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Microsoft Puts C# and the CLI Under "Community Promise"
FishWithAHammer writes "Peter Galli of Microsoft posted a blog entry on Port25 today, regarding the explicit placement of C# and the Common Language Infrastructure (the ECMA standard that underpins .NET) under their Community Promise: 'It is important to note that, under the Community Promise, anyone can freely implement these specifications with their technology, code, and solutions. You do not need to sign a license agreement, or otherwise communicate to Microsoft how you will implement the specifications. ... Under the Community Promise, Microsoft provides assurance that it will not assert its Necessary Claims against anyone who makes, uses, sells, offers for sale, imports, or distributes any Covered Implementation under any type of development or distribution model, including open-source licensing models such as the LGPL or GPL.'"
Adds reader anshulajain: "Understandably, Miguel De Icaza is jumping with joy."
"The Community Promise is an excellent vehicle and, in this situation, ensures the best balance of interoperability and flexibility for developers," Scott Guthrie, the Corporate Vice President for the .Net Developer Platform, told me July 6.
Ok, I certainly hope he received more than just that before he began proclaiming to the world that Microsoft is doing such a thing.
The optimist in me is excited. The skeptical in me is dubious, confused and does not trust blogs. It's not listed on Microsoft's list of products under the Community Promise so I'm going to refrain from breaking out the champagne until all the facts are finalized.
Anyone else got a better source for this than a loosely affiliated blog that bills itself as "Communication from the Open Source Community at Microsoft" ?
My work here is dung.
Okay, first off - I'm a Linux user. I love FOSS. I'm also a realist - i put my trust in that my staff will be able to write C# apps in Wintendo that will function. I expect in the near future that portions may be converted over to mono so that we may host items on Linux servers:
http://www.perfectreign.com/stuff/2009/20090312_secure_submitter.jpg
http://www.perfectreign.com/stuff/2008/20080912_JEDI_Vitals_Screen.png
http://www.perfectreign.com/stuff/2008/20081205_ie6_yoda_ii_ponte.jpg
My question is this - does MS moving to a new license change my current licensing? How does it interact with those running SLES or Virtualized Windows 2008 under XEN?
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
From the Microsoft Community Promise, with my emphasis:
Free software is often distributed to the public while in an incomplete state. This Community Promise appears not to apply to such an implementation that is published before it is completely compliant.
My first response to this news was: "assurance"? WTF? That's like, "My dear, I assure you that I will pull out in time."
But then I read the post about this action being promissory estoppel. And I am most definitely not a lawyer, but in the link provided, all the cases included "the court decided". So it is not some magical binding spell put on Microsoft. If it is in their best interest to suck portions of the community into their trap and then bring legal action later, they can. And probably will. And they have the money to buy lawyers who can find ways around their previous "assurance" and their promises.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
This is nothing new and nothing we didn't already know. It still says nothing about ASP.NET, Windows Forms and all the other parts of .NET that are not part of the ECMA standard. Mono implements many, many things outside the ECMA standard, so anybody but Novell who distributes or otherwise uses Mono is at risk of patent shenanigans.
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
You're not allowed to encourage a behavior and then sue because someone took you at your word later.
That is "setting us up the bomb" and what promissory estoppel is supposed to rectify.
And I'm not a lawyer. Maybe NYCL or someone else can come here and explain further.
--
BMO
I love C# as a language, and .NET has been one of my favorite products from MS, it's great to use for development and seems to be what Java should have been. My concern with this announcement though is that I can't get The Lord of the Rings out of my head...
Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
Hi, I've worked extensively with both and think that they're quite different. Can I presume that Java and C# are the only languages that you've worked with? And C# pretty minimally, at that?
C++ programmers and Java programmers can all feel quite at home after only a short time in C#. It was designed that way. Saying that, coming to it only knowing C/C++, it didn't take much longer for me to develop an initial familiarity with Java. In fact, pretty much by definition, and for obvious reasons of programmer portability, most strongly typed, high-level programming languages are remarkably similar.
To say that C# is identical to Java, though, is bollocks. There are some pretty significant differences, and in many cases I prefer C#'s implementation.
This doesn't make Stallman wrong all along. The issue Stallman raised is that the situation was not clear enough to have confidence that freedoms would be safe. If this announcement clears that up (as it appears to do), then the situation is *now* clear, and he can change his view based on new facts. That does not mean that he is then made wrong in his previous statements. This statement has brought the information that many in the community were asking for, it doesn't make them wrong for wanting this.
I have been following Mono for a while but I am currently still using Java.
The question is which do I commit to?
The way I understand it is:
Java has less "patent liability" than Mono. .net are covered by the Communtiy Promise but not some of the supporting libraries (e.g. ado.net, winforms).
All of Java is under an open license including "essential" libraries (e.g. data access, gui).
Only the "core" (including the framework libraries?) of
I know that these .net libraries have been implemented in Mono but would we have to write new open-source libraries to replace thier functionality and remain "patent-threat" free?
If this is the case then I would imagine that Java would be the preferred choice IF you had to chose one.
What are the overheads of both the Java and Mono virtual machines running at the same time? Would we be better getting behind just one environment and using that.
For what it's worth I really like and prefer Mono - especially Banshee (is there an equivalent for Java?) and I want to develop for it but the Community Promise only covers the ECMA part of .net. Without the other libraries I fear Mono is hamstrung.
