root[mynamehere]# slapt-get –search mono
bsd-games-2.13-x86_64-9 [inst=no]: bsd-games (Classic BSD text games collection)
liberation-fonts-ttf-1.04-noarch-1 [inst=yes]: liberation-fonts-ttf (Liberation TTF Fonts)

I guess these aren’t the Mono on debate here. But thanks for the tip on how to get rid of it. I will use the method once I test Lucid and Mint 9 when they are out. Good riddance.

sudo aptitude remove –purge mono-common

.. on Jaunty, at least, offers this ..

The following NEW packages will be installed:
gnote{a} libboost-filesystem1.34.1{a} libgconfmm-2.6-1c2{a} libgnomemm-2.6-1c2{a} libpanelappletmm-2.6-1c2{a} libpcrecpp0{a}
The following packages will be REMOVED:
f-spot{a} libart2.24-cil{a} libflickrnet2.1.5-cil{a} libgconf2.24-cil{a} libglade2.0-cil{a} libglib2.0-cil{a} libgmime2.2a-cil{a}
libgnome-keyring1.0-cil{a} libgnome-vfs2.24-cil{a} libgnome2.24-cil{a} libgnomepanel2.24-cil{a} libgtk2.0-cil{a} libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil{a}
libmono-addins0.2-cil{a} libmono-cairo2.0-cil{a} libmono-corlib2.0-cil{a} libmono-data-tds2.0-cil{a} libmono-data2.0-cil{a}
libmono-getoptions2.0-cil{a} libmono-i18n2.0-cil{a} libmono-posix2.0-cil{a} libmono-security2.0-cil{a} libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil{a}
libmono-sqlite2.0-cil{a} libmono-system-data2.0-cil{a} libmono-system-web2.0-cil{a} libmono-system2.0-cil{a} libmono0 libmono2.0-cil{a}
libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil{a} libndesk-dbus1.0-cil{a} mono-2.0-gac{a} mono-2.0-runtime{a} mono-common mono-gac{a} mono-jit{a} mono-runtime{a} tomboy{a}
0 packages upgraded, 6 newly installed, 38 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 1743kB of archives. After unpacking 48.7MB will be freed.

.. so they’re swapping Tomboy for gnote, which I figured I’d try.

tx Robert, nice tip, cp .tomboy/*.note .gnote/ made for a snap of a transition. then again, Zim looks awesome, tx OS .. but a shame there doesn’t appear to be a migration feature, yet.

bottom line, my system is *far* more responsive, and no nasty smell. will be bloggin about this.

all i can say, from a user’s perspective, is that i am here because sys monitor showed some app chewing up 90% of my cpu .. hmmn, sounds kinda microshite

mono .. they should call it at least duo.

.. binned.

http://www.opensource.org/licenses/ms-pl.html — Feel free to read for yourself. It is an OSI approved license that is also free software: http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/index_html

I wasn’t talking about their shared source licenses.

Secondly, if you want to take a narrower view of contracts than the legal system provides, that’s your choice. That’s also your own personal problem. Nothing I can say or do to make you realize the way things are, nor can I force you to read the laws that address those sorts of things.

Thirdly, using the past as an indication of future results is a simple logical fallacy, as are ad hominem arguments, both of which you seem to heavily rely on to make your point.

Permit me to clarify very simply what my own position is: I use free software, with the exception of the driver for my graphics chipset and the Flash plugin, exclusively. I advocate the use of free software in just about anything, for good cause: using software that is capable of being reviewed by peers and capable of being proved correct for the purposes of a purpose is a highly important thing. The big baddies like SCO have shown that there is indeed nothing safe in the world, even if you think that there is. And as far ask a cost-benefit risk assessment, using risk as a cost and mitigation as a canceling factor, using only logic and not emotional, ad hominem, or other fallacious supporting arguments, leads one to the conclusion that it is perfectly fine to use the Mono runtime. After all, if the patent position you take were one that you stuck too, you would not use any software that was complex enough to potentially infringe on someone’s patents.

