All you've done is mention ECMA-334, which includes a boilerplate legal message stating that Microsoft will "grant, on a non-discriminatory basis, to any party requesting it, licenses on reasonable terms and conditions, for its patent(s) deemed to be necessary for the implementation of the ECMA Standard".
You have not given any evidence that any such patents actually exist, or that anyone has been or will be charged for a license (i.e. that the statement about royalty-free licensing is untrue).
You, so far, haven't.
My source for the royalty-free claim is a mailing list posting, archived here, in which Jim Miller says "Microsoft (and our co-sponsors, Intel and Hewlett-Packard) went further and have agreed that our patents essential to implementing C# and CLI will be available on a 'royalty-free and otherwise RAND' basis for this purpose."
I assumed you were already familiar with that source, since you said earlier "the only thing I have been able to find were informal statements on mailing lists and in interviews".
So if we're going to apply the same standard, why don't you put up or shut up, Mr. Shill?
Please, call me Microsoft, or Mike for short. Mr. Shill was my father.
It's not my intention to spread FUD, and it's disengenious of you to accuse me of that.
Maybe it's not your intent, but it is what you're doing. "Microsoft might someday somehow lock you into their products if you use C#" is FUD, plain and simple, just like "Linux might be insecure" or "Linux might contain copyrighted code". You're raising fear, uncertainty, and doubt based on no real evidence. There's nothing disingenuous about pointing that out.
More importantly, there is no disputing Microsoft's business model of lock~in, so their reason for the creation of C# is obvious after their humiliation with J++.
There is no disputing that Microsoft tried to do this a decade ago with J++. There is, however, disputing that Microsoft has done so with C#. I'm disputing it, and you're not backing up your claim, you're just pointing to J++.
If you want to write a cross-platform app in C#, you can do it easily. If you want to write a Windows-only app in C#, you can do that too. It's not much different from, say, C++, where you can choose between cross-platform libraries like Qt and platform-specific libraries like MFC.
Oh, I see. How convenient that your position -- that there exists a means by which Microsoft could pull the rug out from under Mono -- requires no evidence whatsoever, while the opposing position requires solid proof. Why, it's almost as if you're imposing a double standard in your own favor.
Microsoft, the Mono developers, and the fanbois, keep asserting that Microsoft provides royalty-free licensing for any patents in C#/CLI. It is up to you to prove that assertion.
Meanwhile, you get to make all the assertions you want with zero proof. Funny how that works.
Until you do, the opposition is fully in their rights to assume there is a patent problem.
There might be goblins following me around, hiding out of sight and moving quickly enough that I can't see them when I turn my head. Some people claim there aren't, but they have not proven their assertion. Until they do, I'd be fully in my rights to assume there are goblins following me.
Of course, I'd be a paranoid lunatic if I made that assumption. In the absence of evidence -- or, hell, even in the face of opposing evidence -- you have the right to believe whatever you want. But that doesn't mean all beliefs are equally reasonable or deserving of respect.
I wonder what was the reason for C#? Did we not have enough languages?
If you've used both C# and Java, you already know the answer to this question.;)
If you haven't, consider features like attributes, properties, delegates, iterable sequences, varargs, enums, a unified type system for classes and primitive types, and pointers. Java has added some of those, but it took a while: Java 1.5 was all about catching up to C#.
Maybe it had something to do with the fact that they failed to hijack Java (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_J%2B%2B) and create a lock~in with their proprietary version, so they said "Hey lets make a C++ knockoff and lock them in with that!".
Except no one is actually "locked in". You can develop and run C# applications without using any Microsoft products, and MS can't do anything to stop you. Go spread FUD elsewhere.
The ECMA process requires that all patents held by member companies that are essential for implementing its standards are available under "reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) terms" for the purpose of implementing those Standards. This is the normal condition used in all
International Standards organizations, including both ECMA and ISO.
But Microsoft (and our co-sponsors, Intel and Hewlett-Packard) went further and have agreed that our patents essential to implementing C# and CLI will be available on a "royalty-free and otherwise RAND" basis for this purpose.
If the government were smart, they would have saved up a lot of money during the boom time so they could ride out the recessions without changing anything. Since they weren't that smart, they need to pay the price for their incompetence.
