[fab] Fwd: Mono and FC

[Paul W. Frields]

On Sat, 2006-11-04 at 16:55 -0500, Jesse Keating wrote:
> Probably something we should look into and make a statement about.
> 
> ----------  Forwarded Message  ----------
> 
> Subject: Mono and FC
> Date: Saturday 04 November 2006 16:52
> From: Paul <paul at all-the-johnsons.co.uk>
> To: For testers of Fedora Core development releases 
> <fedora-test-list at redhat.com>
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Given the decision for Novell to have SuSE killed off in much the same
> way as Corel Linux was, it leaves some serious questions for FC as a
> distro which includes Mono.
> 
> Currently, it is very unclear as to what (if any) patents are infringed
> and as Jesse has said, they are OIN members. However, the possibility
> needs to be looked at as to what should be done. There is not really a
> problem of pulling Mono apps and libraries from FE, but for the likes of
> gnome, there is a lot resting on C#.
> 
> Me, I'd hate to move over to KDE - I really dislike it as a desktop
> environment (and no, I'm not trying to start a flame war), but if this
> is the cost to keep FC untainted, I'm prepared to do it.
> 
> I personally don't believe we can trust Novell any more in OIN - I don't
> know how they would behave if (say) OpenOffice caused a patent problem -
> would they back MS now they have a deal in place to work towards a
> plugin between their bastardisation of XML and the ODF format or would
> they support the OIN and tell MS to go screw themselves (though
> obviously not in words like that!). It seems to me that they may be a
> very large loose cannon.

I'm not sure I understand how this is a real concern.  The OIN owns the
patents on OpenOffice.org (at least v2.0.0) and I don't see what
Novell's potential "backing" would achieve either way.  I wonder how
Novell would construct compatibility between OO.o and MS Office based on
this schema while simultaneously disallowing anyone else from using,
distributing, or shipping it in a non-actionable way without violating
the OO.o licensing.  I'm sure Microsoft's legal team has their best
minds working on it, though.

As a purely OT side-note, MS has not "bastardized" XML.  The Microsoft
Office XML Schema is just a collection of DTDs like any other schema,
albeit probably (a) much more lengthy and convoluted, and (b) unlikely
to ever be completely supported in any product other than Microsoft
Office.  

> The question also of if they can continue distributing SuSE as a GPL'd
> package now they have a deal with MS over patents (which goes against
> the GPL and possibly gives SCO a final foothold). I don't really care if
> SuSE vanishes without trace, but I do care for the longer implications
> of such a deal as Novell did with MS.

I think in the long run the implications for the Linux community will be
rather minimal.  My initial reaction was that this was the beginning of
the end for Novell, making yet another in a long line of poor business
decisions allowing Microsoft to bully them out of a potentially
profitable market. 

> I've not seen much on the Debian lists over this, but the mono lists are
> very quiet; way too quiet over this - it's almost spooky.

BOO SCARY.  (With apologies to Greg; this line in his blog made me
laugh.  I would like to see this particular meme spread like "All your
base...".)

-- 
Paul W. Frields, RHCE                          http://paul.frields.org/
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       Fedora Project Board: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Board
    Fedora Docs Project:  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject
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