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The FSF warns (again) against Mono: and correctly soThe FSF warns (again) against Mono: and correctly soPosted Jul 17, 2009 16:48 UTC (Fri) by jeff@uclinux.org (guest, #8024)In reply to: The FSF warns (again) against Mono by trasz Parent article: The FSF warns (again) against Mono
I find it difficult to believe that intelligent people (evidenced by being a part of this community
discussion) still argue for the use of MicroSoft patented IP, in this case mono, after the VFAT debacle which is still(!) unfolding even now.
I suppose you were not the one on the receiving end of the strategic VFAT lawsuit, so it's safe to
I told you I'd shoot, but you didn't believe me. Why didn't you believe me?
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The FSF warns (again) against Mono: and correctly so Posted Jul 17, 2009 21:34 UTC (Fri) by rahvin (subscriber, #16953) [Link]
If Microsoft was truly interested in not using the patents against Linux in the future they would note which patents apply. Their refusal to even list the patents they believe Linux infringes is tantamount proof that they intend to use them against Linux in the future because if they told us which ones apply, developers and free software lawyers could work together to evade the patents (or they could work to invalidate the patent) like they are trying to do with the VFAT patches.
Microsoft doesn't want their patents to be worked around because then they can't be used as a weapon. This is why they won't say which patents they believe apply. Tack that in with how they used the VFAT patent against Tom-Tom and everyone should be absolutely convinced how MS will proceed once Linux starts hurting windows market share. It's imperative that like Samba we treat these MS "inventions" as toxic elements that exist ONLY for interoperability with windows and are never ever a required part of any distribution.
The FSF warns (again) against Mono: and correctly so Posted Jul 18, 2009 0:55 UTC (Sat) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link] If Microsoft was truly interested in not using the patents against Linux in the future they would note which patents apply. Their refusal to even list the patents they believe Linux infringes is tantamount proof that they intend to use them against Linux in the future because if they told us which ones apply, developers and free software lawyers could work together to evade the patents (or they could work to invalidate the patent) like they are trying to do with the VFAT patches. I have never seen this put so clearly. 100% agreed.
The FSF warns (again) against Mono: and correctly so Posted Jul 18, 2009 17:57 UTC (Sat) by directhex (subscriber, #58519) [Link]
It's a tricky game, that.
Saying "this app is free from this patent" means two levels of work need to be done
1) you need to determine that the patent you hold is enforcable, and relates to the kind of thing an app does (the "easy" stage, although if you own thousands of patents with a combination of hundreds of thousands of claims, it might actually be tricky to identify specific ones)
2) you need to perform a detailed analysis of the app in order to determine whether its implementation really does infringe on the patent in (1)
A general "yeah, we probably have patents on X, or stuff like it" is much much cheaper to say - albeit less precise in its implications. But saying "yeah, we probably have patents on X, but don't worry, whatever they are, you can use them" is somewhat LESS concerning than "you can use patent X" whilst keeping Y and Z secret
The FSF warns (again) against Mono: and correctly so Posted Jul 19, 2009 0:41 UTC (Sun) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link]
You are right. Plus, it occurred to me that if Microsoft listed all patents that they claim are infringed by Free Software, valid or not, it would be much harder to claim plausible deniability.
Patent X might be utter crap (like the long file names patent), but as soon as Microsoft announces it, everybody would have to stop using it, possibly for many years until it is invalidated.
Damn. It appears that no matter what Microsoft does, short of granting Comprehensive Patent License, it is all very very bad.
The FSF warns (again) against Mono: and correctly so Posted Jul 19, 2009 20:53 UTC (Sun) by directhex (subscriber, #58519) [Link]
Don't worry, no matter what they do, even your suggestion, they're still worse than Satan, Jack the Ripper, and Hitler combined
The FSF warns (again) against Mono: and correctly so Posted Jul 20, 2009 1:28 UTC (Mon) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link]
Goodwin strikes again! :-)
Seriously though, I actually don't think that Microsoft is "evil" - that would be ridiculous. They are a for-profit corporation, which is allowed and expected to do whatever possible within the law for said profits. Clearly enforcing their patents is legal and desirable from their point of view.
Objectively I can't blame them for that. But clearly they are in a position of strength, which honestly scares me.
The FSF warns (again) against Mono: and correctly so Posted Jul 18, 2009 6:25 UTC (Sat) by AlexHudson (guest, #41828) [Link]
Not everyone is willing to cede ground to Microsoft simply because they have patents in areas. Give up Mono now, the same logic the applies to Java, Parrot, etc. We give up Samba after that, then we give up ODF, then we give up virtualisation, and then we give up 3D drivers.
Eventually you end up with nothing. This is not a worthwhile or long-term tactic, anyone who thinks there are many "Mono-only" patents out there that we can avoid by just burying our head in the sand is thinking extremely wishfully.
And if you look, you'll also see Microsoft aren't attacking technologies like Mono. That wouldn't make sense; that would turn people off .net. They're attacking things which are completely unrelated but competitive: e.g., having people sign agreements over the Linux kernel.
Microsoft aren't going to be attacking the likes of Mono and OpenOffice.org that soon. The battle lines are in a very different area, and tearing ourselves up over stuff Microsoft likely gives two hoots about is undoubtedly helping them.
