The Mono war is over and we have won, thanks to Microsoft.
Jul 6th
Yeah, alright. Those are words I would never have thought I’d see in a title in a blog post, “thanks to Microsoft.” But, it is true. Microsoft is adding C# and the CLI to the list of technologies that it promises it will not sue for. This is Microsoft’s “Community Promise”, which means that to all of you who claimed that patents were a problem for Mono, if you were not wrong before, you are absolutely, categorically, totally, utterly wrong now.
One of the very few times I have uttered this phrase, but it works now: Thanks, Microsoft.
Rui Miguel Silva Seabra 6th July 2009
I have first hand experience with this promise, I’m a member of a TC which analysed MS-OOXML and this issue came up.
1. you need a RAND or RAND-Z license that nobody outside of Redmond has ever seen. They acknowledge your request, tell you they’ll get back to you with it wearing an yellow smile and you never hear from them again.
2. GPL+LGPL’ed software is very huge, depending on your sources, from 65% to 85% of Free Software is covered under these licenses. It’s of such importance due to such volume that it needs explicit acknowledgement.
They know this, and still they don’t make any explicit statement. Why?
3. Because the text is specifically against GPL, the promise is just to you, not to anyone.
Read the promise with attention to the detail, don’t read the marketing.
Michael Trausch 6th July 2009
Rui,
ECMA requires that any patents be licensed in “reasonable and non-discriminatory terms” to be in any ECMA standard. Attention to detail would indicate that “reasonable and nondiscriminatory” is a type, not the name of a license.
The very first paragraph in the CP is:
Note that “you” is in the legal sense there, e.g., includes both natural personals and fictitious entities such as businesses. It includes the reader. This is the non-discriminatory part.
So, if this is non-discriminatory, all we need to do is prove that it is reasonable. See the quote above; the promise is that you are capable of “making, using, selling, offering for sale, importing or distributing any implementation,” which complies with the specification. It does *not* apply if you intentionally violate the specification. Therefore, it is also reasonable. It is reasonable to say, “I own standard X, and if you are going to implement it, you must implement all things that say MUST within it.” So, then, the license is “RAND” (reasonable and non-discriminatory).
Now, then, you complain that GPL is excluded. It is not, because “any implementation, to the extent it conforms to one of the Covered Specifications, and is compliant with all of the required parts of the mandatory provisions of that specification” includes implementations under (L)GPL, at least in the country that I live in. I don’t know where *you* are, so I can’t speak for your region; I suggest if your legal situation is that bad where you live that you ought to begin considering relocation to a more reasonable area.
Lastly, the text is not specifically against the GPL. The only exclusions from the license are software using the specs covered by the process and implementing them in a non-compliant way intentionally, in the very first paragraph, or if you sue them for patent claims, wherein they then revoke the promise to you. Please read fully before making decisions, and if you don’t understand the underlying legal framework, you’ll need to learn the local law here (where the promise is written) to gain a full understanding of it. That said, the promise, like the GPL, applies worldwide—it did not define any geographical boundaries, either. And, if the promise did mention specific things, then it would not be legally forward-compatible to new versions of GPL, or to other new licenses at all.
Do spend some time to read, and compose a logical argument before posting anything else; I won’t hide your posts, but I don’t have time to response to nonsensical whimsy.