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Can Recent MS Patents Affect Mono and DotGNU?

Posted by Cliff on from the do-you-trust-Redmond dept.

5p1urge asks: "I really love the Mono and DotGNU projects. As someone who's worked in Java for for over 5 years, I welcome C# and it's buddies to the OpenSource world. However, here's question: as far as I can tell, only the C# spec and System.* assemblies were submitted to ECMA and therefore made officially public. What happens when MS decides that, Linux -is- going to steal valuable income-generating business, and therefore it should use it's newly acquired patents to sue? I'd appreciate comments from IT lawyers / solicitors and individuals with experience in this area, as well as from the wider community. I'm asking this question because I want to code in mono / DotGnu but I'm cautious because I wonder if MS can take it away from us?"

2 of 410 comments (clear)

  1. Parrot by Nucleon500 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Well, I think making open-source implementations of .NET is a good idea, but it's certainly not ideal. As I'm sure the Samba, WINE, and OpenOffice.org developers would agree, maintaining compatibility with a standard controlled by any hostile party, especially Microsoft, is an uphill battle. I don't predict legal battles, as Microsoft hasn't done that yet, but Microsoft will continue to play the upgrade game, changing the standards and generally making things difficult.

    I'm waiting for Parrot to mature. It's a register-oriented bytecode interpreter, designed for Perl 6, but with other languages in the wings. When it gets Perl's libraries, Ruby's syntax, real threads, and great speed, I think it will do well.

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    Litigious bastards
  2. Parrot vs Python by cpeterso · · Score: 5, Interesting


    Dan, the author of the Parrot VM, has a bet with Pythong's Guido van Rossum. Dan bet Guido that Parrot can execute pure Python bytecode faster than the Python interpreter can. The battle will be decided at OSCON 2004 in Portland, OR. He sounds pretty confident:

    "Boys and girls, let's get this straight. I'm only going to say this once. Parrot is an order of magnitude faster than perl 5 doing equivalent things. Without enabling any extraordinary measures. You know how Python's performance rates against Perl 5. Do the math."

    Dan's blog entry about the bet: http://www.sidhe.org/~dan/blog/archives/000139.htm l

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    cpeterso