

Miguel De Icaza: Microsoft promises to never sue anyone regarding Mono. - mdasen
http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2009/Jul-06.html

======
Herring
Miguel posted about this on proggit. Read the fine print.
[http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8yrtt/miguel_de...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8yrtt/miguel_de_icaza_microsoft_promises_to_never_sue/)

.

 _"The title of this submission is incorrect.

Microsoft promised not to [sue] over the ECMA parts of Mono. They made no
declaration about ASP.NET, ADO.NET, Winforms or other "up the stack" APIs.

That is why my blog post talks about splitting Mono's source code in two, the
ECMA core and the rest.

I believe that both Debian and Ubuntu do fine-grained packaging and might
already have this, but the source split will make it simpler for others._"

~~~
Herring
And (imo) there's no telling which way a judge might rule. Eg see the email
exchange betwen rms & Bruno Haible on why CLISP is under gpl:
[http://clisp.cvs.sourceforge.net/*checkout*/clisp/clisp/doc/...](http://clisp.cvs.sourceforge.net/*checkout*/clisp/clisp/doc/Why-
CLISP-is-under-GPL)

" _I say this based on discussions I had with our lawyer long ago. The issue
first arose when NeXT proposed to distribute a modified GCC in two parts and
let the user link them. Jobs asked me whether this was lawful. It seemed to me
at the time that it was, following reasoning like what you are using; but
since the result was very undesirable for free software, I said I would have
to ask the lawyer.

What the lawyer said surprised me; he said that judges would consider such
schemes to be "subterfuges" and would be very harsh toward them. He said a
judge would ask whether it is "really" one program, rather than how it is
labeled._"

~~~
crux_
I think the point here is to protect end developers: if you want to be safe
from future patent issues, they are making it easier to opt out of even
installing any of .NET besides the ECMA core on your development systems, thus
providing a decent guarantee that even if the rug gets pulled out from under
Windows.Forms or ADO.NET, your app won't be impacted.

------
JulianMorrison
I don't really see Microsoft as the enemy anymore, but playing in their back
yard is still really, really foolish.

It's not like there's a shortage of cross-platform languages or good JIT VMs.

------
jasonkester
It's amazing how much paranoia and hate gets dumped on the Mono team around
this issue. It must be seriously disheartening.

They just can't win. They need to spend so much of their time proving to
everybody how open source they are, and how they hate Microsoft like everybody
else (honest!), that they end up with pragmatist clowns like me griping at
them for dragging their feet. And still there is this vocal part of the open
source movement that will always hate them with a passion no matter what they
do, because they dare to trust an evil corporation that eats babies and
whatever else Microsoft is supposed to be up to these days.

This whole license things seems like such a non-issue to an outsider. It's
just readily apparent that it's not in Microsoft's best interest to squash a
project like Mono. Here they are saying it again, in the form of a legal
contract, and STILL the die hards don't believe them.

Amazing.

~~~
wheels
Remember, the leader of the pack on this issue is RMS. He's not looking for a
world of coexistence with Microsoft -- he wants them to go away and not come
back. If you try to get inside of how he'd be approaching this issue you get
to, "What about when Microsoft is on the way down? Will they fire back with
these things?"

However, RMS is also pretty true to his stated purposes there; he'll welcome
things back to the fold when situations change (e.g. the Qt / KDE schism over
Qt's licensing), but he's not one to look at things from a good faith
perspective when there's no guarantee of followthrough.

------
8plot
This is strange:

"Q: What if I don’t implement the entire specification? Will I still get the
protections under the CP? A: The CP applies only if the implementation
conforms fully to required portions of the specification. Partial
implementations are not covered."

~~~
ragnemalm
The CP is then more or less useless for free and open source software---the
freedom to modify and redistribute the software is worthless if any feature
you choose to add, remove or modify makes you fair game for a patent lawsuit.
The users have no real control over this sort of software, because they can't
legally distribute modifications which violate the letter of the
specifications.

It sounds like C# and the CLI is still best avoided for open source software.

~~~
yread
It is not just a specification, it is a standard. Why would you even want to
implement something violating the standard?

>It sounds like C# and the CLI is still best avoided for open source software.

Why? How does the language or compiler matter for writing open source or not?
I think the sentence should read:

It sounds like Mono is still best avoided if you are paranoid

And moreover this news is about microsoft promising not to sue mono. It has
nothing to do with microsoft suing or not suing you for writing code.

~~~
daeken
My kernel is pure .NET, but it will most likely never be a complete
implementation. Why? Because many parts of it (e.g. the file stream APIs) are
completely extraneous with my design. It may eventually have the unimplemented
parts as wrappers for other components, but I find it highly unlikely it'll
ever be a completely standards-compliant implementation.

------
beefman
No company in the world has a technology comparable to .net/WPF on any
platform, let alone all major platforms. Microsoft is giving it away. Show me
the evil.

Google et al are taking your data and I defy you to reach a human being on the
phone or by e-mail. It's already plain this approach will prevail, at the
expense of the entirety of human discourse being 20% paid-for. This is really
nothing against Google but it is a far more serious phenomenon than anything
of the Microsoft/Stallman era in terms of individual liberty, and of reality
not sucking.

------
larrywright
I'm not quite sure why Mono is so important. Technically, it's an interesting
accomplishment to be sure, but I don't see that it gives you anything you
can't get elsewhere. Particularly on the web front, MS is certainly not
leading edge anymore.

On the desktop application front, this is certainly better than coding GTK
apps in C, but other alternatives to that already existed (namely the Ruby and
Python bindings for GTK).

