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Miguel de Icaza Talks About Novell, Mono, and Patents

An interview has just been published where Miguel de Icaza speaks to the local Microsoft press. There are various bits that are worth mentioning, but recently we have been focused on the implications of using Mono. Here is what de Icaza had to say about patents:

Some people say the drawback to Mono is the saber rattling from Microsoft about patent, and that it doesn't support the latest versions of .NET. What is your relationship like with Microsoft these days?

[de Icaza:] So, I have two positions, and one is speaking as the person managing the Mono team, and then there is another answer speaking as a Novell vice president. So from the position of the open source community -- a position not attached to Novell -- we as any other software project are aware that software patents are a problem. We don't like them. We think they're bad for the industry, but we know that we need to abide by that system. So we have a very strict policy, that we'll not knowingly introduce patented code into the Mono code base. If somebody raises an issue with us about a patent, or that we're infringing on their code base, we'll be more than happy to either do an investigation to see if there's prior art that will invalidate a patent claim, or basically re-implement the same functionality using a different approach. Or, if worse comes to worse, removing the code from Mono. And I think that's pretty much the same rule that every open source project has to use.


"Whether Microsoft litigates or not, Mono introduces uncertainty"The patent system is defunct and there is no question about it, but stepping on Microsoft's toes by mimicking the very same thing which they created is simply tactless. Whether Microsoft litigates or not, Mono introduces uncertainty. It's easy to see why Microsoft will continue to support de Icaza's work on Mono. As long as Novell's desktop is becoming more assimilated to Windows (in terms of the underlying framework), the more solid Microsoft's vacant claims will seem.

In the fragment above, de Icaza confirms that he has concerns about patents. Rather than dismissing the issue (as many of us do using valid arguments like "prior art"), de Icaza replicates Microsoft's art. A 'carbon copy' imitation of the .NET framework is not even an 'artistic' matter with subjective interpretations. The goal and intent is to copy. Why approach these territories in the first place? Languages exist that are vendor-independent.

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