LWN: Comments on "de Icaza: From Microsoft: C# and CLI under the Community Promise"

Microsoft really has us going...

nix — 2009-07-11T09:52:01+00:00

Well, part of this depends on how big the bytecode interpreters are. The
bytecode interpreter is probably small: the downside is the entire
heavyweight optimizer, native-code JITter, and enormous library that
probably comes with it.

Lua is a pretty good example of an interpreted language so small and fast
that you don't *care* if a program uses it (and with LuaJIT the speed hit
drops even further to the point where it's often indistinguishable from
native code). The 'big' languages with big libraries (Python and Perl to
some degree: Java and C# definitely) you always know are there :/
amazingly the Java people tried to turn this into a *benefit* -- the '100%
Pure Java' thing, which was supposed to emphasise binary-portability
benefits that nobody needs and instead emphasised 'hey, this program is
really big and slow, go find something else' to most of its potential
users.

de Icaza: From Microsoft: C# and CLI under the Community Promise

jlokier — 2009-07-10T18:48:08+00:00

No. LINQ is part of the Microsoft C# language, but where is it in ECMA?

Microsoft really has us going...

Quazatron — 2009-07-09T16:44:42+00:00

I have nothing against C# -- except that it's yet another runtime bytecode interpreter to have loaded, consuming precious memory, in order to run a simple note taking program.

I don't run Mono apps for the same reason I don't run KDE apps when using a Gnome desktop: memory consumption.

I already have a python instance running on my desktop. I'd like it if Gnome developers kept the language selection to a minimum. If they start including applications made in every language under the sun, soon we'll need Java, PHP, Javascript, Ruby and OCaml runtimes loaded as well.

What does this improve??

epa — 2009-07-09T15:33:02+00:00

When he says it doesn't change Fedora's position at all, he means that Fedora already ship Mono. They were happy with the legal situation even before this announcement, and this announcement doesn't change anything. Fedora refuses to ship Moonlight (for not very good reasons IMHO) and it is not covered by this announcement, so they are going to continue with that policy.

Or

man_ls — 2009-07-08T16:55:26+00:00

It would also be easy if Microsoft had never asserted their patents against anyone. As it is they seem to just want to create FUD -- OH NOES CANT BE!

Microsoft really has us going...

dgm — 2009-07-08T13:45:17+00:00

Never forget that no matter how open the specification, Microsoft still retains full control of the intellectual property.

This "promise" allows you to use their purported property, if and only if you play by their rules (there is, at least, one "kill switch".)
So, no, it's not any safer to use Mono (.NET or not) than before.

In my opinion, we should be helping people migrate off .NET ASAP, not helping it spread. To that goal, Mono is a disaster. It can barely run non-trivial software written for .NET, and instead does encourage new developments in those patent encumbered technologies.

de Icaza: From Microsoft: C# and CLI under the Community Promise

jengelh — 2009-07-08T07:46:22+00:00

The whole thing would be totally easy if Microsoft just did assert their patents against someone.

Microsoft really has us going...

jamesh — 2009-07-08T06:11:42+00:00

Could you please explain why do you think Mono is useful and should be included in distributions? I wonder how this split affects those arguments as my feeling is that it doesn't.

The same reason as you'd include any framework in a distribution:

It is required by applications that would be nice to include in the distribution.
It is useful for people using the distribution as a development platform.

With the proposed split, some distributions might decide that only the core portion of Mono satisfies those goals (e.g. because the apps they want to include use GTK# rather than WinForms), and omit the portions not covered by Microsoft's promise.

my guess: not safe

njs — 2009-07-08T04:03:20+00:00

Can you clarify how you conclude that? The actual text begins:

> Microsoft irrevocably promises not to assert any Microsoft Necessary Claims against you for making, using, selling, offering for sale, importing or distributing any implementation [...]

Which on its face would seem to cover, well, not just making but also using, selling, etc.

Is the idea that in writing C# code you will necessarily produce additional instances of infringement, above and beyond those present in the runtime itself?

Protestations notwithstanding

ncm — 2009-07-08T02:43:36+00:00

As I and others have noted, "going after" users or distributors of Mono, who Microsoft has never addressed, is not the same as "going after" Novell or its employees who MS helped in developing Mono. It's in MS's interest for dependence on Mono to spread to all corners of the earth, just as it's in the interest of a codec or RAM bus developer to get its use standardized and unavoidable. In either case such activity broadens the field of possible licensees. Failing to assert a patent, for any number of years, does not reduce the force of the patent, until of course the patent expires. It's common, though, to stipulate in a license contract that royalty or other demands continue in force after the termination of the patent itself, so there's no hurry. Waiting until a few years before expiration to start extorting is just good business.

