Re: News: .NET framework source code available soon...

Frans Bouma [C# MVP] wrote:
What's the relevance of what MS says, other than what's in their
reference license? That license has all what MS has to say about
it.
So, where in the license then does it say "if you have used the .NET
source code in any way, you may not work on Mono"?

It's not in MS' license, it's in Mono's policy for submitters of
patches and code.

So you agree with me then. Microsoft has made no such imposition, and it's not at all about "that license has all what MS Has to say about it".

[...]
you can't reasonably work on these projects because you personally
embed the risk of getting other peoples code in the main trunk.

Why? If you don't copy the code, there's no risk.

Peter, please... it's not in rotor's license, it's in the policy for
mono (and other high profile open source projects). It's simple math,
really.

I know. That's been my point all along.

Erm... I assume you're doing software development, ok? So you
understand logic.

If codebase A is open for you to look at, but A is also commercial, so
you can only look, and you want to work on codebase B, where B is doing
something similar to (parts of) A, and B is open source, isn't it so
that by accepting the license for A, you automatically can be ASSUMED
your work on B is copied from A?

How can you try to make an argument based on logic, and yet still introduce an assumption?

In any case, it can be assumed that your work on B is copied from A whether or not you ever looked at A or ever even had access to it. What you actually did in no way affects what assumptions someone might make about you.

[...]
If mono opens the door to do .NET development and deployment on Linux
on a big scale, MS will kill it. It's not strange, it's logical from
MS' pov, simply because it would otherwise hurt their business.

That's just not true. I sure hope no one at Microsoft is dumb enough to think it is.

Having .NET on Linux, Mac, etc. can only help Microsoft. Can you imagine the sort of advantages they would have should they wind up controlling the primary development platforms not only on Windows, but also on Linux and Mac?

You might argue some lost OS license sales to those platforms but a) they aren't going to be losing any significant number of sales to Linux any time soon and that's not going to change until Linux is actually easy to use, and b) they aren't likely to lose sales to Mac either...even though Apple has dramatically improved their market share, it's done so in the hardware business; people are buying more Macs because they have Intel hardware now, and that means they are still buying Windows licenses. Apple is making the OS market _larger_ rather than taking actual sales away from Microsoft.

But even beyond all that, Microsoft's not solely dependent on OS licenses. They have other ways to leverage their investments, and dominating the development platforms on all OS's is a great way to do that.

Mono isn't a threat at all, any more than Wine was/is a thread. It's a potential boon.

[...]
it's THEIR job to proof you DID copy it.
True. But the question of whether a license was accepted has nothing
to do with that.

of course it has. If you have accepted the license, they have an easy
job to proof you had every oppertunity to copy. If you DIDN'T accept
the license, you didn't have the oppertunity and they have a harder job
proving you copied code.

No, they don't. Your acceptance of the license isn't going to be used as proof of you copying; a comparison of the code will be.

If you have never accepted
the license of this sourcecode, you have never been able to look at
it.
That's a false conclusion. Accepting the license has nothing to do
with whether a person has seen the .NET source code. I can accept
the license and never look at the source code, and I can look at the
source code without ever accepting the license. The two are
completely unrelated.

How can you look at the sourcecode without accepting the license? No,
reflector doesn't count, that's not the sourcecode.

Really? You really believe that there's no way to obtain the source code unless you accept Microsoft's license and get it directly from them?

I'm sorry...as long as you continue to hold that belief, there is no hope for this discussion. And no, I'm not talking about Reflector. I'm talking about the actual source code Microsoft is providing.

[...]
the sco case proofs that they have to. It would also be silly to
claim copyright infrigment without proof that someone indeed copied
your work, aint it? ;)
No, it wouldn't be silly at all. It's easy enough to duplicate the
code from a compiled implementation. You don't need the source code
to violate the copyright rules.

How can I copy SOURCE without access to the source?

First, please re-read what you're replying to. In the text you quoted I am _not_ talking about copying the source. But you don't need to copy the source to be in violation of copyright. And you don't need the source code to copy the implementation.

That said, even though your question isn't relevant to the text you quoted, it's easy enough to answer: you can't copy source without access to source, but assuming that your only access to the source is through Microsoft after accepting their license is silly. Once Microsoft has released the source to anyone, it is trivially available whether you've accepted a license or not, and even if they don't release it that doesn't preclude the source from somehow being leaked from within Microsoft.

If I have only a
compiled form, I can reverse engineer it, and re-use that, which is
allowed in most countries, IF you don't have access to the code and IF
you need that code to do your own work

I'm not going to pretend to be an expert in worldwide copyright law. However, I doubt that any country that is part of the global IP treaties allows for actual copying of an implementation, with or without source code.

Yes, you can reverse engineer to allow your own original code to correctly operate with existing code. But that's a much different situation than what I am talking about and what is relevant in this discussion.

[...]
No doubt. I have said as much. But that's not the issue here. The
question is whether the Mono group has a legal requirement to protect
themselves in this way, and my assertion is that they do not.

So they, and other open source projects who have the same rules, have
a skewed vision on reality? Does 'SCO' ring a bell to you? :)

The question is whether Microsoft's imposed a legal requirement. A projects "vision on reality", skewed or otherwise, is irrelevant.

That said, I would be surprised if SCO would have gotten as far as they had without heavy backing from deep pockets, and it still blew up in their face. I wouldn't call the SCO trial a very good example of successful litigation on the part of the plaintiff.

[...]
I can call it whatever I want to call it. I find this license evil, as
it has sideeffects which aren't visible at first. You for example don't
understand the side effects ;). I've explained them again above.

Frankly, you should consider the possibility that rather than me being a complete moron and not being able to understand the "side effects" as you describe them, that I do in fact understand what you're writing about and still don't find the license to be "evil".

[...]
Also, if MS does something bad to YOU, you can't win a lawsuit
against them if they have a strong case against you in another area.
That's an absurd statement. The courts do not decide separate issues
together. If you have a case against Microsoft with respect to one
thing, it doesn't matter what other case they may have against you in
some unrelated area.

I wasn't talking about courts, I was talking about threats.

You wrote "you can't win a lawsuit". The only thing that can stop you from winning a lawsuit is the courts. So if you weren't talking about the courts, why did you write something that is only relevant with respect to the courts?

Has it
ever occured to you WHY companies file so many patent requests?

Please, stop being so condescending. You are making huge, wild assumptions about what I do or do not know, and what my own personal experience is (hint: not only has the question of why companies file so many patent requests occurred to me, in my own career I have been smack in the middle of the issue).

That's
right, to protect THEMSELVES against companies who threat them with a
lawsuit: if that happens they can threat them back with "if you sue,
we'll sue you over this other thing".

That in no way blocks your own success with a particular legal action.

Pete
.

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