft Founder, Software Architect and General Organizational Supremo of Microsoft (Fair Use):
?The Road Ahead?, Revised and Updated by Bill Gates, Penguin 1996, ISBN 0-14-024351-8
Chapter 3, Lessons From The Computer Industry
“The scalable architecture of the IBM System/360 and its successor, the System/370, drove many of IBM?s competitors out of business and scared away potential newcomers ? at least for a while. Then in 1970 Gene Amdahl, who had been a senior engineer at IBM, founded a competing company. Amdahl had a novel business plan. His Amdahl company would build computers fully compatible with the IBM 360 software. Amdahl delivered hardware that not only ran the same operating systems and applications as IBM?s 360 machines but, because it took advantage of new technology, also outperformed IBM?s comparably priced systems. Soon Control Data, Hitachi and Intel (not Intel) all offered mainframes that were ?plug-compatible? with IBM?s machines. By the mid-1970s the importance of 360 compatibility was becoming obvious. The only mainframe companies doing well were those whose hardware could run IBM?s operating systems.
“Before the 360 and its ?clones?, computers were intentionally designed to be incompatible with those from other companies because the manufacturer?s goal was to make it discouragingly difficult and expensive for existing customers to switch to a different brand. Once a customer committed to a machine, he or she was stuck with offerings from the computer?s manufacturer because changing the software, while it could be done, was difficult and expensive. Amdahl and the other IBM-compatible companies ended that stranglehold on the customer. Now customers could – and did ? choose systems that gave them a choice of hardware suppliers and the widest variety of software applications. Market-driven compatibility proved to be an important lesson for the mainframe and minicomputer industries, and later it was an important lesson for the personal computer industry. It promises to be an important one for the Internet industry as well.”
Pg41-42[?]
And:
“Some commentators like to conclude that IBM made a mistake working with Intel and Microsoft to create its PC. They argue that IBM should have kept the PC architecture proprietary and that Intel and Microsoft somehow got the better of IBM. But the commentators are missing the point. IBM became the central force in the PC industry precisely because it was able to harness an incredible amount of innovative talent and entrepreneurial energy and use it to promote its open architecture. IBM set the standards.”
Pp52-56[?]
And:
“IBM planned to recover with a one-two punch, the first in hardware and the second in software. It wanted to build computers and write operating systems each of which would depend exclusively on the other for its new features. Competitors would be frozen out or forced to pay hefty licensing fees. The strategy was to make everybody else?s ?IBM-compatible? personal computer obsolete.
“IBM?s plan called for substantial changes in the hardware architecture: new connectors and new standards for accessory cards, keyboards, mice, and even displays. This would raise the compatibility ante. Other PC manufacturers and the makers of peripherals would have to start over, and IBM would have the lead again. To give itself a further advantage, IBM didn?t release specifications on any of the new connectors until it had shipped its first systems.”
[?]
“In April 1987 IBM released its one-two punch, which was supposed to beat back the imitators. The ?clone-killer? hardware was called the PS/2, and it ran the new operating system OS/2.”
Pp 61-65[?]
If I was one of the DotNET developers, or a tech-savvy investor in Microsoft, I would be absolutely ropeable – like an enraged bull. Microsoft’s top-heavy management have just thrown a barrel-full of monkey-wrenches into the machinery with a nonchalant “oh what a good boy am i” grin. They’ve indicated by filing this software patent that DotNET is their PS/2, and they’ll happily Edsel it for the fun of beating up an Open Source project, no matter their obligations to their shareholders, let alone their customers or employees.
Next time you have problems with huge URLs, try shrinkster.com
having developed something with .NET i liked the postback stuff which makes the browser act like an application.
i lost much interest when i found out that SmartNavigation is an IE only feature.
what smartnavigation does is this – if you have scrolled down a long page and click on a control, when the page is refreshed the browser is placed at the same point in the page – so the user does not notice the postback.
however – using any browser other than IE means you are brought back to the top of the page and you have to scroll down again to get to the point where you clicked on a control.
clearly a PITA and effectively .NET is useless on anything other than IE.
is there any other technology which gives this postback function – i.e. makes the browser act live an application?
does J2EE do this? is mono capable of getting around the fact that SmartNavigation only works on IE.
or maybe Mono should go its own way and develop a brilliant application development environment which is better than .NET.
lets face it – .NET is way to invloved to be used without buying Visual studio.