As far as technical benefits to Mono, that could go on all day long. Mono is in many cases faster than Microsoft’s implementation of the same standards, it is more featureful in some areas (and behind in others), it runs on more platforms, it provides a highly portable managed code runtime environment with a rich class library to build application software on, and has many, many different compilers which target its VM environment such that code can fluidly interact without making explicit bindings between the various languages.

It is possible to make the JVM faster, more efficient, and port more languages to it, but I don’t know that it is possible to make it as fast as Mono. And with many managed-code libraries being made available for both the JVM and implementations of the CLI, the field is about level there.

I’m not going to waste any more time on this topic, simply because legally the position is *very* clear, a legal defense (should Microsoft *actually* be stupid enough to sue) is also clear. I’ve already shown how you can productively help. Mono cannot be inherently dangerous because it is compatible with the Microsoft version of the CLI runtime, and if someone wants to help by identifying software patents so that programmers have a way to easily avoid implementing them, you’d be doing the community a great service.

I am not making the claim that anything is safe, but I am making the claim that the risks as have been mentioned so far are easily mitigated. Of course, you have to want to see that before you’ll recognize it. Further, I don’t see Microsoft going after Second Life or EA who both make some of their money through the usage of Mono in or with their products, and sources such as those would be the first ones that Microsoft would go after.

Now, if they were to say, start suing them, then I’d say that it was time to follow the cases very closely and hope to hell they don’t settle. And if they sued *you*, I’d hope that you would do your duty to protect free software by also not settling. I would certainly make every effort. Look at the bigger picture here—the community as a whole, not just little you. Freedom takes effort, it takes time, it takes work. Freedom is not, never has been, and never will be free. All you are advocating is to tuck the tail in and run, and so long as there are people out there such as yourself that are willing to do that so easily, Microsoft and similar companies will win anything and everything that they want just because the environment will cater to them.

In any case, the argument is no longer worth spending time on if you’re not even willing to do the basic research that is required to understand the fundamental issues at play here. The fact that you would take the fact that anyone can sue anyone for any reason with or without cause and make it to court doesn’t mean that things should be avoided. If that were the case, you would be running Windows and appropriately licensed proprietary software that has companies behind it that would shield you from legal problems.

Cower in fear if you choose; I’ll make the choice to simply go about my life and my business. I’d rather you made the choice to do something productive, rather than cower, but hey, people can dream. You could always start that Web site. In fact, I’d urge you to do so. We (as in the whole free software world) could very much benefit from a site that would aim to tell us what patents are problems where and what they cover, so that we can implement things and know that we’re avoiding mines in the field. In the meantime, if there is no proof that there is a violation, there is, practically speaking, no violation. If you think there is, than prove it. Otherwise, kindly get another bag of chips and a soda and go on with your life doing whatever it is you do with it.

G’day.

1. One paragraph legaleze.

2. Not showing an explicit agreement by all parties involved.

Okay, sure, lets call that little blurb a contract, which, in terms of theory and tehcnicality of law it is a contract. Great. So, is it really going to be able to stop Microsoft from still pulling the patent death trap that they laid by “indemnifying” Mono with this. Oh wait. What about the actual explicit, fully-signed contract with Novell basically saying that use of Mono outside of the Novell umbrella as unauthorized. IANAL, but I believe that this implicit contract you cited above would actually be nullified by the agreement with Novell. Again, what is stopping Microsoft from being held accountable to that promise?

Not a damn thing, that’s what. A lawsuit? Microsoft has a prior EXPLICIT contract with Novell, a team of lawyers, and the sort of money that a lawsuit could be mere pocket change. In the end we’d be punished FOR THE LAWSUIT. Microsoft has done this before.

Okay, moving on to your other point: Microsoft’s fake open source under Shared Source. Every time I look at them I see non-commercial redistribution and NDAs (NDAs aren’t ina ll the shared source license, but most of them. read them up.). If I can’t do what I really want with the software, it is not free software. If I can’t modify it and sell the result, it’s not free software. It stinks that a faux FOSS license like shared source would get any consideration. May be non=GPL compatible, to be honest, I think most FOSS authorities never take it seriously. And ASP? Are you fucking KIDDING me? I see, it’s open source. Tell me then, why no one’s managed to port it to anything but… oh wait. WINDOWS. Fail. PHP/Perl/Python/Ruby on Rails is better for server usage anyway.