Unfortunately, it's not some faceless "they" in the capitol that suffers, it's everyone.
The economy is basically investment + private spending + government spending. When two of those dry up, things get bad. When all three dry up, things get even worse. If money isn't changing hands, there's no economy.
And when you look more closely at what the government is spending money on, the situation is worse still. In a recession, the need for things like food stamps and Medicaid rises at the same time as the tax revenue to pay for them falls.
State governments don't have the liberty that the federal government does to keep on spending even as tax revenue falls. Raising taxes to keep paying for state services sucks, but it's better than deepening the recession and its impact on citizens by letting those services disappear.
There is no royalty-free license for C#/CLI. If I am mistaken, please provide me with a link to one.
Sure, right after you provide a link to the paid license and the patents it applies to.
"Informal statements on mailing lists and in interviews" may not be the sort of evidence you'd prefer, but they still beat "wild speculation on Slashdot".
OOXML is evidence that Microsoft cannot be prevented from abusing standards the get involved with, especially standards they sponsor.
I'm still waiting to hear what form you think this "abuse" could possibly take. We know what happened with OOXML, and we know it didn't happen with C#.
It seems to me you're just spreading FUD: Microsoft is bad, so whenever Microsoft is involved, anything that's bad just has to be possible even if it would contradict all logic.
Read up on oxml or ooxml or whatever "standard" microsoft is proposing to replace odf with.
OK, so what's the connection between OOXML and the C# or CLI standards?
Some people are concerned that OOXML is impossible for competitors to implement, because it depends on baroque, poorly-documented behavior that Office already implements. That is not the case with C# or the CLI. Mono already has a good implementation of most (all?) of the behavior described in these standards, and the standards are much more complete anyway. Have you actually read them or used Mono, or are you just extrapolating from what you know about OOXML?
We can discuss the issue of counterfeiting money, if you'd like, after you respond to the points I mentioned. I'm open to some compromise there. But I'm not going to cater to your requests while you're ignoring mine.
And what will these "potential licenses" look like? They've left themselves plenty of room.
One might say they've left their detractors plenty of room to come up with scary hypotheticals.
Even in the best case scenario where Microsoft is unable to torpedo the big distros, this state of affairs (patent FUD) retards Linux adoption in corporate systems.
Yes, FUD sucks. Unfortunately, the only FUD here is being spread by the anti-MS crusaders, and it doesn't seem like they're going to stop any time soon.
Btw, I know what it's like to fall in love with a framework. But take a step back from VS and take a look at what's out there. Or just look at the history of development since Smalltalk. I promise it will be rewarding.
You assume that if I like Visual Studio and C#, it must mean I'm unaware of the alternatives? How patronizing.
And if I'm a user of some software? Everything is nice and crossplatform, but the primary platform is Windows. They go C# 4.0 and either Linux does too or it gets left in the cold. I get left in the cold.
Er... how is that Mono's fault, or Ubuntu's fault for including Mono?
An application that depends on.NET features that are only available on Windows is not a cross-platform application, it's a Windows application. The existence of more Windows applications doesn't harm you.
Mono doesn't make your life any harder as a user. It makes your life easier, by giving developers who want to make cross-platform applications an easy way to do it (by sticking to the common features that Mono and.NET both support).
No, there is legitimate competition which harms a business, and there is illegitimate ways of harming a busines. They are NOT the same thing.
Sure, but now you're begging the question by asserting that one form of competition is "illegitimate" while other forms are not.
I believe it's every bit as "legitimate" as offering any other identical products. They're not interfering with anyone else's stock, blocking customers from accessing anyone else's store, etc. They're just offering the same thing for less and letting customers choose the better deal.
Consider a town with two theaters showing the same movie; one charges $9.50 for a ticket and the other charges $10. I expect you'd say that's legitimate competition because both theaters have the studio's permission to show that movie. But I'd say the studio's permission has no bearing on the legitimacy of either theater's operation: as long as they own a projector and a few reels of film, it's automatically "legitimate" for them to charge people to sit on their property and watch the film.
I'm not going to bother responding to the rest of your post because even though you're wrong, I have very little confidence that I can convince you that you are wrong.
Well, I also doubt that you can convince me of that, just as I doubt I can convince you that you're wrong. Such things rarely happen in online debates.
