09.22.09
Alan Cox in 2002: “Microsoft Has Publicly Stated That it Has Patents on Critical Parts of .NET and Will Enforce Them”
Summary: Memorable and foresighted words from one of the top Linux developers
A FEW MONTHS ago Microsoft confirmed Alan's statements, which can be found in this interview with Slashdot that contains a lot more:
What are your feelings on Microsoft’s .NET and any initiatives to make the technology work on Linux?
Alan [Cox]: Microsoft has publically stated that it has patents on critical parts of .NET and will enforce them. If you think that .NET is a good idea, or cloning .NET is a good idea, remember you won’t have a US market unless they find you amusing enough to allow to live on. And if you think Microsoft can be trusted on this look at their recent activities against Samba.
The system itself is mildly interesting as a technology. Its yet another virtual machine, roughly equivalent to picojava in capabilities. It has an interesting way to self generate IDL, but one which their own papers say cannot represent all programming languages.
The more dangerous parts of all this are not so much .NET but chunks of the model that not only the .NET product and the Java standards rely on. Things like xmlrpc, soap and the stuff on top of them are designed to “interwork through firewalls”. A better phrase would be “go through the firewall like a knife through butter in a way that prevents the companies involved monitoring the activity”.
In summary, Microsoft’s .NET is a legal threat, it is just an imitation of Java, and it is a security issue. █
Related posts that mention Alan Cox:
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- Quick Mention: Alan Cox on Software Patents, Standards and Beyond
- Quick Mention: Linus Torvalds “Really Don’t Know” About the Legal Issues
- Responses to GNOME Foundation’s OOXML Statement
- France Gets It Wrong on GNU/Linux
- New Linus Torvalds Interview Covers the Novell Issue, Again
- You Lose, You Lie
- Linus Torvalds Has No “Hugely Strong Opinion” on Cross-licensing Deals (Updated)
- Support for GPLv3 Keeps Growing with Apache Foundation Co-Founder’s Nod
- GPLv3 Released Today, Early Support Already Gained (Updatedx2)
- The Free Software Foundation Explains Why Novell is off the GPLv3 Hook
- Is the Linux Kernel Approaching Acceptance of GPLv3?
- Novell and Xandros Hit by the GPL Cluebat
- Microsoft ‘Study’ Smears GPLv3 (Updated)
- Google Likes GPLv3, Microsoft Hates GPLv3, Eben Moglen Interview on GPLv3
- How’s That GPLv3 Coming Along?
Yuhong Bao said,
September 22, 2009 at 11:36 am
“and it is a security issue”
Most of the content in that article talks about Vista being a security issue, not Mono.