Therefore, all your protestations of MS's foreknowledge are irrelevant and, in fact, misleading.

I doesn't makes the rules, I doesn't legally advises about the rules, I only reports the rules.

And the moral...

jordanb — 2009-07-08T02:42:57+00:00

Well, Mono and Bono are a poor rhyme (it'd work better if you were referring to the singer), and you too the meter out back and shot it. ;)

Microsoft really has us going...

drag — 2009-07-08T02:08:56+00:00

Mono folks worked based off a standard Microsoft set up themselves. They shared code with Microsoft, went to Microsoft conventions, announced products, did demonstrations.

Microsoft even made sure to license them codecs free of charge in order to get silverlight legal to distribute for Novell.

Microsoft has had full knowledge of Mono from _day_one_.

Now Microsoft has publicly announced, under no uncertain terms, that they will absolutely not file claims against anybody who makes, uses, sells, distributes or imports in any manners.

Now you and other people decide that none of this means anything.. that a company can sit on patents for years and help a competitor and then all of a sudden a decade later go after them... even after publicly announcing, in writing on their own website that they won't. But from what I can tell and from what I know that is a whole bunch of flaming horseshit and, in fact, C# is safe to use.

Microsoft really has us going...

ncm — 2009-07-08T01:27:30+00:00

C# and CLI were [already] safe to implement. The questionable portions of Mono, from a legal standpoint, were the parts that implement .NET compatibility.

False. MS's US patents appear to cover possibly unavoidable details of implementation of CLI. They may assert these patents against Mono with or without .NET attached. As coriordan noted in 340344, protecting the Mono developers, if in fact this announcement does such a thing, does nothing for Mono distributors, Mono coders, or Mono users.

And the moral...

dskoll — 2009-07-08T01:26:42+00:00

Microsoft and Mono
Are the Spider to our Fly.
Nothing's done pro-bono:
They want OSS to die.

Better rhyming scheme? :-)

Promises, promises, promises

SEMW — 2009-07-07T23:45:44+00:00

No; as far as I can see, their complaints still apply. In particular, all the quotes from the OSP singled out for complaint are still to be found on the CP page.

de Icaza: From Microsoft: C# and CLI under the Community Promise

SEMW — 2009-07-07T23:37:54+00:00

In particular, I think bronson's mention of Estoppel above is worth expanding on here. I'll quote from the Wikipedia article:

"In general, estoppel protects an aggrieved party, if the counter-party induced an expectation from the aggrieved party, and the aggrieved party reasonably relied on the expectation and would suffer detriment if the expectation is not met.

"While there are many types of estoppel, in simpler terms, most estoppels prohibit an individual or group from being harmed as a result of another's deeds, statements or promises, when later actions or statements contradict or undermine what was originally stated, promised, or inferred."

"announced" on a blog? and only for complete implementations

SEMW — 2009-07-07T23:32:38+00:00

> First, take this with a grain of salt because there is apparently no official announcement from Microsoft, only an unaffiliated blog article with a single somewhat ambiguous quote

The LWN paragraph links to the Microsoft Community Promise page ( http://www.microsoft.com/interop/cp ), which lists C# and the CLI as covered specifications.

And the moral...

jordanb — 2009-07-07T23:21:44+00:00

That's pretty good. The meter is a bit off though. I think it works better like this:

If Microsoft to Mono
Is the spider to the fly
Then so be it, dear friends
That Mono has to die

That gives seven syllables in the first two lines, and six on the next with a rhythm:

U S U S U S U
S U S U S U S
U S U S S S
U S U S S S

The rhyme scheme is still a bit wonky though: A B C B

Microsoft really has us going...

drag — 2009-07-07T20:24:43+00:00

That would be right that Mono isn't .NET. But I think that C# with Gnome would still have positive benefits, even if your dealing with people that are only familar with .NET so far.

Microsoft really has us going...

tzafrir — 2009-07-07T20:06:49+00:00

The counter argument to that is that Mono and .Net are not the same thing. "Mono-Safe" seems to only cover basic parts. It also fails to cover later features of C# and the run-time (anything later than 2006. That's the latest thing I see on EMCA's page).