But it's still unfortunate that you skipped what I think were the most important parts of that post, the last two responses: I think I did serious damage to the claim that people are entitled to get paid for unsolicited work they've already done, and to the claim that granting a monopoly on copies is anything like paying your employees. I had hoped to at least see your take on those points.
1) Is there a licensing concern using the C# language, or any of the compiler technology? Specifically, are there any software patents that could be leveraged against the open source community for using the C# implementation that could result in a massive court action? I do not know the details of any agreements (if they exist) but knowing Microsoft's stance on OSS, there is certainly potential for future abuse. Something along the lines of "Use of C# on any non-Microsoft platform is henceforth prohibited."
Since C# and CLI are ECMA standards, Microsoft is obligated to offer any such patents under reasonable and non-discriminatory licenses. That would rule out banning the use of C# on non-MS platforms. They've also gone further and said that any licensing would be royalty-free.
That said... the idea that patents covering these technologies even exist seems to be a myth. I've never seen any actual patents referenced in any of these Mono threads, only scary hype about the possibility that they might exist undetected.
2) Is C# considered an open standard? Secondly, is the specification controlled by Microsoft directly? Or, is it influenced by the communities? Java is a similar monster, but it's been my observation that Sun (Oracle) is a willing participant in the Linux/Unix space so it hasn't been such a problem. An Example here would be something like, "C# compilers and applications now depend on a library that is currently available on Windows platform, any reverse engineering or decompilation or efforts to replicate this library will result in criminal penalties."
The C# language, the CLI (virtual machine) and core framework are ECMA standards. Microsoft could release C# 5.0 without submitting it to ECMA and impose draconian terms, but you could keep on using the older standardized version.
It's funny that with RAND Microsoft doesn't even need to sue to hurt FOSS. All they would have to do is charge a penny for it. It would be a GPL crisis, with all the big Linux vendors suddenly being forced to keep track of copies of Mono, or drop it.
Except Microsoft has already stated that any potential licensing would be not just RAND but also royalty-free.
Mono, on the other hand, already has a patent-licencing agreement in place with Novell. That means that you do not have that same agreement, and that there is an axe hanging over it, should Microsoft ever decide that its patent licence needs to be enforced. That enforcement will probably happen when Mono apps become popular enough that Linux 'sales' increase to the detriment of Windows marketshare.
The licensing arrangement between MS and Novell doesn't mention Mono specifically, and really has nothing to do with Mono.
The arrangement you should be looking at is Microsoft's obligation to provide reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing of any patents needed to implement the ECMA standards for C# and CLI, and their decision to go even further and offer these licenses royalty-free.
Worst case scenario: the community has to scrape together some money to buy a one-time license if MS decides to go that route. But even that's unlikely, IMO. No one ever seems to be able to point out any actual patents that could be used against Mono anyway.
Windows developers are at 3.5 SP! level, beta people are already checking version 4. What is Mono at? 2? Without very important windows forms right?
Wrong: "Support for Windows Forms 2.0 is complete. At this point, we are largely just fixing bugs and polishing our code."
I've written WinForms apps in Visual Studio that ran on Mono with no changes, and that was over a year ago. This month I've been doing command-line apps, and of course they work just fine on Mono as well.
Mono also supports many individual features of C# 3 and.NET 3.
Can you picture MS allowing their multi billion dollar clone framework to perform better on a free operating system?
I love this attitude, the one that assumes an independent team of programmers would somehow need Microsoft's permission to implement the available C# and CLI standards.
Seriously, what could they do? If the next version of Mono ran.NET applications faster than.NET, what would happen if Microsoft decided not to "allow" that? Would the code disappear? Would the Mono team be the subject of some groundless lawsuit that would be laughed right out of court?
How about even using a "portable" language defined and controlled by Microsoft? Sure, if you only care about Windows, use C#. But Microsoft has a long history of jerking around standards that it controls to make them impossible for competitors to adopt.
The standardized version of the C# language is not controlled by Microsoft. It's, you know, standardized. If you're paranoid about MS pulling the rug out from under you in the future, then stick to the ECMA standard, and don't use the latest whiz-bang C# 4.0 features until and unless those become standardized too.
They weren't required to monitor all torrents coming through them. They were asked to pull down certain specific torrents. That's the difference.