The bottom line is that while C# and the .NET framework are certainly better
than MS's previous development offerings, it still offers very little of
interest in my opinion. Ruby, Scala, Clojure, and Python have much more
compelling features for most problems.

~~~
youngian
Yes. Anyone care to give a short explanation of what exactly is so promising
about Mono that it's worth all the worrying? Whether or not these fears pan
out to anything, they're substantial enough that there should be a pretty good
motivation for not just switching to another development platform.

~~~
inklesspen
The only thing I've ever heard is that some people _like_ programming in C#
and refuse to learn other languages.

------
rbanffy
I hate do do it (no, not really), but I told you so. :-)

Mono _is_ a patent minefield and trusting Microsoft not to sue based on a
promise of good behaviour is ludicrously optimistic, at best.

------
oomkiller
Does anyone else think that trusting Microsoft (or any other
corporation/business for that matter) with a PROMISE is a bad idea?

~~~
tlrobinson
Maybe... Are these sort of "promises" legally binding?

~~~
berntb
Remember when Microsoft promised an open document standard for the next Office
-- and it was many thousands of pages that was less than trivial to implement?

(Without looking, I assume that to add maiming to injury, the standard allowed
variations, so non-Microsoft documents could be made incompatible between
versions of Office?)

I haven't played the game, but the idiom these days seems to be "the cake is a
lie".

~~~
sokoloff
Did you really expect the document standard to be 10 (or even 100) pages long
and trivial to implement?

How long is the full spec for HTML, or PDF? Are either of those "trivial" to
implement? Both of those formats are, IMNSHO, inherently simpler than the sum
total of complexity of all the Office document formats. (Even if you just
include Word and Excel)

Microsoft can't win here. Either they document the simple middle-of-the-road,
90% of Word docs conform, case, and get skewered for not being open enough. Or
they release the full spec and get skewered for "Wow, writing a competitor to
the most common word processing and spreadsheet application is actually harder
than creating hotornot or million-dollar-homepage."

~~~
berntb
A competing standard, which didn't have to do dirty tricks to get ISO
certified, was a fraction (tenth?) of the size.

Also, claims of innocence is extra absurd here:

[http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Microsoft_offers_to_pay_blogger_...](http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Microsoft_offers_to_pay_blogger_to_%27correct%27_Wikipedia_article)

~~~
sokoloff
The file formats for other competing formats (like say, .txt or .csv) are also
very simple.

They also don't fully interoperate with Word or Excel.

~~~
berntb
You have a point, I guess it would be impossible to define a better format for
use with the Office package. (Sadly, that wasn't a joke.)

I talked about compatibility in another comment:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=691268>

------
rbanffy
Does anyone here know if their promise will cover future versions? Or if they
can sue an implementation of an older version of ECMA 334 and 335 if they
chose to extend it?

And how much ECMA standards are worth if Microsoft decides to extend them in
their implementations? It seems to me whatever comes with the latest Visual
Studio is the de-facto standard, not whatever ECMA publishes.

------
makecheck
If a "promise" holds any weight in court, why do contracts ever have to be
written and signed?

~~~
MaysonL
Because they're much easier to pin down and enforce than spoken promises: or
even publicly published ones. Note that they often have clauses indicating
that they supersede any prior agreements [read - the salesman's "promise"
isn't enforceable].

------
icefox
note this isn't for everything, but only some parts.

------
dantheman
That's excellent news.

~~~
bad_user
Yes it is :) But unfortunately it won't put a stop to all the flames. Many
people just like being anti-something.

~~~
kirubakaran
_Many people just like being anti-something._

People weren't anti-Microsoft without reasons.

~~~
bad_user
Giving logical arguments that are anti-Microsoft is perfectly reasonable.
Dedicating your life to being anti-Microsoft and blaming people for their
choices, yelling "wolf" every time someone does something cool (and starting a
blog in the process that explains on a weekly basis how free-software is at
peril) ... is just insane.

Unfortunately I've been there ... back in the day I posted a couple emails on
mono-list about how Gnome is poisoned (with all the bells and whistles of an
anti-MS propaganda, GNU/Linux and all that crap). I ignited flame-wars that
probably ruined the day for some people.

In retrospect I really regret that.

Young people want to be a part of something. If that something promises to
save the world from evil, it's even more alluring.

For me the day came when I got married :) Since I believe in "doing what you
love" it can be unbearable at times while working hard for an income to
support your family, to still work on cool shit, and to still have valid
arguments for a religion that promotes and even requires "free as in speech"
for products of essentially _very_ hard work.

~~~
berntb
Oh, everything in moderation. But personally, I don't buy stuff from criminal
monopolists.

In some situations, I assume I might buy from criminals -- but I avoid
monopolists like the plague.

The problem with monopolists is that they have business reasons to not be
compatible. That means they have to keep their systems so complex that they
can't easily be cloned -- and also to be a bit incompatible between versions.

That damages my life quality, if I worked with their stuff.

That was a logical argument. After someone damaged my life quality, I will be
pissed off. That is human nature.

Edit: The ending was too harsh, I do believe you didn't intend an ad
hominem... you just think that it is meaningless to be upset about Microsoft.
I hope you're right.

------
pawan
thats a good news.

------
spitfire
Bwhahahahahaha.

You want to trust Microsoft to keep their words? Really? When has that ever
happened in the past, ever.

You can trust them to do everything in their power to screw you over and
nothing short.

This isn't a fanboy hate post either. From a purely business perspective
aligning with Microsoft is toxic.

~~~
bad_user
You don't have to trust Microsoft. If trust was required for collaboration,
contracts would've been useless.

You can trust the legal system though ... what you're looking for it's called
"estoppel": <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoppel>

~~~
gtufano
Interesting, but I don't think that this concept applies to the "civil law"
countries.