Full compatibility between Mono and .net 1.0 and 1.1 was already not achieved by Novell (and will certainly never be achieved), and now we can be sure it will even less achieved with .net 2.0
As someone pointed out yesterday, those thinking to include mono in GNOME (for already very wrong reasons) better use this as a reason/excuse to backtrack and start favoring Python or Java.
Bye bye mono….
Microsoft is happy though as many developers are now educated in .net.
My assumption is, that it is just not the case that Mono does not infringe any .NET related patents, because otherwise they would say so.
Why doesn’t Novell just claim that Mono doesn’t infringe? Because that is an impossible statement to make, not necessarily because Mono does in fact infringe, but because that is something which can only be determined by a court of competent jurisdiction. Technically speaking, Mono is neither infringing nor non-infringing until it is determined as such by a court.
Until such a determination is made, the best anyone can do is to advance a theory as to how a court might rule on the matter. In many areas law, such theories are relatively easy to advance on the basis of the available evidence, as the relevant domain of law is mature and well established. In the case of patents, and particularly in case of software patents, the relevant body of law–and the relevant body of law is always broader than just acts of legislation as written and will always include judicial precedent as well–is simply not mature enough to allow for anyone to theorize with any great level of certainty.
In the case of Novell, if they were absolutely sure of their footing, they could offer a blanket indemnification for any of their customers. That they haven’t done such indicates that they have judged that potential downside to offering that indemnification outweighs any upside to making such an offer. On the other hand, we do know that they got the go ahead from their in house council to acquire Ximian and its copyrights on Mono, which Novell has all but said was the real motivation for acquiring Ximian in the first place, again predicated on risk/reward calculus where any potential liabilities incurred were judged to be outweighed by the business value represented by Mono.
A similar determination of the relative risks and rewards of using Mono should be made by each individual user of Mono. As we all know, Redhat has seemingly judged that they don’t wish to incur any of the risks associated with distributing Mono, but keep in mind that they are balancing those percieved risks with their own individual assessment of the business value of Mono. And it shouldn’t be surprising to anyone that Redhat would judge the business value of Mono to be less than does Novell. Any particular piece of technology can have different values to different organizations, and Redhat is already invested in technologies and development platforms which are competitors with Mono (and .Net generally).
Let’s say I’m a VAR in the business of writing highly targetted applications to specific vertical markets, and that I further have a close relationship with Novell and derive significant value from being a part of its reseller network. Do I think Mono represents more of an upside than a downside? Not to answer for everyone, but, yes, I would personally make the determination that Mono+C#+Gtk# was an excellent basis for building cross platform solutions which invloved little relative risk.
Now, were I Ebay or Amazon, for instance, and looking to build out a next generation achitecture for my services, would I make the same determination? No, probably not. Were that my situation, I’d probably make the determination that such a high profile utilization of Mono would essentially force MS’s hand. In such a scenario MS would have to pursue any patent claims it thinks it might have or effectively acknowledge that the claims are baseless (and thereby deprive themselves of the marketing/FUD value they represent). Even if my lawyers were highly confident that MS would not ultimately prevail, any business advantage would outweighed by high potential risks (most of which would remain even assuming an ultimate MS loss in court).
Different strokes for different folks.
Perhaps I’m wrong here, but I was under the distinct impression that the bulk of OSX’s Core APIs were inerited directly from OpenStep. Aren’t many of the relevant libraries and classes still named along the lines of NSxxx.xxxx? The GnuStep project seems to believe so, as they’re claiming a high degree of portability between Cocoa apps and the GnuStep implementation of the OpenStep specification.
I’ve looked over the patents in the past, and no, simply implementing the ECMA spec isn’t prima facie evidence of having infringed upon a MS patent.