At least with Java I know where I stand, all the libraries are included and the functionality is already there.
Yes they really are that good. Thanks for asking.
It sounds promising, and it may end up meaning Stallman was wrong all along
You've got the causality exactly wrong. If it wasn't for Stallman and other FOSS people making a lot of noise about this recently, it wouldn't have happened. (Note that I'm not saying Stallman himself is to be thanked for this, it's the general noise about the topic, which he was a part of.)
There are always two levels to statements such as those Stallman etc. made about Mono. On the first level, they are meant to be taken at face value - their arguments are either valid or not, in and of themselves. On the second level, they are intended to cause an effect of some form, such as motivating certain people to do certain things. In this case, the second level was meant to motivate Microsoft to make the first level (the direct arguments against using Mono) invalid. That appears to have worked (well, once Microsoft formally announces this, presumably soon, but all we have so far is a blog post).
As I read in the antitrust documents, Microsoft feels that a "win" in the "war" is for the competition to use their standards. In several email messages and presentations given at MS, they outline this philosophy. They compare it to owning the competition by making them play the game by their rules.
http://antitrust.slated.org/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/3000/PX03096.pdf
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Yes. Stallman. Have you read his comments on Java lately?
Sheesh. The Stallman bashing gets really ridiculous at times.
Mart
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
So Miguel is finally admitting there is potentially dodgy code in Mono? After all the invective he threw at people concerned about patents, I think it would behoove him to apologise, now that he is doing exactly what he was being criticised for not doing before.
Given Miguel's online temper tantrums and obvious unwillingness to concede being wrong, I hope you don't mind if I don't hold my breath.
Mart
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Considering your entire "question" is basically slamming it, I doubt you'll care what people answer.
But for the record, yes, it is *that* good.
The controversy is all over political crap, not the quality of the language or runtime. If you want to write software, and don't care about political crap, there's virtually nothing out there better than C# and the CLI right now.
Comment of the year
This isn't meant to be helping Microsoft's competitors, such as Linux. Quite the opposite - it's meant to be helping Microsoft.
Proprietary lock-in the key to Microsoft's business model, whether we're talking about Office document formats, proprietary Internet Explorer extensions and incompatabilities or C#/CLI.
In this case it seems Microsoft accrues multiple benefits from open source developers who can't resist the free candy being offered:
1) It helps spread adoption of Microsoft's proprietary standards
2) It stops open source developers from pushing and developing alternative open source standards
3) It sets anyone (Mono) reimplementing these standards up for the future rug-pull when they change and/or extend the standard in the future, which will be done according to the needs of Microsofts business model
There's a reason the document format for Microsoft's office applications often changes from release to release, and it's not simply because new features are added. This is to force people to upgrade - which is the basis of Microsoft's business model. You can be sure that C#/CLI will be managed in the same way - don't expect Microsoft to keep these standards static now that they have "kindly" encouraged you to adopt/reimplement them. Quite the contrary, once there is significant open-source reliant upon them, then they have more incentive than ever to churn them.
Probably not SCO..
Erm. No. He is saying he is now splitting potentially dangerous code from the main project. That means that there was potentially dangerous code before, something which Miguel and his fanbois were disclaiming all along.
Of course, pointing out that he made a one-eighty is considered Flamebait these days. Sigh.
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Does this announcement fall under the Embrace phase, or the Extend phase?
Actually, it will be:
4. Mono forks the standard and implements their own, not patent-encumbered version.
We are actually already there with Gtk# and stuff. Using Mono as a platform to get existing .NET apps working isn't really viable anyway (even though they keep trying). The real issue at stake is being able to use the language, and the core class library, as a foundation for a FOSS stack, together with frameworks like Gtk and GStreamer. Compatibility with "C#+N" is not a big deal there.
To be fair, it's not necessarily a concession that the code is dangerous. There's a distinction between "known safe" and "believed safe". If Miguel was arguing that all of Mono previously fell under "believed safe", then splitting into "known safe" and "believed safe" packages is not a 180. I'm not saying that I believe the rest of Mono to be safe, but Microsoft has now come out and declared some things to be "definitively safe", a change which would cause any responsible person to split the packages to reflect that, regardless of previous legal standing.
If you read that document and you still feel that a "win" for Microsoft isn't the worst thing that could happen to the computer industry, then I feel bad for you, your children, and society as a whole for raising you to think that it's a good thing.
The only "win" that would be beneficial to the world would be for Microsoft to quit playing these legal games and release the patents, open the spec up for input from the community and quit trying to "own" everything. They won't do that because they still have the patents up their sleeves and by not releasing the rights in full only shows me that they intend to use it if they suddenly see their monopoly hold start to dip below recovery.
They want to maintain control over the standard so they can always be ahead of everyone else. They keep the language under a veil of legal battles to discourage anyone from doing anything constructive with it. If the Linux/Mac desktop becomes dependent on .NET, you can kiss them goodbye. Why would anyone want to use the substandard protocols legally available to those systems if they can get first party cutting edge tech on Windows? That's what they want, and that's why I won't install Mono on my Linux machine until all patents are off or nullified by the courts. This is the same for Office document standards, the same for SQL standards, the same for Web standards...
That's why a "win" for Microsoft is a bad thing in this case. A majority market holder should not also be the standards designator. It's asking for antitrust violations out the wazoo. It doesn't matter what the credentials of the language are. It's solely on the credentials of the organizer.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.