Mono Position Statement

[Martin Owens]

I read an article recently that we spend so much time debating and
reading arguments about mono, that we do ourselves no credit and waste
time too.

Continued in-line...

On Wed, 2009-07-01 at 08:16 +0200, Jonathan Carter (highvoltage) wrote:
> Not that I'm in any way an expert on software patents, but isn't that
> like giving in to terrorists? Why should Ubuntu (or anyone else for that
> matter) give the patent trolls (because the type of companies that would
> cause trouble for mono users *are* patent trolls) what they want?

The difference is that terrorism is not legal and the law is legal by
definition (event patent law). Stamping one's foot and shouting that the
world isn't fair won't make patents or the Rambus precedent go away.

> I think it's perhaps better to step on someone's toes and when they want
> to make a big deal about it, take them on on the issue instead of being
> increasingly scared of the big patent trolls hiding under your bed.

I think it's best to listen to a number of opinions and then consider
how your going to deal with the problem. I do appreciate that liblame
(mp3 decoding) isn't included because of patent threats _and_ because
Acatel have been known to go on the war path with them, but we do seem
to have one rule for media codecs and another rule for programmer
options. Why not step on everyone's toes if we think we can just ignore
parts of the law we don't like.

> You know that Microsoft recently attempted to patent the double-click?
> Would you have also stopped using pointing devices and software that
> supported double-clicks if they were awarded the patent?

Do you have prior art for all patents in question? do you have the time
and money to argue each one of the multiple patents in a court case has
prior art or is invalid because it's obvious? Robberies with fake guns
are not dealt with by the fake police.

Although since those I trust most about legal opinion have come out
against mono, I'm still against it's inclusion. No matter how good it is
technically or how bountiful it is or indeed how many egos have invested
time it's learning it.

Perhaps it's because I'm a social person and Microsoft are ostracised
from my community for repeated harm and I'm not that easy to forgive it.

On the other hand perhaps it's because there is a reasonable legal
threat because no one can seem to find the RAND license from Microsoft,
the fact that it's RAND(1) and not a public declaration or maybe it's
because it's an ECMA(2) standard and not W3C, RFC or ISO that really
makes me question it, or maybe it's because Microsoft would dearly like
to see our community break up and isn't a benevolent bystander but a
fierce and ignoble competitor.

Anyway, this is wasting more time.

Regards, Martin

(1) Reasonable and Non Discriminatory
(2) Look at the record for how the ECMA dealt with OOXML, they're not
impartial or in the business of creating reasonable standards. Rubber
stamping organisation only.