>"We do have some serious concerns about Mono and we'll continue to look at it with our legal counsel to see what if any steps are needed on our part," Frields said."

Please publish those concerns, I'd love to see the threatening patents for a change ...

In the meantime, I wonder if Red Hat could comment on the claims that have been made that both Firefox and OpenOffice infringe on Microsoft's COMs patents: 6,243,764

They seem afraid of .NET, but COM seems to be OK with them.

@ Anonymous
"Please publish those concerns, I'd love to see the threatening patents for a change ..."

Just as soon as Microsoft reveals them, you'll know.

I believe that the mono developers are not puppets and are pursuing mono development for the same purposes as are any free software developers.

I also believe that Microsoft has more than adequately demonstrated that they cannot be trusted. Ever.

So THE question is not: "are mono developers and backers evil"? Rather, the question is: "can Microsoft screw the user's of mono, or the distributions that use mono, sometime in the future"?

For the answer, instead of (Microsoft loves this)
infinite flame wars, acrimony and vitriol for all, why don't we just ask the Software Freedom Law Center for an opinion?

@Anonymous
"I also believe that Microsoft has more than adequately demonstrated that they cannot be trusted. Ever."

Truer words are seldom spoken. And yes, I couldn't agree more, Microsoft is extremely pleased with the "infinite flame wars, acrimony and vitriol for all". Whenever things get a little quiet, all it takes is a few carefully
placed comments and everyone's got their knickers up in a bunch instead of doing useful work. It's a very effective use of their resources.

And *sigh* we fall for it every time.

J

Stop bring up com patents on OpenOffice. UNO in OpenOffice is from starwriter that predates COM patents by a good 7 years. UNO is that old no patent can apply to it.

Basically if MS wants to fight Com patents out the prior art exists to nuke them.

Quit kissin' M$'s butt & you won't HAVE "Mono"!!!!

If the license wording is so ambiguous that even RedHat's legal counsel can't decipher it, then I'd say either request and get clarification of any wording in question from Novell (who distributes and license the mono framework), or drop it. If the distributor won't offer clear instructions on the use of their product they must be hiding something. It's their responsibility to go back to M$ regarding any patent/license infringement so they can produce their product, not ours.

Mr oiaohm did not bother to read the patent application above. The COM patent has nothing to do with spreadsheets, he could have learned that if he bothered reading the patent above.

The patent above is for Microsoft's COM.

Microsoft invented COM's IUnknown and QueryInterface fair and square. Any claim that StarOffice invented COM and Microsoft copied it is ridiculous.

Provide *any* prior art to Microsoft's patent application. IUnknown comes from an internal paper at Microsoft from 1988 (according to the Wikipedia and all the links provided there).

You can not.

And UNO does support COM, and copies QueryInterface/IUnknown top to bottom.

Mono will still remain in Fedora in the repository until there is a clear legal argument that including Mono in the distribution will cause legal battle with Microsoft patents etc.

The thing about GNote in Fedora12 is something mainly due to the size limitation in LiveCD. Tomboy requires Mono and that requires a large dependency tree which can increase the liveCD size. Tomboy has been excluded from the LiveCD for quite a while now due to that reason leaving the LiveCD without a good note taking application. In Fedora12, the plan is to bring back a note taking application into the LiveCD, which is GNote.

Tomboy and Mono will still remain in the repository for those who want to use them. Until somehow Microsoft decided to fsck up everybody by suing or extorting patent license from users of Mono or some other legal issues.

"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

If you want to learn more about Mono and Moonlight, just go to groklaw.net - where there are comments from the Software Freedom Law Center. Conclusion: This stuff is radioactive!

As others have stated, no matter what you think of Microsoft, they KNOW how to write clear legal documents if they want - and clearly, that is not their intent.

That being the case, why would anyone in their right mind use this stuff? I think Fedora and Redhat are doing the community a great service by being the stalwarts of the open source community and calling Microsoft out. The message, don't play games. If you want us to use it, be clear and concise on your intent. It isn't that hard. If you are playing games, based upon your infamous history - we don't trust you. Go take a hike!

Hi there,

I found this, albeit late and wanted to offer another viewpoint.

I wish things were different and we could 'trust' Microsoft, but atm that is not the situation, and we know that from several issues, amoung them the mess with mono, OOXML ,tomtom and the infamous linux cancerous statement from ballmer a few years back, and nothing much has changed ,- not that I really expected it.

I read the groklaw articles & comments, and that amoung other warning signs led me to my current belief , and that I'm very grateful to fedora/redhat for taking this completley logical and sensible approach, which is why I'm now using fedora 11 as my main linux distribution, and proud of it. I am elated to steer clear from anything mono on any level, and if at anytime in the future MS removes any concerns over its use I'll revisit my stance on it happily.

I also want to reiterate what others here have said, which is why did we ever decide to use it in the first place, considering the risk, and that it was certainly nothing we 'had' to rely on given the wealth of opportunity linux offers us.

It provides a great deal of clarity, now that Richard Stallman has chimed in on this as one of the respected proponents of the greater free software movement, and I completely agree with his view .

That is what its all about at the end of the day, is having choice , being secure and 'free' in using ones Operating System, and all 3 of those criteria are met in spades with Fedora. I thank them all for having the foresight to take these bold, yet completely sensible steps .

Cheers
neighborlee