Next, I know full and well I can sue for anything. That was my whole point. And though I’m not one of those who believes the TomTom lawsuit was actually about Linux, I was pointing it out as an example of how the prior SCOTUS decisions regarding software patents weren’t exactly stopping Microsoft from making patent lawsuits over software anyway. The ONLY way software patents would work is if there are simply NO software patents. As Eben Moglen said, in this excellent, excellent speech (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NorfgQlEJv8), I’ll paraphrase on major point he made: Software is a form of mathematics at its core, and that mathematics should never be patented (Mathematics itself cannot be. If you discover an awesome formula or algorithm, you can keep it secret, but you cannot patent it.). Now, I know the SCOTUS made some decisions toward freeing us from software patents, but they have far from removed them, and the terms for software patents are still vague enough that Microsoft can still patent just about anything they want. (Patents altogether in this country need reform, as one can apply for and recieve rather frivolous patents, and if you don’t believe me, someone applied for and received a patent for a stick for use of playign fetch for dogs. Not MANUFACTURED sticks. Natural sticks you can find in your yard after a windy day. This leads me to another point:

BAD PATENTS ARE GRANTED ALL THE DAMN TIME. Not just in software. Three major categories, frivolous (Like the stick.), obviousness (Like most anything Microsoft has threatened Linux with in the past and will likely attempt to threaten Linux with in the future, like the patent FUD that brought us the Novell/Microsoft deal.), or prior art (Microsoft patented procedures for page-up/page-down.) Now, in legal theory this would mean the patent cases about them should be dismissed, yes?

This is where the money and fleet of lawyers come in. Remember that in civil cases, 9/10 it is the one with the most money to spend that wins the suit. So, Microsoft probably could have sued for those 235 patents and won simply because they had the most money.

So why didn’t they? I have a few theories. One of course is that these patents never existed and they just wanted to trap gullible distributions like Xandros, Microsoft wannabes like Linspire, and distributors with Microsoft-worshippers like Miguel de Icaza in Novell. Why? So that Mono/Moonlight could happen. So that Microsoft could inject just enough IP poison in there so that they could take out FOSS projects.

Why haven’t they yet? They’re waiting for something huge NOT a part of Novell, to use Mono, that’s what. GNOME is a part of Novell, and also doesn’t have enough of Mono “infecting it.” I bet you my house that if the Linux kernel itself stupidly goes Mono (It won’t, but it’s a hypothetical example.) Microsoft would immediately sue and go for the kill, despite the implicit contract you cited. Why? Because Microsoft has a “real” contract in the EXPLICIT one it has in Novell saying they’re the only ones who can safely use Mono. Uh oh!

If Microsoft really intended not to sue over Mono, they would have done more than a PR-dreamed implicit contract intended to fool gullible morons like you and they would have DONE something, not just SAID something. They would have done something like… say… dropped the actual patents over .NET that are threatening Mono and anything it touches. What Microsoft did was all talk. If they were truly embracing open source, they’d actually GO open source and make their products that way, instead they offer us non-disclosure agreements and non-commercial redistribution clauses. Oh, and the fact that they’re still trying to torpedo Linux. Unless you can cite me a source showing Microsoft getting genuinely friendly with a Linux distributor outside its cross-patent deals.

Microsoft’s entire history is littered with those considered “safe” from Microsoft, both by implicit and explicit contracts. Look to Apple, IBM, or Spyglass. I’m not as naive as you. I’m not going to blindly believe that the shared source licenses, or an implicit (UNENFORCIBLE) contract suddenly means Microsoft is done attacking Linux. I have way too much common sense for that, as well as way topo much knowledge of Mcirosoft’s history of unethically and illegally burying competition. Ever hear of Be OS? DR-DOS? Surely you know what happened to Netscape.

Sure there is risk, as you say. Maybe safe shouldn’t be what I’m looking for. Sudden;y that goes into the next part of my point. With Microsoft’s threats and a more safe .NET implementation in development for Linux, the question becomes: WHY THE HELL SHOULD I RISK MONO? I use nothing using Mono. Nothign mission-critical will likely ever be developed based on Mono for Linux.