The FSF warns (again) against Mono: and correctly so Posted Jul 18, 2009 14:14 UTC (Sat) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] Not everyone is willing to cede ground to Microsoft simply because they have patents in areas. But you have to weigh the risks and benefits. Obviously, we'd fight for the right to run (for example) Linux, the X Window System, SSH, etc. because they are core parts of the free software infrastructure. If you are concerned about Windows interoperability, you'll also fight for the right to run Samba. C# and Mono simply don't seem (to me, anyway) to have enough benefits to outweigh the risks. Besides, the patent threat is only one problem. The far larger problem is trying to keep up with a technology Microsoft controls and can change on a whim. The Linux implementations of C# and Mono will always be poor substitutes for the "real thing", and Microsoft will use that as a weapon against free software.
The FSF warns (again) against Mono: and correctly so Posted Jul 19, 2009 10:30 UTC (Sun) by AlexHudson (guest, #41828) [Link]
The "keeping up with MS" is a bit of a red herring. Mono is vastly usable in its own right, and is in fact ahead of the Microsoft implementation in key areas (e.g, compilation to static code, support for SIMD, etc.). People who think Mono is just copying .net are basically wrong.
The situation isn't vastly different to other areas anyway: MS have long had arguably a much better C/C++ compiler than gcc; big apps like OpenOffice.org enjoy a performance boost on W32. We lag them technologically in many areas. That's a different issue to software freedom and always has been.
I'm sure plenty of people won't see the benefit in using Mono. For the most part, they are not the target audience for it anyway: the target are those vast hoards of developers who are competent in Visual Studio but who would run screaming from vi/emacs.
The FSF warns (again) against Mono: and correctly so Posted Jul 19, 2009 16:12 UTC (Sun) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] I'm sure plenty of people won't see the benefit in using Mono. For the most part, they are not the target audience for it anyway: the target are those vast hoards of developers who are competent in Visual Studio but who would run screaming from vi/emacs. And for that constituency, Mono will fail unless it slavishly keeps up with Microsoft, feature-for-feature. The people you're talking about are first and foremost Windows developers, who will deign to port to non-Windows platforms as long as it's a no-brainer. They won't show the slightest interest in Mono unless it can be used to port Windows apps effortlessly. And this is doomed to failure. Mono and C# have lots of risks and no benefits for Linux users. Likewise, they are not yet suitable for Windows developers looking for an effortless port. All Mono and C# do is waste developers' time when they could be working on more valuable free software projects.
The FSF warns (again) against Mono: and correctly so Posted Jul 20, 2009 7:41 UTC (Mon) by AlexHudson (guest, #41828) [Link]
I'm not sure why you think it's useless for that constituency. The offer isn't "run your Windows apps on Linux" - for the most part, people sadly don't care a huge amount about that.
The offer is "use your Windows dev skills on other platforms". That's why we've seen take-up of Mono in places like the games industry: it's about transfer of _skills_, not transfer of _source_.
The FSF warns (again) against Mono: and correctly so Posted Jul 20, 2009 11:47 UTC (Mon) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] The offer is "use your Windows dev skills on other platforms". That's why we've seen take-up of Mono in places like the games industry: it's about transfer of _skills_, not transfer of _source_. Sorry, I don't buy this. Any competent programmer can pick up a different language and environment fairly quickly. I own a software company, and I'm in charge of hiring developers. Any developer who is scared off because we use a different language or don't use Visual Studio would automatically go into my "do not hire" list. What a lot of people call "Windows dev skills" are nothing more than dilettante-level noodling around with pretty IDEs. Once such "developers" run smack into any non-Windowsism (which they will), they get stuck and panic. I've observed this several times in my career, which is why I no longer bother hiring developers unless they have some non-Windows experience.
The FSF warns (again) against Mono: and correctly so Posted Jul 20, 2009 11:56 UTC (Mon) by AlexHudson (guest, #41828) [Link]
Whether or not these "dilettantes" are people you would hire is entirely orthogonal to the fact that they exist or the desire to support them, even if we limited the argument to that subset alone.
In any event, it's not entirely about capability (though there would definitely be people entirely stuck moving from VS to [for example] vim). It's about transferability of skills.
To much argument about Mono is "I don't need/like it therefore nobody else should do either". It misses the point.
The FSF warns (again) against Mono: and correctly so Posted Jul 20, 2009 14:05 UTC (Mon) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] To much argument about Mono is "I don't need/like it therefore nobody else should do either". It misses the point. The point is that Mono does nothing very useful for the Linux community. It's also very risky for that same community, and it commits the Mono developers to slavishly following proprietary standards set by a company very hostile to free software. So really, I don't care if people use Mono on Linux. I would care very much if Mono were installed by default on a Linux distro, or became used for critical components of a Linux distro. That's crossing the line.
The FSF warns (again) against Mono: and correctly so Posted Jul 20, 2009 21:43 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
If you were to force me to use vi I would get stuck and panic: the
keybindings simply fall out of my skull. But everyone knows Emacs is a religion as well as an editor, so forcing me to use anything else would be religious intolerance. :)
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