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MS .net vs Mono, Open Source
vinsci writes "Sometimes, reader comments to reporter-written stories are just as good as the stories themselves. Such as David Mohring's comment yesterday on ZDNet.com's story Mono & .Net: The odd couple. Since Microsoft are now using their licensing terms to stop GPL and LGPL free software, it would be a welcome sign of free software maturity at Microsoft if they actually resolved the Mono issue. The gist of his comment: 'Microsoft's CEOs have made it 'patently' clear that they intend to restrict competing .Net implementations by cultivating Microsoft's patents, [...]
Mono also implements parts of .NET that have NOT been submitted to ECMA and ISO standards. Those parts of Mono lack even the protection for IP infringement with re-implementation that ISO documentation licensing implies. [...] There [are] those that claim that .NET is open to re-implementation, but until Microsoft make a simliar public legal declaration to Sun's JSPA, any .NET re-implementation represents a pending legal mindfield.'
While on the subject of C# development, users of the GPL'd C# development environment SharpDevelop may also want to try Eclipse together with the Open Source Improve CSharp plugin for Eclipse. Eclipse also support C/C++ these days using GCC and GDB, thanks to the CDT. There are about two hundred add-on plugins available for Eclipse. Eclipse itself is available for many platforms, including Linux with native GTK 2 support."
.Net is MS proprietary. No way MS is going to let you run it in any useful way on non-MS operating systems.
If you plan to sup with the devil, it is best to bring a long spoon
Its worth noting that IBM had Microsoft's "good will" too. Then they got burned on OS/2, not once but twice. Once when Microsoft stole the code to make NT, and once when Microsoft threatened to stop selling IBM Windows if they continued their development efforts on any completing software. And they didn't break the law "on occasion", they broke it every single chance they got.
Sorry, but history shows that having Microsoft's "good will" is nothing more than a one-way ticket to an unpleasant death.
And de Icaza says he has unofficial word that in the coming weeks Microsoft plans to share .Net-related intellectual property. Pending review by Microsoft lawyers, he says, "Microsoft patents on technology developed specifically for .Net will be granted royalty-free to those trying to implement the spec."
Yeah, it says "unofficial", but don't spread FUD until there's some updated (the Ballmer quote is from March) official information.
from http://swpat.ffii.org/players/microsoft/index.en.h tml:
Asked by CollabNet CTO Brian Behlendorf whether Microsoft will enforce its patents against open source projects, Mundie replied, "Yes, absolutely." An audience member pointed out that many open source projects aren't funded and so can't afford legal representation to rival Microsoft's. "Oh well," said Mundie. "Get your money, and let's go to court."
and
"Heise report about Steve Ballmer's talk at CeBit. At a speech event together with chancellor Schroeder, Ballmer says that Microsoft owns lots of patents which cover its new DotNet standard and that it aims to use them to prevent opensource implementations of DotNet. The key phrases read, in translation:"
It's Blackdown Java. It is not a third party implementation. Sun simply dumped their source code onto a bunch of people outside Sun who then fixed a bunch of bugs and ported it to Linux.
IBM has had it's JVM for eons now. There are lots of embedded JVMs.
IBM does not have its own Java implementation--they have a license to Sun's Java implementation, and they replace some of Sun's components with their own.
(ii) Sun has tolerated those implementations for years now.
Sun hasn't tolerated anything. As far as I can tell, anybody who is shipping anything remotely resembling a Java platform implementation has a contractual agreement with Sun. In fact, merely to claim that something is Java, you need a contractual agreement with Sun (because of their trademark).
(iii) In the past, Sun has never shown to be anti-competitive as microsoft. They don't defend or promote Solaris at any cost the way microsoft does.
I see no basis for that statement. Sun simply isn't leveraging their monopoly because they don't have one. As a 15 year Sun customer, all the indications I have seen are that Sun is worse than Microsoft when it comes to cut-throat competition and intellectual property, they are simply not as successful.