Mono Position Statement

[Scott James Remnant]

On Wed, 2009-07-01 at 13:13 -0400, Martin Owens wrote:

> On Wed, 2009-07-01 at 17:58 +0100, Scott James Remnant wrote:
> 
> > I have underlined the key part of your sentence.
> 
> You don't think Microsoft have anything against us or any reason to
> consider poking us? Very trusting.
> 
I think that, without having looked through the USPTO, that if Microsoft
really wanted to attack Linux I'm sure they have lots of registered
patents.

That's what you get for a system that allows you to patent things like
"underlining hyperlinks and displaying them in a blue colour".


I think that the co-sponsors and authors of the ECMA C# standards, HP
and Intel, have no reason to consider action against Linux.


I think that Microsoft have far more to gain in promoting C# and the CLR
as an open, cross-platform standard and would be far more interested in
seeing Java's demise than Linux.

(And let's not forget, that Sun patented Java up the wahoonie and there
are countless other patent holders - in this economy, any one of them
could be asset-stripped by a patent troll - and you're worried about
C#?)


I think that Microsoft would be in some real trouble in various quarters
(anti-competitive, etc.) if they suddenly starting litigating
competitors for implementing a standard that Microsoft themselves openly
published and encouraged implementations for on other platforms.


I think that Microsoft are fully aware of Mono (cf. IronPython) and the
longer they go without litigation, the more likely their practices are
going to be held as anti-competitive rather than reasonable.

Scott
-- 
Scott James Remnant
scott at ubuntu.com
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