See, in most behavior there’s a little thing called risk-benefits analysis. Okay, so, take an investment. There’s a risk… but the potential benefits are stronger, yes? Now lets look at Mono. Way too much of a risk, and despite everything you said, I’m still not convinced it’s not a huge risk… and what are the benefits? I haven’t seen any good TECHNICAL or PRACTICAL reason to use Mono, as it is primarily just used by small apps as shortcut for programmers. Note I’m an experienced programmer myself. But I choose to ignore C# and any sort of .NET CLI implementation. Why? Because I see no reason to. A real programmer worth his salt would be able to implement just about everything in .NET WITHOUT the use of .NET or its alternative implementations, like Mono, stuff that has already been done and done well for decades.

So an apparent patent threat for little gain? Why should I? This is why Mono never made it big in Linux and is stuck infecting tiny projects like Tomboy or Banshee and why Microsoft hasn’t bothered to do what we realists have been saying they’d since the creation of Mono.

I concede I can’t prove Microsoft will try to thrash anyone who used Mono. However its still in my favor because of a teensy thing called Microsoft’s history. Their partners all end up betrayed. Microsoft has been proven in a court of law to have BROKEN the law. Several times. They’ve been convicted at least twice of anti-trust violations and have been declared an illegal monopoly. I’m not about to believe, just because in recent history Microsoft MIGHT be doing things good for open soure, because, quite frankly, I know better than to simply believe it. Maybe if they spend maybe a little more than a decade then I’ll be convinced they’re not trapping open source.

As for the law requiring that Microsoft do what’s best for Microsoft. There’s no evidence, none, that Microsoft actually believes FOSS to be its future. All we have is PR and the faux FOSS licenses. We haven’t seen them really do that much like, say, open up the NT kernel. Nothing that shows to the FOSS community that what they are doing ISN’T trapping FOSS projects or companies.

Can you honestly tell me that Mono is not an opportunity of the sort I speak, when all is said and done? Can you honestly tell me beyond a con

By the way, being able to PRINT a document makes it no more legally sound. Unles we actually SEE Microsoft SIGN a contract with someone who can really do something about the PR you linked me to, that’s all it is. It’s still an implicit contract, and not worth crap when it’d come time to try to hold Microsoft to it. If it were EXPLICITLY AGREED UPON however, that Microsoft wouldn’t sue anyone over Mono no matter what, then I’d feel safe. As it happens, no such contract exists nor will it ever, because Microosft is more than likely planning to use Mono’s patents against us in the end, no matter what contract there is.

Again, all you proved in your citations was that Microsoft is talking the talk. But it’s not proof they’re walking the walk. Tell me how we’re going to enforce this promise if Microsoft breaks it? Hmm? Class action suit, maybe. In which case all Micrsoft has to do is prove that they never SIGNED AN EXPLICIT CONTRACT.

Face it, Mono is a patent poison. And Microsoft wants to crush Linux just like all the other competition.

The first error you have made here is the assumption that a corporation is a single entity with a single mind. No, indeed, no corporation is like this. Is there a chance that they will go back on their community promise? Maybe. Does the law defend them in doing so? Absolutely not.

If a company issues a public statement, the public has reasonable cause to believe it. If the company does not adhere to it, then the company has been deceptive. Further, this means that mens rea is not present on the part of a member of the public (which did not seek out a contract because it believed it was not legally obliged to do so, because the member of the public read the promise and had reason to believe that the words contained meaning). So, this means that the member of the public is not criminally liable for any violation whatsoever. So the next thing to cover is civil violations.

Let’s frame this differently by constructing a situation that is similar and comparing it. Let’s say that I made all of the content on my Web site available in the public domain (for the record, it is not). Now, let’s say that at some arbitrary time, I change that, by claiming copyright on my Web site’s content and licensing it under the strictest terms that Copyright law would permit me. Does this mean that I can win a case against you for using something that was already entered in the public domain? Absolutely not; you would have the reasonable expectation to use that content. After all, once something is in the public domain, it is always in the public domain, even if a derivative is copyrighted. Now, if you use the derivative, or newly-written posts which I assert copyright on, then you would be guilty of copyright infringement and thus I could win *that* case. While this example is on a copyright, it demonstrates the same basic principle.

