Comments on: Quick Mention: Good Explanation of the Mono Problem http://techrights.org/2008/11/18/explanation-of-mono-issue/ Free Software Sentry – watching and reporting maneuvers of those threatened by software freedom Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:00:35 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Jose_X http://techrights.org/2008/11/18/explanation-of-mono-issue/comment-page-1/#comment-37735 Jose_X Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:32:58 +0000 http://boycottnovell.com/2008/11/18/explanation-of-mono-issue/#comment-37735 I did not know those details too well, but let's not forget a few things. For the longest time, Microsoft did not rely on patents at all to stomp on the competition. We may even find the patent threat to be minimal depending on court rulings. From http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20071023002351958 , >> Turning a product into a platform perpetuates and broadens the success of the product. This is because writing code to support even one platform is hard; writing code to support multiple, alternative platforms is exponentially more difficult. This leads developers to choose between alternative platforms, and (ideally) choose one over all others. This choice, once made, is not easily changed; code written to one platform is only re-written to another with difficulty. In effect, once a developer chooses a platform, the developer is "locked in" to that platform. Mono is FOSS; however... If we remove the patent threats, it's not exactly evil or anything, but its spread (used to create more and more apps) would tilt various advantages in Microsoft's direction and definitely hurt support for Linux "organic" investments and hurt FOSS supportive commercial players. IBM and Sun, for example, have very large investments (think brain cells/dev addiction, code base, business contracts, etc) in Java. PHP and others platform supporters would also hurt. Linux itself would lose momentum. Etc. See also http://boycottnovell.com/2008/10/11/mono-2-beyond-the-hype/#comment-27135 I did not know those details too well, but let’s not forget a few things. For the longest time, Microsoft did not rely on patents at all to stomp on the competition. We may even find the patent threat to be minimal depending on court rulings.

From http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20071023002351958 ,

>> Turning a product into a platform perpetuates and broadens the success of the product. This is because writing code to support even one platform is hard; writing code to support multiple, alternative platforms is exponentially more difficult. This leads developers to choose between alternative platforms, and (ideally) choose one over all others. This choice, once made, is not easily changed; code written to one platform is only re-written to another with difficulty. In effect, once a developer chooses a platform, the developer is “locked in” to that platform.

Mono is FOSS; however… If we remove the patent threats, it’s not exactly evil or anything, but its spread (used to create more and more apps) would tilt various advantages in Microsoft’s direction and definitely hurt support for Linux “organic” investments and hurt FOSS supportive commercial players.

IBM and Sun, for example, have very large investments (think brain cells/dev addiction, code base, business contracts, etc) in Java. PHP and others platform supporters would also hurt. Linux itself would lose momentum. Etc.

See also http://boycottnovell.com/2008/10/11/mono-2-beyond-the-hype/#comment-27135

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