Again, we don't expect the phone company to cut off service to people who use the phone to discuss illegal activities, or even to disconnect specific phone calls. We recognize that phone service is a tool that can be used for many different purposes, and that if someone is abusing it, it's the job of law enforcement to go after those particular people -- the phone company has no responsibility other than to provide information (which a torrent site does automatically). Why can't we treat torrent sites the same way?
If my neighbour spends his time acting as a local directory enquiries for drug dealers, I am very very keen for that guy to be arrested.
Of course you are; that's the point. If you're an anti-drug crusader, you'll be "very very keen" for anyone tangentially involved with drug sales to be arrested, whether or not they're breaking the law.
Likewise, statements like "Its amazing the crazy bullshit that gets rationalised by people who want to justify pirating music" suggest that you have the sort of bias that would lead you to be "very very keen" for anyone tangentially involved with copyright infringement to be arrested, whether or not they broke the law. You shouldn't preside over the TPB trial either.
If he's specifically told that other guys X and Y are using his board to exchange messages directly facilitating drug sales; and a reasonable person in his position would consider there be a strong probability that it is indeed the case; and he explicitly refuses to pull down the messages regardless; and X and Y do turn out to be using the board that way (as found out from other evidence) - then, yes, he is facilitating the crime, and is responsible for that.
I'm not so sure. We don't expect the phone company to monitor everyone's calls to make sure they aren't using the phone for illegal purposes, nor do we expect them to cut off service to everyone who discusses illegal activity over the phone. That's why we have common carrier laws. Why shouldn't the same logic apply to someone who owns a public bulletin board, or runs a torrent site?
Except the behavior you describe is already illegal. Facilitating a crime is a crime.
What isn't so clear is whether "facilitating" was intended to include what TPB does. They don't host, transfer, or even see the content of any illegally transferred files. Every ISP has a more direct hand in copyright infringement than TPB does.
To continue the analogy, you'd probably have a hard time arguing that someone who owns a public bulletin board is "facilitating" the sale of drugs, particularly if he makes no attempt to verify the truth of anything written on his board.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I've given a source.
All you've done is mention ECMA-334, which includes a boilerplate legal message stating that Microsoft will "grant, on a non-discriminatory basis, to any party requesting it, licenses on reasonable terms and conditions, for its patent(s) deemed to be necessary for the implementation of the ECMA Standard".
You have not given any evidence that any such patents actually exist, or that anyone has been or will be charged for a license (i.e. that the statement about royalty-free licensing is untrue).
You, so far, haven't.
My source for the royalty-free claim is a mailing list posting, archived here, in which Jim Miller says "Microsoft (and our co-sponsors, Intel and Hewlett-Packard) went further and have agreed that our patents essential to implementing C# and CLI will be available on a 'royalty-free and otherwise RAND' basis for this purpose."
I assumed you were already familiar with that source, since you said earlier "the only thing I have been able to find were informal statements on mailing lists and in interviews".
So if we're going to apply the same standard, why don't you put up or shut up, Mr. Shill?
Please, call me Microsoft, or Mike for short. Mr. Shill was my father.
Microsoft implies very heavily that there are patent problems
So you'll believe that without questioning it, but you won't believe them when they say they'll offer a royalty free license.
You assert, you prove. No amount of trying to twist around from under your burden of proof is going to save you.
And yet you seem to think it'll save you. Same standard for both of us, buddy.
It's not my intention to spread FUD, and it's disengenious of you to accuse me of that.
Maybe it's not your intent, but it is what you're doing. "Microsoft might someday somehow lock you into their products if you use C#" is FUD, plain and simple, just like "Linux might be insecure" or "Linux might contain copyrighted code". You're raising fear, uncertainty, and doubt based on no real evidence. There's nothing disingenuous about pointing that out.
More importantly, there is no disputing Microsoft's business model of lock~in, so their reason for the creation of C# is obvious after their humiliation with J++.
There is no disputing that Microsoft tried to do this a decade ago with J++. There is, however, disputing that Microsoft has done so with C#. I'm disputing it, and you're not backing up your claim, you're just pointing to J++.
If you want to write a cross-platform app in C#, you can do it easily. If you want to write a Windows-only app in C#, you can do that too. It's not much different from, say, C++, where you can choose between cross-platform libraries like Qt and platform-specific libraries like MFC.
