Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft Willing to Sell Us 'Protection' for Use of Mono

Deal or no deal? Shall we collect donations? Or just strip Mono off?

Mono is greed



As regular readers may know, we have been actively pursuing answers from Microsoft regarding Mono. Well, we are finally successful. With concerns about patent ambush in Mono, an answer was needed.



Our suspicions seem partially confirmed with the following reply that suggests patent licensing and mentions "Mono" by name.




From: "Mike Ward (LCA)" <Mike.Ward at microsoft.com> To: [Anon] Cc: "Nick Tsilas (LCA)" <ntsilas at microsoft.com> Subject: Request for a written license for ECMA 334 implementation

[Anon],

I am responding to the e-mail string below on behalf of the intellectual property & licensing team at Microsoft. I help companies obtain licenses to use Microsoft's patents and other IP. If a license to cover Mono or other technologies is necessary, I can work with you and/or Roy to develop a mutually beneficial agreement. Please give me a call on 425-703-6405 to discuss your needs and to identify next steps.

Michael W. Ward Senior Director Intellectual Property & Licensing Microsoft Corporation One Microsoft Way 8 / 1096 Redmond, WA 98052-6399

425-703-6405 Office 425-681-6946 Mobile 425-708-4293 Fax

-----Original Message-----

From: [Anon]

Sent: Monday, November 10, 2008 10:25 AM

To: Nick Tsilas (LCA) Subject: Request for a written license for ECMA 334 implementation From: Roy Schestowitz To: ntsilas at microsoft.com Date: Wed, Nov 7, 2008 Subject: Request for a written license for ECMA 334 implementation

Dear Nicos Tsilas,

I tried contacting iplg@microsoft.com a couple of times over the past month, but was unable to receive a reply. I am therefore expressing my determination to receive a licence for commercial distribution of Mono, in accordance with your terms presented by Bob Muglia:

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2060750,00.asp

"There is a substantive effort in open source to bring such an implementation of .Net to market, known as Mono and being driven by Novell, and one of the attributes of the agreement we made with Novell is that the intellectual property associated with that is available to Novell customers."

According to several legal analyses, Mono is not safe for those who are not Novell customers to use. I would therefore like to purchase a licence.

Best regards,

Roy Schestowitz




Any other interpretations?

"Tsilas [senior director of interoperability and IP policy at Microsoft] is admitting, more explicitly than implicitly, that Microsoft’s profit depends on it controlling standards and that OOXML is a product designed to do exactly that. The mask has slipped and the nature of this particular war is on display. As Ericson, captain of HMS Compass Rose, might say: we are sorry if it is too hard for you, Microsoft."

--ZDNet

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