Remember that these patents are specific to .Net, they’re not some random thing thrown together. The patent text itself is absolutely clear – if you’re adhering to the ECMA spec then you’re subject to this. No one can make any other determination.
In any case, you can wave those hands about wildly and call names all you like, but it won’t change the fact that there are numerous actual experts on patent law who’ve arrived at the opinion that MS is on very shaky ground with respect to their claims.
Their other patents maybe, but .Net, no. The patent text is much more specific on these than any other patent they have. You simply do not understand how Microsoft has went about this.
As to the damage to FOSS with a court battle. A FOSS project can’t be directly attacked for patent infringement. Novel could be sued, but they’ve already assumed that responsibilty. Theoretically individual users could be targeted for an infringement suit, but that’s exceedingly unlikely due to the high cost and low chance of recouping those expenses through licensing.
You’re wandering off assuming that everyone is going to be sued again. Legal action may be taken, but it’s the fact that no one can take the risk.
FOSS projects should simply proceed as if patents didn’t exist at all, and if threatened the official response should be along the lines of “F**K OFF! You parasitic shyster!.” Rarely will a patent holder decide it’s worthwhile to pursue litigation.
Open source projects simply cannot do that. The cost of getting involved in legal entanglements is more than enough of an impediment. That’s why open source projects out there simply cannot adopt Mono on a large scale.
The appropriate response then is to disregard the FUD.
They can’t. See above. No users or businesses are going to either. Microsoft knows this very, very well.
And the widespread deployment of Samba demonstrates that quite a few very, very large companies (as well as innumerable small ones) have decided that the FUD is in fact FUD, and patent arsenals are largely paper tigers.
SMB is a network protocol that has been around for years, even before Microsoft picked it up and used it. I see a lot of people bring up the Samba issue, but it simply isn’t the same. .Net, from the ground up, is quite clearly Microsoft’s technology. The patent text is not simply a catch-all for vague ideas others have implemented. It describes, on purpose, exactly how .Net works and is quite clearly specific to that technology. You’re free to use the ideas Microsoft has in .Net, as long as you don’t implement them within Microsoft’s turf and the technology that they came up with. Mono is quite clearly doing that without any doubt whatsoever, and that’s the be-all and end-all. They could have easily gone off and done their own thing, but they haven’t.
Remember that these patents are specific to .Net, they’re not some random thing thrown together. The patent text itself is absolutely clear – if you’re adhering to the ECMA spec then you’re subject to this. No one can make any other determination.
The more you repeat this, the more clear it becomes you have no idea how patent law works. No, implementing the spec is not prima facie evidence of having infringed a MS patent. No doubt MS would love for a court to see it that way, but that would run contrary to the bulk of controlling case law. Again, I ask for lines of code and a patent citation. That’s what a court will ask for when a case is filed, and that’s the only thing I’ll accept from you.
Their other patents maybe, but .Net, no. The patent text is much more specific on these than any other patent they have. You simply do not understand how Microsoft has went about this.
You’re simply wrong here as to matters of fact. Yes, there most certainly are experts in patent law who are of the opinion that the .Net APIs can be implemented without infringing upon MS patents.
You’re wandering off assuming that everyone is going to be sued again. Legal action may be taken, but it’s the fact that no one can take the risk.
Wrong again as to the facts. There are organizations, most Novell themselves, who have judged that any risk they might incur is worth it.
Open source projects simply cannot do that. The cost of getting involved in legal entanglements is more than enough of an impediment. That’s why open source projects out there simply cannot adopt Mono on a large scale.
An OSS project cannot be directly attacked with a charge of patent infringement. Who would be sued? A “project” isn’t a legally existing entity. Copyright holders might be named in an infringement suit, but no damages could be demonstrated absent distribution. Distributers could definitely be held liable in the case of an adverse judgement, but an ftp server in Asia or anywhere else in the world that doesn’t recognize the validity of US software patents will remedy that.
