10.18.08

Microsoft Does Not Reply to Request for Mono Patent Protection

Posted in Microsoft, Mono, Novell, Patents, Site News at 10:45 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

As we promised to do, we have have just resent our request to Microsoft Licensing. They have not replied for over a week.

From: Roy Schestowitz
To: iplg at microsoft.com
Date: Sat, Oct 18, 2008
Subject: Request for a written license for ECMA 376 implementation

Dear Microsoft Licensing,

I would be interested 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

Meanwhile we have identified possible patent violations in Mono, which may collide with existing Microsoft patents (not even submarine patents). █

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Microsoft Pressures for WAMP While Novell Helps ‘Infect’ AMP

Posted in Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, Patents at 10:34 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Windows advantaging and patent encumbering

TWO DAYS ago we explained why Microsoft had invaded Apache, its competitor. It’s about benefiting the Microsoft stack through various enhancements. Yesterday we showed Microsoft's latest move toward Windows-isation of AMP, which is a strategy that Microsoft's internal documents expose as well.

Glyn Moody, taking both developments into account, reaches the same conclusions. This could be an “Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish” move.

This is how it will go. Purely in order to “improve” the performance of Apache and Hadoop on the Windows platform, Microsoft will helpfully offer some really cool hacks….which will of course only work on the Windows platform.

This will effectively fork the Apache/Hadoop/whatever code – all for the good of their communities. Of course, there may be some “patented” technologies in there, but Microsoft will promise never, ever to sue anyone using this “optimised” open source – cross its heart and hope to die. Look for Microsoft to get involved with other leading open source projects in the same way.

This was predicable. They have already done the same thing to PHP (the “P” in LAMP) after a deal with Zend in 2006.

Another trend worth highlighting is Microsoft’s attempt to sway developers in .NET’s way. Novell is helping Microsoft's cause. This has various motivations, but one of them stands out. “[It's] all written in .NET, just for patent ambush purposes and infection,” says one knowledgeable reader. Only Novell customers are said to be 'protected' and, according to this reader, “all the “free tools” that Microsoft releases are strangely written in .NET for infection purposes.”

Do not allow this to happen. Microsoft and Novell rely on people’s ignorance — for now. █