Re: Wine c.f. Mono

[Linus Walleij <triad df lth se>]

On Sat, 31 Dec 2005, Andy Burns wrote:

> Is it largely a question of how far "behind the curve" Wine is perceived to 
> be compared to how close to "snapping at the heels" Mono is seen?

No. AFAIK there is no clear rationale at all unless it someday comes out 
of the Red Hat legal dept.

The most common answer that I believe other distributions will give, is 
that Microsoft is in a very bad position to run lawsuits that threaten to 
harm interoperability (double so in the EU), so both Mono and Wine are 
quite safe. However two heavyweight law pillars (antitrust vs IP-law) 
colliding means the outcome is uncertain at best.

You can never plan against patent infringement anyway, so it might be best 
to simply include them and wait for the call, if it ever comes. IP law is 
not a field of philosophical absolutes, though one wish it would be. We 
are presumably already shipping thousands of patented routines with the 
packages in Fedora, though it is highly uncertain if any of them would 
stand up in court.

Torvalds said he simply outright ignores patents so even the kernel may 
contain a fair number of patented things.

Linus