3 ms·

It was a FUD attack on something that really couldn't have been a trap legally or intellectually. I guess the sticking point is that I don't see how it couldn'

It was a FUD attack on something that really couldn't have been a trap legally or intellectually. I guess the sticking point is that I don't see how it couldn't have been a trap legally or intellectually. X exists. X is patented. Making a clone of X and using that clone in critical technologies is a risky strategy, unless you get an explicit legal guarantee that you won't be sued. It happened to C#, it happened to MP3, it happened to H.264. All very similar situations. Now, you may say that C# is different than MP3 or H.264 because you personally reviewed MS's patents and you personally guarantee that none of them actually apply to Mono, so we're all in the clear. That is awesome, because as most software developers are not patent lawyers, we lack the ability to do that ourselves. We just know that some people said it's a problem, others said it's not, and MS itself was silent for quite some time. But it's not the same as an affirmative statement from MS saying they're not going to sue other C# implementations for patent infringement. You are right that MS may have gotten a bit more attention than another company would have in the same situation. If so, it can be reasonably explained by that old "fool me once" quote. But even so, the whole situation could have been diffused by MS if they wanted to. Now we are looking 6 years later and well things have really opened up in C# and mono? They seem to have. To be honest I haven't been following the developments of the past couple years in great detail because it seems like the "C# on Linux" ship has already sailed. And that's a damn shame. I think C# is a great language. It fits a niche that still isn't really filled in the Linux ecosystem (although that niche is getting smaller and smaller as time goes on and other technologies develop).

baghira 11y ago
I have to agree. Even Gnome developers described the thing as "putting our balls in Redmond's hands": http://lu.is/blog/index.cgi/531.html http://lu.is/blog/index.cgi/531.html. In fact the mono patent situation remained unclear for years, until 2009 if I remember correctly. And in 2006 there was the whole Novell-Microsoft kerfuffle, with Ballmer saying that only Suse Linux users were not violating Microsoft intellectual property http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/2006/11/16/ballmer-on-novell-linux-and-patents/ http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/2006/11/16/ballmer-on-no.... So I really would not call the reaction FUD. Also, adding my personal experience from that period, I'd say that many Linux desktop users, myself included, were not interested in adding mono as another dependency to the stack, especially to run three applications: a note-taking application (tomboy), photo management (f-spot) or the banshee music player(which, I'm sorry to say, was one of the most crash-happy pieces of gnome). Samba and ffmpeg (well, the patented parts thereof) were never meant to be building blocks on which to write a lot free software, they are ways to ensure compatibility with existing closed solutions. I have some simpathy for de Icaza's idea that, since C# is a nice programming language, people should be encouraged and helped to use it, but the combination of patents' threat and frankly the "let's just put it in gnome!" approach doomed the effort. Also, in hindsight, mono would have (has?) worked better in the entreprise sector, rather than in desktop environment (Ruby is about as open as it gets, but it is not used for DE's stuff, execpt YAST2 I think). Hopefully now that most of the dotnet stack is open (except the bits that do depend on windows e.g. WindowsForm, if I'm not mistaken) we'll see a rebirth of interest.

baghira 11y ago

I have to agree. Even Gnome developers described the thing as "putting our balls in Redmond's hands": http://lu.is/blog/index.cgi/531.html http://lu.is/blog/index.cgi/531.html. In fact the mono patent situation remained unclear for years, until 2009 if I remember correctly. And in 2006 there was the whole Novell-Microsoft kerfuffle, with Ballmer saying that only Suse Linux users were not violating Microsoft intellectual property http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/2006/11/16/ballmer-on-novell-linux-and-patents/ http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/2006/11/16/ballmer-on-no.... So I really would not call the reaction FUD. Also, adding my personal experience from that period, I'd say that many Linux desktop users, myself included, were not interested in adding mono as another dependency to the stack, especially to run three applications: a note-taking application (tomboy), photo management (f-spot) or the banshee music player(which, I'm sorry to say, was one of the most crash-happy pieces of gnome). Samba and ffmpeg (well, the patented parts thereof) were never meant to be building blocks on which to write a lot free software, they are ways to ensure compatibility with existing closed solutions. I have some simpathy for de Icaza's idea that, since C# is a nice programming language, people should be encouraged and helped to use it, but the combination of patents' threat and frankly the "let's just put it in gnome!" approach doomed the effort. Also, in hindsight, mono would have (has?) worked better in the entreprise sector, rather than in desktop environment (Ruby is about as open as it gets, but it is not used for DE's stuff, execpt YAST2 I think). Hopefully now that most of the dotnet stack is open (except the bits that do depend on windows e.g. WindowsForm, if I'm not mistaken) we'll see a rebirth of interest.