Now, let’s take something else into account: members of a corporation are required BY LAWto act in the corporation’s best interests. Of course, what is in a corporation’s best interest changes, over time. Of course Microsoft wants everyone to run Windows—on the desktop, on the server. As long as everyone purchases their copy of Windows (which of course is the company’s intention), they *must* want that, for as long as they determine that they are going to continue the Windows line of operating systems. And when, one day, they stop making the Windows line of operating systems (which their research into managed-code operating systems suggests they will eventually do), they will no longer want everyone to run Windows. Instead, they will want everyone to run that new operating system. Why? It betters their bottom line. This is natural.

Now, as to your statement that Microsoft wants to bury Linux and all other free/open source software, this is simply not true. Microsoft has itself released free software—see the ASP.NET MVC stack that they released. The ASP.NET MVC stack is free software by extension of the fact that it is licensed under a recognized free software license (despite the fact that it is incompatible with the GPL license, it is still free software in that it grants the appropriate rights by which it can be called free software). If your assertion that Microsoft wanted to bury all free and open source software were true in the slightest, they would not themselves be releasing software under that model. This is significant, because it means that someone at Microsoft—however small—has realized that there must be a fundamental shift in the way that they do things, or they very truly will be left behind. Do they want to push Linux out of the market? Yes, as well as OS X, AIX, z/OS, MVS, Free/Net/OpenBSD, and I’m willing to bet ReactOS. Tough. In this world, you get competition.

As for your mention of CONTRACT (emphasis yours), I am glad that you brought that up. What is a contract? It is “an agreement creating and defining the obligations between two or more parties,” in the words of Sir John William Salmond. That fundamental definition of a contract still holds true today. Now, the community promise states the following:

Microsoft irrevocably promises not to assert any Microsoft Necessary Claims against you for making, using, selling, offering for sale, importing or distributing any implementation, to the extent it conforms to one of the Covered Specifications, and is compliant with all of the required parts of the mandatory provisions of that specification (“Covered Implementation”), subject to the following:

This is a personal promise directly from Microsoft to you, and you acknowledge as a condition of benefiting from it that no Microsoft rights are received from suppliers, distributors, or otherwise in connection with this promise. If you file, maintain, or voluntarily participate in a patent infringement lawsuit against a Microsoft implementation of any Covered Specification, then this personal promise does not apply with respect to any Covered Implementation made or used by you. To clarify, “Microsoft Necessary Claims” are those claims of Microsoft-owned or Microsoft-controlled patents that are necessary to implement the required portions (which also include the required elements of optional portions) of the Covered Specification that are described in detail and not those merely referenced in the Covered Specification.

Much like the end-user license agreements which Microsoft grants in exchange for monetary consideration (and often with unenforceable components, but that is beside the point), this is a contract. If you read the contract, and you agree to it, Microsoft has already stated that they agree to it. This unqualified acceptance by both parties makes it active. Furthermore, it is not the type of contract that is required to be validated in writing, as are the contracts that govern the sale or transfer of title of certain types of things such as property. Oh, and in American law, such seemingly informal agreements are covered, provided that there is proof that the agreement existed in the first place. This is why one can have a verbal contract over some seemingly little thing and take it to court in this over-zealously litigious society we live in. No signature is required. Note further that “necessary claims” are named such because as a corporation owning a patent, it is required to act to enforce the patent (again, by law, that whole best interests thing) unless there is an agreement that states otherwise.

That is, unless enforcement of the patent would be a greater danger to themselves than it would be a help. You do not see Microsoft shutting down the development of the Linux kernel or the GNU userland, despite the alleged fact that they have hundreds of patents covering that software that they could enforce. Not only would it make no sense to do that from a PR point of view, it would be murderous on them if they didn’t want the DoJ actively crawling up their asses again; they would in effect be murdering several companies and significantly harming numerous others, and it would be seen as a mala fide action with the intended consequences to become the monopoly it was 10 years ago.