But those students will want features only available in Mono-Risky. And I wonder how we can reduce the risk here.

de Icaza: From Microsoft: C# and CLI under the Community Promise

rahulsundaram — 2009-07-07T19:51:54+00:00

Here is the correct release notes.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_12_Alpha_release_not...

And the moral...

ikm — 2009-07-07T19:47:45+00:00

"...If Microsoft to Mono
Is spider to the fly,
Then so be it, my dear friends -
That Mono has to die!"

(grinning :)

de Icaza: From Microsoft: C# and CLI under the Community Promise

einstein — 2009-07-07T19:43:43+00:00

> The whole Linux world is a compatible implementation of a proprietary operating system. Serious case of NIH syndrome.

It has nothing whatsoever to do with NIH but rather the danger of exposing linux users to lawsuits.

de Icaza: From Microsoft: C# and CLI under the Community Promise

rahulsundaram — 2009-07-07T19:41:43+00:00

What Fedora attitude are you talking about? Fedora has included Mono for
quite sometime.

http://lwn.net/Articles/179597/

Fedora up until the last version includes Mono (because of Tomboy and F-
Spot). You don't get Mono by default if you install from the Live CD since
Fedora 10 but that's because of lack of space as opposed to anything legal.
Gnote will be default in Fedora 12, again because of the same reasons.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_11_Alpha_release_not...

Promises, promises, promises

mjw — 2009-07-07T19:33:43+00:00

Last time Microsoft made a Promise, the Open Specification Promise, it turned out not to be as good as one would have hoped:
http://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2008/osp-gpl.html

Does the Community Promise fix this?

de Icaza: From Microsoft: C# and CLI under the Community Promise

butlerm — 2009-07-07T18:50:19+00:00

In hindsight, the Mono project should have split out the .NET stuff from the
very beginning. WinForms, ASP, ADO, WPF, ...

With that split out, the Fedora attitude to not including the Mono core seems
pretty juvenile to me. The whole Linux world is a compatible implementation
of a proprietary operating system. Serious case of NIH syndrome.

One might as well use the same argument with the POSIX API - it is derived
from Unix, the vendors cannot be trusted, therefore we should eliminate any
trace of POSIX and send Linux to an early grave. Or at the very least,
Microsoft could sanitize its systems from any POSIX influence. Maybe that is
what they already did.

Microsoft really has us going...

drag — 2009-07-07T18:18:01+00:00

I think that it should be included for the same reasons why they include python or C++ support.

It's a nice language that a lot of people who are new to Linux already know very well and is comfortable with. Schools and universities are full of people that are learning C#. So it's a very nice option to have and is a nice alternative to programming in C for Gnome folks. Python is very high level and is slow, and C is very fast. C# is a nice in-between and it's bindings are very good.

It's just that I feel that distributions should stay away from including the .NET stuff by default. Lots of users need that sort of thing and is a nice option to have, but there are lots of stuff that is not included in distros by default for lots of reasons. Just as long as its packaged and available should be fine.

What does this improve??

coriordan — 2009-07-07T18:10:50+00:00

Tom "spot" Callaway (Fedora's licence guy) has a similar take:

It really doesn't affect our stance on Mono at all. Microsoft is "covering" less than OIN does for us, and it doesn't go anywhere near the areas we currently stay away from (Silverlight/Moonlight). Full of sound and fury, but signifying nothing.

de Icaza: From Microsoft: C# and CLI under the Community Promise

bronson — 2009-07-07T17:57:21+00:00

This gets into some very gray legal areas. If you're interested, read up on estoppel. Would Microsoft intentionally estop themselves? It seems rather unlikely.

I would guess there's enough ambiguity in this promise that it doesn't actually amount to much legally. I'm basing that on MS's rather long history of saying one thing and doing another -- I haven't actually read this particular situation very closely. Personally, I find it much easier just to not install Banshee and F-Spot. :)

What does this improve??

bronson — 2009-07-07T17:40:25+00:00

That's quite a reply. If you can't/won't substantiate your position, you support coriordan's point quite nicely.

Microsoft really has us going...

tzafrir — 2009-07-07T17:38:24+00:00

What you write here actually makes me more uncomfortable.

