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No. That was/is just FSF FUD. You have always been able to build anything on top of it without concerns about patents from the implementation. This claim was s
by useerup 12y ago
No. That was/is just FSF FUD.
You have always been able to build anything on top of it without concerns about patents from the implementation. This claim was so hilarious that it is incomprehensible that anyone ever believed it.
You have also been able to reimplement .NET CLR and core libraries without fear of patent litigation (from Microsoft). They have placed the CLR and core libraries under the legal estoppel of the community promise since 2007 (IIRC), in addition to publicly granting patent license to anyone creating an implementation of NET CLR and core libraries from the specifications. This latter was part of the process under which C#, .NET CLR and core libraries was standardized under ISO. A precondition for the standardization was that any necessary patents (for implementation) be offered on RAND terms (reasonable and non-discriminatory). Microsoft has always offered the patent grants free.
The community promise was created in response to FUD from (among others) FSF that Microsoft would just sue anyway (despite patent grants), and with their vast army of lawyers and deep coffers they could bury in court. The community promise creates legal estoppel, whereby a case by Microsoft would be dismissed if you acted "in good faith" by relying on the promise.
Open sourcing Parallel LINQ has no bearing on the patent status of anything building on top of it. If you believe the FSF FUD, you will be ensnared in .NET technology and Microsoft will sue you out of existence if you ever become successful. If you do not believe the FUD, you can continue to take advantage of LINQ, Parallel LINQ, .NET, C#, F# etc.
- MichaelGG 12y agoWhen I read the community promise, it seemed to still allow Microsoft to go after competitors and use patents "defensively". So it's not impossible that you end up fighting MS on an unrelated matter, then they could use their promised patents against you. Probably incredibly unlikely, but a strict interpretation might view it as a risk. Or did I misunderstand?
- makomk 12y agoNo, it's not just FUD, and it doesn't just apply to LINQ either. Microsoft only promised not to sue over certain kinds of patent infringement in core libraries; that promise didn't extend to code you wrote on top of those libraries, which is unsurprising. Unfortunately they've patented a bunch of common ways of using .NET functionality, including many of the things you might use LINQ for and one of the most common idioms for using delegagtes and events. (Both of the commonly used GUI libraries - Windows.Forms and Gtk# - infringe the latter patent. So if you're running a GUI-based .NET app on anything but Windows then Microsoft can sue you if they ever decide it's to their advantage to do so.)
- MagicWishMonkey 12y agoIf Microsoft is willing to spend millions of dollars and take a huge PR hit to sue you, it's safe to assume that whatever you've built is successful/popular enough to make you very a wealthy man. At that point, who cares?
- kbenson 12y agoPossibly it matters if it's not you that's sued, but you have similar usage as the company that is. Investors may or may not find that an acceptable risk if MegaCorp XYZ is currently embroiled in a large lawsuit. For example, if your company had the same strategy as Google (and/or made some similar mistakes) with regard to circumventing Java licensing/restrictions, I could see investors or possible investors that were aware of that being somewhat spooked at certain points in the past.