Now, while I cannot prove that any action will or will not take place in the future, neither can you. Prove that I won’t sue you tomorrow because you’re being an idiot and I take personal offense to that. I can say that I won’t. I can assure you that the statement is true, because I wouldn’t waste my time nor the filing fees unless you have actually done something to damage me, though I could easily make the claim that you’ve committed defamation (libel) and that I am hurt by it—I am not, nor have I ever been, an apologist for Microsoft; on the other side of the coin, I am not filled with blind ripe hatred for them, either. Note that I am not stipulating that you are, but I will say that you seem to be. Still, you have no proof that I won’t do that, or that I will. Demanding someone to prove something from the future is plain idiocy only used to fluff the argument.

What I can say is this: Microsoft has stated that the ECMA standards are covered under their Community Promise. The Community Promise can be agreed to by any legally competent member of the public who is of age to enter into an agreement. Should Microsoft sue someone who is covered by and has agreed to the Community Promise (which, read carefully, does have obligations that the implementor must pay attention to) and the suit is brought without cause as outlined in the Community Promise, then the lawsuit is mala fide and is thus subject to summary judgment.

And I see you brought up TomTom again. Let’s clear that one up a bit, shall we? Any person or company can sue any other person or company for any cause, real, perceived, or just plain ficticious. I *can* sue you if you are so ugly that you cause me to vomit. I will likely never win that case, so it largely would not matter. It’d be 15 seconds of hoopla, go away, never to be generally heard of again. Or I *can* sue you because you called me something which I am most assuredly not, in a public forum, and I could feel incensed enough with you so as to take you to court to lay out my claims and proof (my entire computer network would be a good start) that I am no such apologist. Fortunately, logical (that is, formal) arguments hold up more in court than they do in interpersonal communications, where they are often ignored. I could probably win that case and leave you with your head spinning, wondering how I won, because you seem the type that would rather make emotionally-charged arguments than listen to a boring real argument and its proof. Don’t worry, I won’t bother; it’s really not worth the time or money, especially if you’re not in the country.

Oh, right. That means the problem isn’t the lawsuit. It was the *settlement*. And let me tell you, that was a *stupid* move, insofar as it threw a lot of vaguity on a fire for the FUD-slinging crowed to pick up and throw. While we cannot be sure of the terms of the settlement, since they were not disclosed, it would make sense only if it were a measure taken to prevent a whole patent war of sorts—which is in everyone’s worst interest, but is often perceived to be in the everyone’s best interest. A patent world war, right now, in this time, would be absolutely beautiful. It’d be the one true way to expose just how much stupidity, incompetence, wimpy settlements and a broken system to begin with all mixed together throughout time created this ugly mess, and it would ultimately be repaired.

That is exactly why we have three major components to the legal system. The truly underlying problem is that we, arguably the most important parts of the system of government are seeing a broken system combined with fear (of said broken system), and so we dart, weave, and try hard as hell to avoid getting entangled with it, even if it that is the most reasonable option available to fix it (and believe you me, it *is* available). Perhaps the largest of all the choice rocks to live under.

Further, this is not some PR conference that we’re talking about. We’re talking about a document that you can print right now and retain, should you choose to do so. A document which, in the event of a suit brought forth for any of the causes not listed in this document, could be used to demonstrate the frivolousness of the suit on the basis that the suit is brought mala fide due to blatant misrepresentation on the part of Microsoft, the corporation.

How you can call something which does not exist “blatantly obvious” is beyond me. The ECMA standards are not only controlled by Microsoft, but also HP and Intel, all of whom are the submitters of the standards to the ECMA. So Microsoft is quite nearly impossibly able to slip in ways to make the standard only possible on a Win32 implementation (not to mention the sheer difficulty of doing that in the first place) and it largely consists of material which is simply not patentable under the current legal system. Combine this with the fact that any advocate of your position has yet to reveal a valid patent against Mono (or virtually any other nontrivial software project along the same lines, such as Wine, or even not along the same lines, such as the Linux kernel—which, don’t forget, Microsoft alleges infringes on 200+ of its active patents) and what you have is clear: fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Now that the potential and perceived threat has been addressed in this situation, wouldn’t it be time to find a new fight? Really.

