[OT] Mono politics [was: Re: Compile Mono]

[Bob McConnell]

Mario Vukelic wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-05-14 at 18:17 -0400, Bob McConnell wrote:
>> It introduces patented Microsoft tools and processes into Linux 
> 
> Um, no it doesn't.

Then why did Novell sign a patent covenant and pay license fees to 
Microsoft in order to continue to develop and distribute it?

> It reimplements an ECMA standard, and _optionally_
> lets you execute stuff like Win.Forms that are part of MS's .NET.

And who do you think drafted that standard? ECMA is a collection of 
corporations rubber stamping each others' documentation in an attempt to 
give it some minimal appearance of respectability. Nothing more, nothing 
less. It does not require any patent releases for those documents. To 
the contrary, many of their so called "standards" are encumbered by 
patents and require both license agreements and royalty payments.

> And if you are at it, please also remove Samba, OpenOffice, and lots of
> other stuff.

Not until reverse engineering is outlawed. Even though the DMCA 
attempted to do that, it hasn't happened yet. The Mono project on the 
other hand, is now using internal documentation and code from Microsoft, 
guaranteed to include restrictions that will force them to abandon any 
OSI approved license. If you become dependent on it, you will also be 
forced to accept Microsoft's conditions to move forward.

The first thing I did after installing Ubuntu was to remove Mono and 
everything dependent on it. With the increase in dependency shown by 
Hardy, I will be looking for a different distribution for the next update.

Bob McConnell
N2SPP