As an end user I have no reason to care about possibly infringing software patents at all. As a developer the issue is a little more complicated, but in the end I’m protected by the fact that it wouldn’t be possible to get a judgement against myself personally which would even begin to cover the costs associated with filing the case. And as a business, well, that’s risk/reward judgement which will vary greatly depending upon individual circumstances.
They can’t. See above. No users or businesses are going to either. Microsoft knows this very, very well.
Wrong again. Some already are. More will follow.
I see a lot of people bring up the Samba issue, but it simply isn’t the same.
Yes, it most certainly is. MS patents related .Net aren’t magic and they operate in precisely the same fashion as every other patent ever issued by the USPTO.
Microsoft is being rather stupid here.
In fact, this is getting to sound more and more like the SCO Group versus IBM, no, wait a mo, it’s Linus Torvalds, no, it’s … who cares – the SCO Group can’t get their storiy straight, yawn, wake me when it’s over.
Patents in machinery are specific. They have to be. Patents in software seem to be anything but. That seems to be because companies can get away with it.
And people are saying that such-and-such a technology is protected by patents, ergo it is too risky to clone. Bull.
If it is software and is protected by patents, it is much too risky to use. Microsoft SQL Server usres found that out the hard and painful way, and Microsoft is still appealing.
So Microsoft blithely goes off and patents something that is supposed to take the world by storm? Microsoft ties to a rip-off clone of Java-as-system, a “DON’T TOUCH ME” set of clauses?
Microsoft is greasing the slide for a mighty quick crash-and-burn.
Just because BG was against patents in the past, and that MS only defended itself against patent attacks, does not mean MS will not use their portfolio in the future. There have been some clues that MS will use their patent portfolio more agressive, leaded by an ex-IBM employee who now does the very same work in the patent minefield, at MS. Use a search engine and you’ll find an article on that (quite interesting one IMO). Don’t forget, a threatened beast makes strange moves.
I know about Microsoft hiring an ex-IBMer to kick-start their software patent fumblings. The point is that Bill Gates recognized that IBM’s fumbling with PS/2 and tight-*ssed legal manoeuvres doomed it from the word go.
Fast forward to 2005 and we find Microsoft engaging in almost exactly the same sort of tight-*ssed legal manoeuvres that doomed IBM’s PS/2. Microsoft has done this, knowing full well what the consequences are. I can’t see why they shouldn’t pay in full the consequences of their own stupidity.
This is likely to give added impetus to Java, with or without the blessings of Sun, who in any case, can’t get around to making up their minds whether or not Open Source is a good enough thing for them. I expect Apache’s Java effort’s going to keep Java alive, now that Microsoft is killing off DotNET as a contender.
The more you repeat this, the more clear it becomes you have no idea how patent law works. No, implementing the spec is not prima facie evidence of having infringed a MS patent.
For f**k’s sake – that’s the direct evidence that will be used! You’re whining off on how patent law works – the fact is, it doesn’t. If you have enough in there to make it reasonably clear (i.e. you’re using the CLR) that’s it. It’s not a catch-all patent – it’s specific to .Net technology.
You’re simply wrong here as to matters of fact. Yes, there most certainly are experts in patent law who are of the opinion that the .Net APIs can be implemented without infringing upon MS patents.
Who? Novell and Mono aren’t quoting them.
Wrong again as to the facts. There are organizations, most Novell themselves, who have judged that any risk they might incur is worth it.
Novell are not using Mono. It’s one very noisy division. The vast majority of Novell are simply not using it for anything at all.
An OSS project cannot be directly attacked with a charge of patent infringement. Who would be sued?
That’s not what I said, and this is passing high over your head at 30,000 feet. Getting legally entangled at any level is enough.
Wrong again. Some already are. More will follow.
Oh right – so as many businesses are relying on Mono as they do Linux, Unix and Java? I must have missed that one. I think you’re pretty deluded as to who is (or isn’t) using Mono.
Yes, it most certainly is. MS patents related .Net aren’t magic and they operate in precisely the same fashion as every other patent ever issued by the USPTO.
You haven’t replied to the rest of my comment as to why Samba is different. Saying patent law works in this way, and that these patents work in the same way is quite clearly not true.