You tell me to trust you when you say that the patents Microsoft claimed on the Linux kernel are fictitious. No apologies, but I won’t. Or when you say that Mono is going to be used to crush Linux distributors later, given that this would be an utterly impossible action to carry out; the attempt itself would land even a company with Microsoft’s bankroll near or in bankruptcy. You’re talking about hundreds, if not thousands, of entities around the world; not all of which are going to be reachable, even for Microsoft.

Hrm. I’m reminded of something you may want to watch; there’s a movie about a company called NURV, movie’s called Antitrust. I think you’d like the bad guy in the movie.

What suggests that Mono is usable is a through reading of the law, both legislative and case law, which not only explains the tests that patents must pass to be valid (and spells out that just because a patent is granted does not mean that it is valid). What suggests that Mono is safe? Hell. What suggests that a landline is safe, or a mobile phone? What suggests that 40 hours of work in a week is safe? What suggests that a driving a car (or riding or walking around cars) is safe? Pretty much nothing. There is nothing in this world—nothing—that is safe.

However, and here is the secret, safe isn’t the thing you ought to be looking for. In anything, everything that all we people do, there is risk. What do you do with risk? I suppose that depends on the type of person you are. Some people run from it. Others will assess the risks, understand them, learn how to mitigate them, and then do whatever it is that they were going to do anyway. And lastly is the group that just doesn’t give a flying rat’s derrière about any of it and just behave foolishly and self-destructively. Two ends of spectrum, and but one listed option somewhere about center on it, which countless variations in between (some types of risks are addressable, others need to be feared and avoided like plague, etc.). Most of us probably fall somewhere between the left (run) and center (mitigate), at least if we look at it that way. Take a look at people who go places in life and see what they do. Rarely do you see one who sits at either end of the spectrum, choosing instead to hover closer to center. Hrm. Risk mitigation sounds pretty safe to me. Oh, but it requires that you not get all fearful of everything and look at everything with a clear mind. That’s the only catch. As I have done already several times now, then, I cite existing U.S. law and existing U.S. case law (20+ years of it, though the history can be found well enough by following the trail of law and case law back) and I cite the current legal climate to show that any risks that perhaps may develop in the future can be mitigated. I cite as an example of one method of mitigation a fully functional human brain with an IQ of over, I don’t know, 90 or so, who is trained in the art of thinking, who can mitigate ahead-of-time in an intelligent fashion to begin with, by not putting all of his or her eggs in a single basket.

And while Microsoft (specifically, Bill Gates at “Micro-Soft”, as it was then) can be credited with starting the positional attack on software freedom as far back as in the 1970s, with his so-called open letter to hobbyists, was the foundation of that. Questioning whether mere hobbyists could build good software at all, whining about spending $40,000 of computer time to build Altair BASIC and launching into an attack on those who do nothing but steal software, because that’s what hobbyists do, right? Talking about his company only ever breaking even and software not being a profit industry. Much farther back than 1998.

So, what’s the threat? Please, cite something that has relevance and significance that identifies it. Say, a patent that would be held valid to begin with. Though I’ll accept any patent covering the CLI, really. C# can’t be patented and any patent on it would be absolutely laughable, so I’m not going to include that, but hey, if they have patented technology in their version of the compiler, I’d sure like to know about it. I’d love just once to actually have something to read from your side of the table that is, say, a legal source document proving that there might even be a basis for the patent argument, since that argument necessitates a patent existing in the first place.

Besides, if someone would produce a bloody patent, the patent could be shown not only to the Mono people to fix in their code, but the GNU people and the countless other unaffiliated programmers, including freelancers, so that everyone could know what to code around. Maybe you ought to come up with a Web site that takes such submissions, classifying them logistically in categories programmers would expect to find them in, thus reducing the barrier to entry to determine what cannot legally be done and for how long it cannot legally be done. If there already is a project like this, then by goodness market for it. Get its name out there, get people to know about it. That would be useful, if you have the time and the energy for it. And, in the very spirit that free software (including reimplementations of proprietary software rewritten as free software or implementations of standards including compression and encryption standards) is developed, you’d be contributing back in a way that is meaningful.