Could you please explain why do you think Mono is useful and should be included in distributions? I wonder how this split affects those arguments as my feeling is that it doesn't.

my guess: not safe

coriordan — 2009-07-07T17:36:48+00:00

Microsoft can promise a lot

They can, but they don't even do that much. This agreement only protects people who are writing C# and CLI compilers/interpreters. The (careless) people who use either of these technologies to make their own software are still left unprotected in a very patent dangerous field.

Microsoft really has us going...

drag — 2009-07-07T17:17:30+00:00

I think it has much more to do with making distributers and users comfortable with Mono's CLI and C# implementation then it has to do with the Microsoft announcement.

Nothing has fundamentally changed with this announcement. Anybody paying attention knew pretty well that C# and CLI were safe to implement.

The questionable portions of Mono, from a legal standpoint, were the parts that implement .NET compatibility.

So Mono working to split off the .NET stuff from the CLI stuff is going to make it easier (not to mention reduce the footprint) for distributions to incorporate C# programs that don't use .NET (like Fspot) without worrying about it.

-----------------------

Personally I am not a huge fan of C# or whatever.. but I hate to see a huge amount of hard work knocked down through nothing more then ignorance and paranoia.

Microsoft really has us going...

astrophoenix — 2009-07-07T16:38:17+00:00

so Microsoft puts out one little announcement, and now all the mono devs are scurrying around like ants working their asses off. what if next week Microsoft announces something contradictory? this sucks.

Children's poem summarizes this perfectly

dskoll — 2009-07-07T16:21:41+00:00

Will you walk into my parlour?" said the Spider to the Fly,
'Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy;
The way into my parlour is up a winding stair,
And I've a many curious things to shew when you are there."
"Oh no, no," said the little Fly, "to ask me is in vain,
For who goes up your winding stair can ne'er come down again."

Mary Howitt

de Icaza: From Microsoft: C# and CLI under the Community Promise

tdz — 2009-07-07T15:52:23+00:00

Does anyone know how safe this is? Microsoft can promise a lot, but without any concrete agreement between them and, lets say, the Mono Project, how much weight would such a promise have in court?

Regards, Thomas

What does this improve??

me@jasonclinton.com — 2009-07-07T15:48:04+00:00

> "No?"

No.

What does this improve??

coriordan — 2009-07-07T15:34:39+00:00

The point of the article isn't clear to me.

Splitting the codebase won't change much. The problem with Microsoft's technologies is that they exist in an environment that's known to be heavily patented. This agreement might make it safer to make exact implementations of MS's systems (so maybe Novell is a bit safer), but using them as a starting point for free software packages is still a really bad idea. No?

de Icaza: From Microsoft: C# and CLI under the Community Promise

tzafrir — 2009-07-07T15:30:55+00:00

http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/... - 4th edition (June 2006)

So where can I find those newer versions?

de Icaza: From Microsoft: C# and CLI under the Community Promise

Jonno — 2009-07-07T15:26:02+00:00

Yes, usually in well advance of the .Net framework

LWN: Comments on "de Icaza: From Microsoft: C# and CLI under the Community Promise"

Microsoft really has us going...

de Icaza: From Microsoft: C# and CLI under the Community Promise

Microsoft really has us going...

What does this improve??

Or

Microsoft really has us going...

de Icaza: From Microsoft: C# and CLI under the Community Promise

Microsoft really has us going...

my guess: not safe

Protestations notwithstanding

And the moral...

Microsoft really has us going...

Microsoft really has us going...

And the moral...

Promises, promises, promises

de Icaza: From Microsoft: C# and CLI under the Community Promise

"announced" on a blog? and only for *complete* implementations

And the moral...

Microsoft really has us going...

Microsoft really has us going...

de Icaza: From Microsoft: C# and CLI under the Community Promise

And the moral...

de Icaza: From Microsoft: C# and CLI under the Community Promise

de Icaza: From Microsoft: C# and CLI under the Community Promise

Promises, promises, promises

de Icaza: From Microsoft: C# and CLI under the Community Promise

Microsoft really has us going...

What does this improve??

de Icaza: From Microsoft: C# and CLI under the Community Promise

What does this improve??

Microsoft really has us going...

my guess: not safe

Microsoft really has us going...

Microsoft really has us going...

Children's poem summarizes this perfectly

de Icaza: From Microsoft: C# and CLI under the Community Promise

What does this improve??

What does this improve??

de Icaza: From Microsoft: C# and CLI under the Community Promise

de Icaza: From Microsoft: C# and CLI under the Community Promise

"announced" on a blog? and only for complete implementations