Re: Mono in FC3

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Atlantic Works - I.T. & Multimedia wrote:
> Mono is available under GPL, so it could be included in FC, right?

I understand that Microsoft have taken out patents that appear to cover
parts of .NET. 

The core parts of Mono and .NET have been standardised through ECMA.
ECMA requires that any patents needed to implement the standard are
licensed under "reasonable and non-discriminatory terms". This, however,
is understood to allow requiring a small per-copy license fee, which is
clearly incompatible with Free Software.

Certain Microsoft personnel have indicated 
( http://web.archive.org/web/20030609164123/http://mailserver.di.unipi.it/pipermail/dotnet-sscli/msg00218.html )
that Microsoft will not require such license fees. It is unclear that
these individuals have authority to make such a statement.

Large parts of Mono re-implement parts of .NET that do *not* fall under
the ECMA standardisation process. I am unaware of any statement from
Microsoft that guarantees they will not seek license fees for those
parts of Mono.

I believe that Red Hat, who have been very careful about respecting
copyrights and patents, remain worried about the possibility of a
Microsoft lawsuit crippling the use of Mono once large amounts of
open source software for Mono have been written.

That is the situation as I understand it: I hope it is a reasonably
impartial overview of the situation...

James.

-- 
E-mail address: james@ | "[the computer] belonged to our Rabid NT Guy, and we
westexe.demon.co.uk    | called it Kant partly because we were naming servers
                       | after philosophers and theologians, and partly
                       | because it couldn't.  -- Anthony DeBoer



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