Richard Stallman on .NET, Mono and DotGNU

Last week I published a short correspondence I had with Richard Stallman on the subject of the GNU GPL and copyright. As I mentioned, that was from a couple of years ago, but I thought it might be worth posting now given the lively interest in the issues it raises.

On Open Enterprise.

Are Microsoft's Promises For Ever?

This sounds good:

I have some good news to announce: Microsoft will be applying the Community Promise to the ECMA 334 and ECMA 335 specs.

ECMA 334 specifies the form and establishes the interpretation of programs written in the C# programming language, while the ECMA 335 standard defines the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) in which applications written in multiple high-level languages can be executed in different system environments without the need to rewrite those applications to take into consideration the unique characteristics of those environments.

"The Community Promise is an excellent vehicle and, in this situation, ensures the best balance of interoperability and flexibility for developers," Scott Guthrie, the Corporate Vice President for the .Net Developer Platform, told me July 6.

It is important to note that, under the Community Promise, anyone can freely implement these specifications with their technology, code, and solutions.

You do not need to sign a license agreement, or otherwise communicate to Microsoft how you will implement the specifications.

The Promise applies to developers, distributors, and users of Covered Implementations without regard to the development model that created the implementations, the type of copyright licenses under which it is distributed, or the associated business model.

Under the Community Promise, Microsoft provides assurance that it will not assert its Necessary Claims against anyone who makes, uses, sells, offers for sale, imports, or distributes any Covered Implementation under any type of development or distribution model, including open-source licensing models such as the LGPL or GPL.

But boring old sceptic that I am, I have memories of this:

The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), provider of pro-bono legal services to protect and advance free and open source software, today published a paper that considers the legal implications of Microsoft's Open Specification Promise (OSP) and explains why it should not be relied upon by developers concerned about patent risk.

SFLC published the paper in response to questions from its clients and the community about the OSP and its compatibility with the GNU General Public License (GPL). The paper says that the promise should not be relied upon because of Microsoft's ability to revoke the promise for future versions of specifications, the promise's limited scope, and its incompatibility with free software licenses, including the GPL.

That was then, of course, what about now? Well, here's what the FAQ says on the subject:

Q: Does this CP apply to all versions of the specification, including future revisions?

A: The Community Promise applies to all existing versions of the specifications designated on the public list posted at /interop/cp/, unless otherwise noted with respect to a particular specification.

Now, is it just me, or does Microsoft conspicuously fail to answer its own question? The question was: does it apply to all versions *including* future revision? And Microsoft's answer is about *existing* versions: so doesn't that mean it could simply not apply the promise to a future version? Isn't this the same problem as with the Open Specification Promise? Just asking.

Open Enterprise Interview: Tamás Bíró, Sense/Net

Once hackers have stopped arguing whether it's “free software” or “open source”, and discussing the relative merits of GNOME or KDE, they can always get stuck into the perennial question of whether they ought to develop applications using Mono, tied as it is to Microsoft's .NET framework, or not....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Why Mono and Samba Are Patently Different

Here's a very good question: why are people (including me) nasty to Mono, but nice to Samba?

On Open Enterprise blog.

The Second Life of Philip Rosedale

Last week I chatted to the founder of Second Life, Philip Rosedale. He was telling me how happy he was that he'd found a new CEO to take over the day-to-day running of Linden Lab. Well, he would say that, wouldn't he? Except that in this case, I believe him....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Solving the Mono Problem

Alan Lord grapples manfully with Mono:

The nasty taste which has always ‘ever-so-slightly’ tainted my use of Ubuntu is that Mono is there only to support applications written in languages and for platforms which are basically Microsoft’s. It encourages software development using systems that are based on technologies almost certainly encumbered by a whole raft of M$ patents. To my mind, there are many great non M$ languages and architectures out there which are almost part-and-parcel of Linux programming and I see no need to bring .NET, ASP or even Visual Basic to my desktop. If I want to write an application, I could use PHP, Python, PERL, C, C++, Java and, of course, many others. Why do I need to endorse and encourage the proliferation of non-free software by relying on M$’s IP and the smell of their stinky patents?

Interesting discussion of what happens when you rip Mono out of Ubuntu: nothing, it seems....

The Beginning of the End for Novell?

This is a characteristically brilliant post from Pam over at Groklaw, particularly in the way it uses the Wayback machine to skewer Novell as it twists in the wind. It concludes:

So, here's the question I have for Novell: what happened to that promise to protect FOSS with its patent portfolio? Novell did say it. We relied upon it, and OIN is totally separate from the above promise. I mention that because some Novell guys have been saying that Novell never made any such promise or that the OIN patents fulfill the promise. Read the promise again. Novell clearly promised to use its patent portfolio, not OIN's, and Novell appears to have just bargained that patent portfolio away, giving Microsoft a clear path to now bring patent infringement claims against everyone else. Novell's character and honor is on the line. And we await your statement with interest.

But arising from this, I too have a couple of questions that are starting to loom large in my mind:

Is this the beginning of the end for Mono? If Novell continues along its current path surely everything it touches will be regarded as tainted by the free software community, and Mono is sponsored by Novell. And now that Sun has done the decent thing with Java, there is a nice little programming language just waiting for all those disappointed hackers.

The other question is even bigger: is this the end for Novell? It seems to me that there is a broad-based and massive movement growing within the free software world to ostracise Novell utterly - something that will simply kill the company. As far as I know, this has never been done before - perhaps because the free software world simply wasn't strong enough. Now it is: are we about to see it claim its first victim? (Via AC/OS.)