It doesn't work that way.
Oh, I see. How convenient that your position -- that there exists a means by which Microsoft could pull the rug out from under Mono -- requires no evidence whatsoever, while the opposing position requires solid proof. Why, it's almost as if you're imposing a double standard in your own favor.
Microsoft, the Mono developers, and the fanbois, keep asserting that Microsoft provides royalty-free licensing for any patents in C#/CLI. It is up to you to prove that assertion.
Meanwhile, you get to make all the assertions you want with zero proof. Funny how that works.
Until you do, the opposition is fully in their rights to assume there is a patent problem.
There might be goblins following me around, hiding out of sight and moving quickly enough that I can't see them when I turn my head. Some people claim there aren't, but they have not proven their assertion. Until they do, I'd be fully in my rights to assume there are goblins following me.
Of course, I'd be a paranoid lunatic if I made that assumption. In the absence of evidence -- or, hell, even in the face of opposing evidence -- you have the right to believe whatever you want. But that doesn't mean all beliefs are equally reasonable or deserving of respect.
I wonder what was the reason for C#? Did we not have enough languages?
If you've used both C# and Java, you already know the answer to this question. ;)
If you haven't, consider features like attributes, properties, delegates, iterable sequences, varargs, enums, a unified type system for classes and primitive types, and pointers. Java has added some of those, but it took a while: Java 1.5 was all about catching up to C#.
Maybe it had something to do with the fact that they failed to hijack Java (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_J%2B%2B) and create a lock~in with their proprietary version, so they said "Hey lets make a C++ knockoff and lock them in with that!".
Except no one is actually "locked in". You can develop and run C# applications without using any Microsoft products, and MS can't do anything to stop you. Go spread FUD elsewhere.
Here you go.
If the government were smart, they would have saved up a lot of money during the boom time so they could ride out the recessions without changing anything. Since they weren't that smart, they need to pay the price for their incompetence.
Unfortunately, it's not some faceless "they" in the capitol that suffers, it's everyone.
The economy is basically investment + private spending + government spending. When two of those dry up, things get bad. When all three dry up, things get even worse. If money isn't changing hands, there's no economy.
And when you look more closely at what the government is spending money on, the situation is worse still. In a recession, the need for things like food stamps and Medicaid rises at the same time as the tax revenue to pay for them falls.
State governments don't have the liberty that the federal government does to keep on spending even as tax revenue falls. Raising taxes to keep paying for state services sucks, but it's better than deepening the recession and its impact on citizens by letting those services disappear.
There is no royalty-free license for C#/CLI. If I am mistaken, please provide me with a link to one.
Sure, right after you provide a link to the paid license and the patents it applies to.
"Informal statements on mailing lists and in interviews" may not be the sort of evidence you'd prefer, but they still beat "wild speculation on Slashdot".
OOXML is evidence that Microsoft cannot be prevented from abusing standards the get involved with, especially standards they sponsor.
I'm still waiting to hear what form you think this "abuse" could possibly take. We know what happened with OOXML, and we know it didn't happen with C#.
It seems to me you're just spreading FUD: Microsoft is bad, so whenever Microsoft is involved, anything that's bad just has to be possible even if it would contradict all logic.
Take a deep breath and think twice.
Done.
Read up on oxml or ooxml or whatever "standard" microsoft is proposing to replace odf with.
OK, so what's the connection between OOXML and the C# or CLI standards?
Some people are concerned that OOXML is impossible for competitors to implement, because it depends on baroque, poorly-documented behavior that Office already implements. That is not the case with C# or the CLI. Mono already has a good implementation of most (all?) of the behavior described in these standards, and the standards are much more complete anyway. Have you actually read them or used Mono, or are you just extrapolating from what you know about OOXML?
You first. :P
We can discuss the issue of counterfeiting money, if you'd like, after you respond to the points I mentioned. I'm open to some compromise there. But I'm not going to cater to your requests while you're ignoring mine.
And what will these "potential licenses" look like? They've left themselves plenty of room.
One might say they've left their detractors plenty of room to come up with scary hypotheticals.
Even in the best case scenario where Microsoft is unable to torpedo the big distros, this state of affairs (patent FUD) retards Linux adoption in corporate systems.
