

Microsoft's Empty Promise - tjr
http://www.fsf.org/news/2009-07-mscp-mono

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snprbob86
This is a significantly better explanation of the FSF's concerns than
Stallman. His post reeked of FUD, but this post actually makes sense to me.

I quite like C#, especially 3.0, as a language. I am equally saddened that it
is encumbered by hate as it is by fear. I honestly don't think Microsoft would
start a mutually assured destruction war, but I've been wrong in the past.
That said, I still wouldn't use it for an open source project because it is a
political death sentence for any community-driven project :-( can't we all
just get along?

~~~
cabalamat
> _I honestly don't think Microsoft would start a mutually assured destruction
> war_

I don't think they would, at the moment. I do think they might at some point
in the future.

> _can't we all just get along?_

Sadly, Microsoft's business model and future profits depend on limiting our
freedom when we use computers, so no, we can't just get along.

~~~
hvs
I think Microsoft would be most likely to start firing patent lawsuits at a
time where Mono started to gain real traction in the free software community.
So, if the community _did_ start adopting Mono as a major platform and
developed a lot of good software for it, that is when Microsoft would pull the
trigger. So, either way, Microsoft gets what it wants. They limit adoption by
holding patents that could be later used against the community, and if it
_does_ get adopted they can start suing.

I say this as someone who really likes the .NET platform and think it could
add a lot of value to the free software community. But I have to agree with
the FSF on this one.

~~~
j_baker
> _I think Microsoft would be most likely to start firing patent lawsuits at a
> time where Mono started to gain real traction in the free software
> community. So, if the community did start adopting Mono as a major platform
> and developed a lot of good software for it, that is when Microsoft would
> pull the trigger._

You know, it is possible that Microsoft has some grand master plan here. But I
have to invoke Occam's razor here: it's more likely that MS is ok with Mono.

After all, they don't make money off of .Net directly. They _give_ it away.
They make their money by selling Visual Studio. If you were on the fence,
wouldn't you be more willing to buy Visual Studio if you knew you could use it
to write programs for Windows, Linux, _and_ OS X? And of course, if you have
to buy Visual Studio, you have to buy Windows too.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
They don't need to have a master plan. Just leaving ammo lying around when a
future Microsoft could have any of a million reasons to use it is the problem.

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emilis_info
One thought that got stuck in my mind after reading the article: use Mono and
you risk being sued like TomTom was sued for using VFAT.

~~~
fatdog789
The FSF has a problem understanding the word "necessary". A court will
determine that any method/code/algorithm necessary to fully implement the
specs is "necessary", and thus covered by MS's promise.

In contrast, MS never released the FAT family of patents under an open
license, as it has with Mono. Bringing up the spectre of TomTom (in the
article) is FUD -- it's irrelevant and displays a ridiculous lack of
understanding of the law. (And since the FSF is a legal organization, that
means their legal opinions can't be trusted to be accurate.)

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dtf
Microsoft is the FSF's arch-nemesis. It doesn't matter what they do: it must
always be wrong, as it is their very existence that defines the FSF. The hate
must survive.

~~~
bitdiddle
Off the top of my head I would suspect the FSF was established well before
MS's rise to dominate the desktop.

~~~
nopassrecover
The FSF can't very well target IBM anymore though.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Well if they can shift from IBM to Microsoft, I'm sure they can shift again if
Microsoft actually embraces FLOSS to any great extent. Which further
undermines the original point claiming that FSF just parrot the opposite of
whatever Microsoft say.

