What I can’t work out is why, given you claim to be a free software supporter.

I think you’re in denial.

Second, I’ve said before, I don’t listen to Microsoft’s threats.

So should we permit successful extortion of GNU/Linux users to carry on?

Second, I’ve said before, I don’t listen to Microsoft’s threats. If you want to take heed of them, do what you please, but I’m not going to stop using free software just because Microsoft says so.

It doesn’t matter what corporate deals are entered into; the free software community is not party to those deals.

That’s like saying that the Iraqi people are not affected by the United States’ beef with Hussein and imaginary WoMD. I guess those 1+ million dead people are evidence of the fact that decisions up at the top can’t be dismissed and ignored.

To think that Novell’s deal has no effect on Free software is to forget what happened just a couple of days ago.

Also, don’t forget that Steve Ballmer said the deal with Novell “established that open source is not free” (I could find the exact quote). Later they attacked Free software (May 2007).

Either code is free, or it is not free. There is no half-measure, and free code is free code.

Either way, it’s not going to happen, because MS aren’t going to chase individual users for pennies by spending pounds on lawsuits.

It doesn’t need to, which is why it’s important to keep the code free of what seems like copycats.

Either way, it’s not going to happen, because MS aren’t going to chase individual users for pennies by spending pounds on lawsuits. The maths just doesn’t make sense, even if you believe in the tooth-fairy/patent situation.

Nice piece of illogic, but neither the users nor distributors are “replicating”.

They /use/ ‘replicas’ that Microsoft might wish to claim have associated royalties.

>> Someone did try to replicate Java – Microsoft did. And they got sued by Sun

Well, good. So now we know Mono users/distributors can be sued by Microsoft for replication.

Nice piece of illogic, but neither the users nor distributors are “replicating”.

Potentially they could go to court against Novell, but they’d be a little unlikely to win that particular battle

Well, good. So now we know Mono users/distributors can be sued by Microsoft for replication. Sun, on the other, merely wants GNU/Linux users to harness Java. And why not? Sun won’t attack Free software projects. It’s defending them (e.g. Firestar, NetApp).

Sun does not make money in the same way as Microsoft does (e.g. free lunch for non-free beer… or hardware/services). Same with IBM. This was recently discussed here.

You should take from this example what companies are capable of doing when they believe their lives to be at stake if they don’t take legal actions. And how much larger and in control over their realm is Microsoft than was Sun?

Some attacks on others can be detrimental to the company. It all depends on the lesser of two evils I suppose. Who would have thought that Microsoft would have risked so much by raping ISO the way they did? Microsoft truly has a lot riding on their monopolies.

As Sun did, Microsoft has made some things very clear. That will carry extra weight in court.

The earlier post http://boycottnovell.com/2008/10/16/mono-coming-from-which-devs/#comment-28295 lays out an argument that the threat to FOSS from mono wrt patents are possibly significant on many levels and can be expected to be much worse than for any other piece of FOSS because of the Microsoft factor. Microsoft is not Joe the Patent Plumber. Regular Joe’s basically want money and focus on large companies. Microsoft has billions monthly threatened as Linux+FOSS grows.

The bottom line wrt patents is this: Microsoft wants to subvert FOSS, and mono gives them a much easier path to do so. We aren’t talking about general or random attacks against rich entities but a focused effort to derail non-MS sanctioned commercial FOSS that is currently mostly out of their control and influence. Joe the Patent Plumber doesn’t have it in for FOSS or nearly the way Microsoft does and with Microsoft’s resources to fight it.

That patent landscape may or may not change significantly for the better in the near term. Exposing yourself under the current laws to such an extra risk makes little sense unless you really can’t avoid mono very much (eg, Novell).

And there are other reasons to avoid mono.

If you want to argue whether or not Sun or Microsoft might be more likely to sue a free software project; well, that’s a partially interesting discussion. But that’s really a drop in the ocean if we’re honest.

I would not make any real investments in mono at least unless I was prepared to play the patent game with Microsoft.

This is work in progress.

The first is useless at is simply discusses a licensing problem primarily about trademark use (at least the article gave that impression). That has nothing to do with patents.

The second link mentions that JBOSS uses some Sun software. Again, that is not about patents. Phipps’ comment might be no more harmful than Sun wanting to have acknowledged that JBOSS does not currently work without the help of Sun’s property (the JVM and some of the J2SE core platform I presume).

Here is the quote:
>> However, Phipps said he doubts that JBoss software will pass the compliance test. Basing his opinion on public information, Phipps said JBoss software does not appear to implement all of the J2EE specification. Phipps also noted that JBoss appears to be using software written by Sun.
>> “I predict that now that we’re calling their bluff, they will make up another excuse for not doing the tests,” Phipps said.

Each of these problems can easily be repeated with Microsoft’s dotnet but at a grander scale because Microsoft is more powerful than Sun (size, $$, influence, etc), and Microsoft has much more to lose than Sun. Sun has always made use of licensing royalties, I think, but Microsoft needs to further protect their much more important monopolies. To Microsoft, licenses are but a means to a much more lucrative end (much as serves the current patent FUD on their part). They will stop where to protect their monopolies?

It seems that Sun does not threaten FOSS with patents while Microsoft definitely does. That is a big difference, and judges will surely be less sympathetic for those that regardless jumped to use dotnet clones.

Alex, again, I can’t believe you would think that mono was safer than Java or than most other competing technologies from a patent risk pov. If you simply think patents should not slow anyone’s plans to use software X then state so. Trying to rationalize mono as safer does not help your case.

I would not make any real investments in mono at least unless I was prepared to play the patent game with Microsoft.

[I actually wouldn’t make investments in any version of dotnet (even if patents weren’t an issue) in order to limit helping Microsoft out against us, but that is a different argument.. see for example some comments I made here http://www.computerworlduk.com/community/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=1380&blogid=14#tsb ]

Someone also tried to do a J2EE application server – JBoss – and Sun wanted six figures off them as well as making threatening noises about them reusing their “IP”.