Yes, FUD sucks. Unfortunately, the only FUD here is being spread by the anti-MS crusaders, and it doesn't seem like they're going to stop any time soon.
Btw, I know what it's like to fall in love with a framework. But take a step back from VS and take a look at what's out there. Or just look at the history of development since Smalltalk. I promise it will be rewarding.
You assume that if I like Visual Studio and C#, it must mean I'm unaware of the alternatives? How patronizing.
And if I'm a user of some software? Everything is nice and crossplatform, but the primary platform is Windows. They go C# 4.0 and either Linux does too or it gets left in the cold. I get left in the cold.
Er... how is that Mono's fault, or Ubuntu's fault for including Mono?
An application that depends on .NET features that are only available on Windows is not a cross-platform application, it's a Windows application. The existence of more Windows applications doesn't harm you.
Mono doesn't make your life any harder as a user. It makes your life easier, by giving developers who want to make cross-platform applications an easy way to do it (by sticking to the common features that Mono and .NET both support).
No, there is legitimate competition which harms a business, and there is illegitimate ways of harming a busines. They are NOT the same thing.
Sure, but now you're begging the question by asserting that one form of competition is "illegitimate" while other forms are not.
I believe it's every bit as "legitimate" as offering any other identical products. They're not interfering with anyone else's stock, blocking customers from accessing anyone else's store, etc. They're just offering the same thing for less and letting customers choose the better deal.
Consider a town with two theaters showing the same movie; one charges $9.50 for a ticket and the other charges $10. I expect you'd say that's legitimate competition because both theaters have the studio's permission to show that movie. But I'd say the studio's permission has no bearing on the legitimacy of either theater's operation: as long as they own a projector and a few reels of film, it's automatically "legitimate" for them to charge people to sit on their property and watch the film.
I'm not going to bother responding to the rest of your post because even though you're wrong, I have very little confidence that I can convince you that you are wrong.
Well, I also doubt that you can convince me of that, just as I doubt I can convince you that you're wrong. Such things rarely happen in online debates.
But it's still unfortunate that you skipped what I think were the most important parts of that post, the last two responses: I think I did serious damage to the claim that people are entitled to get paid for unsolicited work they've already done, and to the claim that granting a monopoly on copies is anything like paying your employees. I had hoped to at least see your take on those points.
1) Is there a licensing concern using the C# language, or any of the compiler technology? Specifically, are there any software patents that could be leveraged against the open source community for using the C# implementation that could result in a massive court action? I do not know the details of any agreements (if they exist) but knowing Microsoft's stance on OSS, there is certainly potential for future abuse. Something along the lines of "Use of C# on any non-Microsoft platform is henceforth prohibited."
Since C# and CLI are ECMA standards, Microsoft is obligated to offer any such patents under reasonable and non-discriminatory licenses. That would rule out banning the use of C# on non-MS platforms. They've also gone further and said that any licensing would be royalty-free.
That said... the idea that patents covering these technologies even exist seems to be a myth. I've never seen any actual patents referenced in any of these Mono threads, only scary hype about the possibility that they might exist undetected.
2) Is C# considered an open standard? Secondly, is the specification controlled by Microsoft directly? Or, is it influenced by the communities? Java is a similar monster, but it's been my observation that Sun (Oracle) is a willing participant in the Linux/Unix space so it hasn't been such a problem. An Example here would be something like, "C# compilers and applications now depend on a library that is currently available on Windows platform, any reverse engineering or decompilation or efforts to replicate this library will result in criminal penalties."
The C# language, the CLI (virtual machine) and core framework are ECMA standards. Microsoft could release C# 5.0 without submitting it to ECMA and impose draconian terms, but you could keep on using the older standardized version.
It's funny that with RAND Microsoft doesn't even need to sue to hurt FOSS. All they would have to do is charge a penny for it. It would be a GPL crisis, with all the big Linux vendors suddenly being forced to keep track of copies of Mono, or drop it.
Except Microsoft has already stated that any potential licensing would be not just RAND but also royalty-free.
You cannot implement a GUI application without using APIs which are not ECMA spec.
You can, however, implement a GUI application without using Windows Forms. Use GTK# or QtSharp instead if you're worried.
