[linux-l] Novell uns SuSE

Peter Ross Peter.Ross at alumni.tu-berlin.de
Fr Mai 28 06:31:04 CEST 2004


On Fri, 28 May 2004, Olaf [iso-8859-1] 'Rübezahl' Radicke wrote:

> Mir ist gerade eingefallen, das Novell auch XIMIAN
> gekauft hat und Miguel de Icaza jetzt bei Novell
> arbeitet.

Eine gute Zusammenfassung aller Deiner Befuerchtungen findet sich hier:

https://listman.redhat.com/archives/k12osn/2004-May/msg00286.html

> Wenn Novell richtig gemein sein will, patentieren sie die Technologie
> von Momo

http://go-mono.com/faq.html (Entschuldigung, es ist etwas laenglich, aber
so ist es wohl immer, wenn es um Recht geht;-) :

--- Schnipp ---

Licensing

Question 128: Will I be able to write proprietary applications that run
with Mono?

Yes. The licensing scheme is planned to allow proprietary developers to
write applications with Mono.

Question 129: What license or licenses are you using for the Mono Project?

The C# Compiler is released under the terms of the GNU GPL. The runtime
libraries are under the GNU Library GPL. And the class libraries are
released under the terms of the MIT X11 license.

The Mono runtime and the Mono C# Compiler are also available under a
proprietary license for those who can not use the LGPL and the GPL in
their code.

For licensing details, contact mono-licensing at ximian.com

Question 130: I would like to contribute code to Mono under a particular
license. What licenses will you accept?

We will have to evaluate the licenses for compatibility first, but as a
general rule, we will accept the code under the same terms of the
"container" module.

Patents

Question 131: Could patents be used to completely disable Mono (either
submarine patents filed now, or changes made by Microsoft specifically to
create patent problems)?

First some background information.

The .NET Framework is divided in two parts: the ECMA/ISO covered
technologies and the other technologies developed on top of it like
ADO.NET, ASP.NET and Windows.Forms.

Mono implements the ECMA/ISO covered parts, as well as being a project
that aims to implement the higher level blocks like ASP.NET, ADO.NET and
Windows.Forms.

The Mono project has gone beyond both of those components and has
developed and integrated third party class libraries, the most important
being: Debugging APIs, integration with the Gnome platform (Accessibility,
Pango rendering, Gdk/Gtk, Glade, GnomeUI), Mozilla, OpenGL, extensive
database support (Microsoft only supports a couple of providers out of the
box, while Mono has support for 11 different providers), our POSIX
integration libraries and finally the embedded API (used to add scripting
to applications and host the CLI, or for example as an embedded runtime in
Apache).

The core of the .NET Framework, and what has been patented by Microsoft
falls under the ECMA/ISO submission. Jim Miller at Microsoft has made a
statement on the patents covering ISO/ECMA, (he is one of the inventors
listed in the patent): here.

Basically a grant is given to anyone who want to implement those
components for free and for any purpose.

The controversial elements are the ASP.NET, ADO.NET and Windows.Forms
subsets. Those are convenient for people who need full compatibility with
the Windows platform, but are not required for the open source Mono
platform, nor integration with today's Mono's rich support of Linux.

The Mono strategy for dealing with these technologies is as follows: (1)
work around the patent by using a different implementation technique that
retains the API, but changes the mechanism; if that is not possible, we
would (2) remove the pieces of code that were covered by those patents,
and also (3) find prior art that would render the patent useless. Not
providing a patented capability would weaken the interoperability, but it
would still provide the free software / open source software community
with good development tools, which is the primary reason for developing
Mono.

The patents do not apply in countries where software patents are not
allowed.

For Linux server and desktop development, we only need the ECMA
components, and things that we have developed (like Gtk#) or Apache
integration.

--- Schnapp ---

Diser Satz sollte den Herren im Europaparlament ordentlich um die Ohren
gehauen werden!

The patents do not apply in countries where software patents are not
allowed.

Gruss
Peter



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