[clug] Mono in Linux

[Nathan O'Sullivan]

You seem have a different interpretation of the Novell's patent 
agreement to the mainstream press, which primarily focused Microsoft's 
unsubstantiated claims relating to patents that cover parts of Linux.

I also was not aware that Mono was a money-making machine for Novell; 
but you may be right. Certainly it we should all evaluate what these 
large companies are doing and why, because if it benefits us its only 
incidental.

> I just don't understand why free software developers would willingly
> put themselves in that position. Free software should be steering
> clear of all patent issues that they know about and not willfully
> entering into them.
>
> I guess we'll see what happens :-)
>
>   

I guess there's shades of the Linus Torvald's BitKeeper issue at play 
here. Your position is one extreme, to stay as far away from potential 
patent issues wherever you see them.

My position is at the other end, where patent infringement is an 
unfortunate fact of life no matter what you do. Mono is GPL, C# is an 
ECMA standard, and as a Free Software advocate that is enough for me.

I think this whole discussion can be mostly summarised with "should be steering clear of all patent issues that they know about" requires agreeing on what exactly constitutes a "patent issue"; and indeed, that is the problem with the wider pro-Mono anti-Mono argument.

If Mono was in a VFAT situation, I'm sure we'd all agree Mono was poison.  Its not, even if one day it might be - everyone reacts differently to that uncertainty.

Regards
Nathan