Mono, on the other hand, already has a patent-licencing agreement in place with Novell. That means that you do not have that same agreement, and that there is an axe hanging over it, should Microsoft ever decide that its patent licence needs to be enforced. That enforcement will probably happen when Mono apps become popular enough that Linux 'sales' increase to the detriment of Windows marketshare.
The licensing arrangement between MS and Novell doesn't mention Mono specifically, and really has nothing to do with Mono.
The arrangement you should be looking at is Microsoft's obligation to provide reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing of any patents needed to implement the ECMA standards for C# and CLI, and their decision to go even further and offer these licenses royalty-free.
Worst case scenario: the community has to scrape together some money to buy a one-time license if MS decides to go that route. But even that's unlikely, IMO. No one ever seems to be able to point out any actual patents that could be used against Mono anyway.
Windows developers are at 3.5 SP! level, beta people are already checking version 4. What is Mono at? 2? Without very important windows forms right?
Wrong: "Support for Windows Forms 2.0 is complete. At this point, we are largely just fixing bugs and polishing our code."
I've written WinForms apps in Visual Studio that ran on Mono with no changes, and that was over a year ago. This month I've been doing command-line apps, and of course they work just fine on Mono as well.
Mono also supports many individual features of C# 3 and .NET 3.
Can you picture MS allowing their multi billion dollar clone framework to perform better on a free operating system?
I love this attitude, the one that assumes an independent team of programmers would somehow need Microsoft's permission to implement the available C# and CLI standards.
Seriously, what could they do? If the next version of Mono ran .NET applications faster than .NET, what would happen if Microsoft decided not to "allow" that? Would the code disappear? Would the Mono team be the subject of some groundless lawsuit that would be laughed right out of court?
How about even using a "portable" language defined and controlled by Microsoft? Sure, if you only care about Windows, use C#. But Microsoft has a long history of jerking around standards that it controls to make them impossible for competitors to adopt.
The standardized version of the C# language is not controlled by Microsoft. It's, you know, standardized. If you're paranoid about MS pulling the rug out from under you in the future, then stick to the ECMA standard, and don't use the latest whiz-bang C# 4.0 features until and unless those become standardized too.
They weren't required to monitor all torrents coming through them. They were asked to pull down certain specific torrents. That's the difference.
Again, we don't expect the phone company to cut off service to people who use the phone to discuss illegal activities, or even to disconnect specific phone calls. We recognize that phone service is a tool that can be used for many different purposes, and that if someone is abusing it, it's the job of law enforcement to go after those particular people -- the phone company has no responsibility other than to provide information (which a torrent site does automatically). Why can't we treat torrent sites the same way?
If my neighbour spends his time acting as a local directory enquiries for drug dealers, I am very very keen for that guy to be arrested.
Of course you are; that's the point. If you're an anti-drug crusader, you'll be "very very keen" for anyone tangentially involved with drug sales to be arrested, whether or not they're breaking the law.
Likewise, statements like "Its amazing the crazy bullshit that gets rationalised by people who want to justify pirating music" suggest that you have the sort of bias that would lead you to be "very very keen" for anyone tangentially involved with copyright infringement to be arrested, whether or not they broke the law. You shouldn't preside over the TPB trial either.
If he's specifically told that other guys X and Y are using his board to exchange messages directly facilitating drug sales; and a reasonable person in his position would consider there be a strong probability that it is indeed the case; and he explicitly refuses to pull down the messages regardless; and X and Y do turn out to be using the board that way (as found out from other evidence) - then, yes, he is facilitating the crime, and is responsible for that.
I'm not so sure. We don't expect the phone company to monitor everyone's calls to make sure they aren't using the phone for illegal purposes, nor do we expect them to cut off service to everyone who discusses illegal activity over the phone. That's why we have common carrier laws. Why shouldn't the same logic apply to someone who owns a public bulletin board, or runs a torrent site?
Except the behavior you describe is already illegal. Facilitating a crime is a crime.
What isn't so clear is whether "facilitating" was intended to include what TPB does. They don't host, transfer, or even see the content of any illegally transferred files. Every ISP has a more direct hand in copyright infringement than TPB does.
To continue the analogy, you'd probably have a hard time arguing that someone who owns a public bulletin board is "facilitating" the sale of drugs, particularly if he makes no attempt to verify the truth of anything written on his board.