Posted: 07/28/2009 R Scheckelhoff
Mono


Occasionally I agree with Richard Stallman, but the other day I read a quote from him relating to the use of Mono within commercial projects. His position was something along the line that undertaking such a thing may be taking a path fraught with perils. I think his comment used the term "may be dangerous". I think that I must concur. Ok, secretly RS is probably my hero, since he is all that stands between the little guy and ruthless monopolization of the software world. -- edited 9/6/09.

While his efforts are successfully endowing us with some freedom from those who would wield the misappropriated hammer of patent law, the philosophy that drives those efforts makes it a lot harder for a fellow to earn a dime, because the service model does not do as well as the production model (This follows my contention that factory jobs are superior to retail (at least at lower levels)) --- After all, we are talking about the "little guys" of the world. In the case of the subject of this article, RS is warning us about cozy relationships with compromising patent holders, where we must worry that what is given comes at the price of the promotion of an agenda ulterior to ours.

When a plausible .Net environment made it's way into the *nix world, I was initially excited. Especially so because FreeBSD was selected as the platform to which Microsoft would release the initial "template" specification implementation (called rotor). Thank God I read the license that accompanied that distribution. I never did see a copy of that distribution ... only the license. I swear.

It gave me the feeling that somehow, after I touched, knew of, or knew somebody that knew of the reference implementation, that I would never be allowed to write commercial code on a *nix platform for the remainder of my lifetime.

A lot has happened since the early MS announcements and releases. Microsoft released an official specification to a bone fide standards group, and a few brave souls have taken the specification as delivered to the standards group, and have created their own implementations.

Years passed, and Microsoft presented a letter to the public that disavowed the flavor of the original licensing verbiage. In it, Microsoft promised never to file suit for any patent/copyright infringements based upon the original speciification. Quite nice, one might think, except that a whole lot of what comprises the .Net environment steps outside of the bounds of the original specification.

How many of the current implementation(s) for *nix platforms have added material to facilitate functionality outside of the original specification? How could one know?

It's not just Mono itself, but all of that which may be attached. Sure, those who contribute to the ever burgeoning library store for this newish platform have some idea. But what about us mere mortals?

This, of course, is the problem with patents. Patents cover ideas, not implementations. No matter how a *nix implementor might create a widget for a new .Net (out of bounds WRT original spec) feature, the patent might call it infringement where copyright law would not.

Supposedly, an agreement with Novell (by Microsoft), gives immunity to Novell customers. Many users of Mono are not Novell customers, per se. What level of "protection" exist, and what level of affiliation with Novell would make one sleep better at night? Novell is the "keeper of the keys", as far as Mono goes, so serious commercial work would be better fortified by an official affiliation with them.

I had decided to wait until MS provided some further softening for it's claimed patent portfolio, when lo and behold, I found this link exclaiming that they have done such a thing. Today!


http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet ...

In the middle of writing this editorial, I moved over to Google and there it was. What are the odds? My entire editorial made past tense in a moment? Let us hope so ...

For those who are curious, here is one of R. Stallman's warnings : http://www.fsf.org/news....

The announcement seems to extend the "protections" previously granted to Novell to all others as well: http://linux.com/news...


I'm still shaky on the "out-of-bounds" thing though, so I'm probably going to hang out on the sidelines a bit longer ...

attribution: This site and it's authors have absolutely no affiliation with, and are not endorsed by Novell, Microsoft, Richard Stallman, or any other entities mentioned on this opinion page.