So far this is typical Microsoft behavior. And I won’t feel safe using Mono just because a company that has declared numerous times TO THIS DAY it wants to bury Linux and all FOSS says that it is safe. Making it an ECMA standard doesn’t indemnify us, either. Unless Microsoft actually signed a CONTRACT with someone saying that Mono will never be the subject of a lawsuit, your little “promise” from Microsoft is worth crap. They’ve gone back on promises way too much for me to blindly trust everything Microsoft tells me like you apparently do. Let me guess, are you one of those dumb shits who actually started blogging with headlines like “Microsoft Goes Open Source” when it tried to get projects like Blender hooked on .NET so they’d be stuck on Windows?

So, how about this: You believe Microsoft won’t sue us over Mono despite having a long history of doing similar things? Prove it. Prove to me that Microsoft will actually keep that promise. I highly doubt they will. Mono is a patent death trap. And SCOTUS cases are not patent system reform. Microsoft already sued TomTom for patents earrlier this year. There’s nothing. NOTHING. Stopping

Just because Microsoft says it in a PR conference doesn’t make it so. Unless we see Microsoft signing a contract or a real patent reform happens, there’s nothing safe in Mono. At all. Unless, of course, you’re a SuSE user. They’re the only people actually indemnified from the blatantly obvious Mono patent death trap.

As for the “three-pronged” patent test, it doesn’t need to actually WIN a patent lawsuit to do damage. Settlements can cause enough damage, and settlements are most common in those cases, as lawsuits are prohibitively expensive. On top of this, Microsoft has the money, not the FOSS projects and users foolishly using Mono and exposing themselves to this, and thus will usually be forced into the “painless” option of bending over and taking it up the ass, which is what Mcirosoft wants, not a won lawsuit. Microsoft didn’t sue over the fictional patent-infringements in Linux not just because they were fictional but also because what Microsoft wanted was to manipulate Linux distributors, not crush them outright. That’s what Mono will be for later, trust me.

This is not an outdated problem. There’s nothing that suggests Mono is safe beyond the non-credible word of a monopolistic global corporation that has, since 1998, declared FOSS and Linux its greatest threat and enemy. Perhaps you can actually cite something NOT written by Microsoft that proves Mono is safe? Oh wait, you can’t.

As far as citing who and what and whatever—forget it. Quit blindly citing things, go out there, and read the laws as they are written. Read the case law as it is published and presently standing. Learn a bit. It’ll help you a great deal to be able to forumlate an opinion based on the facts, straight from the sources, instead of digested time and time again through people on both sides that clearly have a bias.

I’d move for closure of additional comments on this old post. Not only has it become irrelevant, but it’s bloody time to move on. Maybe start working to improve the situation moreso than it has already improved itself and make waves to completely, explicitly prohibit software patents. While current patent law (at least in the U.S.) and the legal climate (again, at least in the U.S.) makes it relatively easy to challenge software patents and win (if you actually bother to go through with the court case, unlike what TomTom did, which was asinine; though less asinine than the sensationalist and uninformed “reporting” that surrounded it). There is a three-pronged legal test on patents which determine their validity here in the States, and most—if not all—software patents (including any that could even remotely possibly be asserted on the CLI; though to know that you’d have to read patent law, case law as pertains to patents, and the ECMA standards themselves) fail this test, just as business process patents do (see current Bilski case and keep an eye on it for the SCOTUS ruling sometime later this year). Already, we are seeing software patents being invalidated on the basis of this ruling, and we are seeing that the USPTO is proactively rejecting more (already known to be invalid) software patents after the case issued clarification on the patent test—which, by the way, was established 20+ years ago, by the Supreme Court.

The problem here in this small event, and the overall problem in our society, is that rarely is there a time when people stop to think and validate the information that they are given. Why is it that a layman should never argue in a court for himself, do you suppose? It’s not because lawyers have minds that are naturally attuned to the premise of law. There are many pretty bad lawyers out there. It is (in part, mind, and don’t harp on this point as being the only one, it’s just a part—the only relevant part for the purposes of this discussion anyway) because a lawyer can be held accountable for not doing his job well. And many law-savvy non-laywers have been able to take their lawyers to court for sheer incompetence. Legislation, while it can be sometimes hard to understand, is modified and formed in part by the courts by case law (which is often significantly easier to read). So, seriously people. Stop typing for a while, and start reading, eh?