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Comment by xradionut | Hacker News Reader

If you don't want to be mistaken for a rabid OSS zealot, you should be more knowledgable about Mono's license(s) and not fling RMS-poo around.

http://www.mono-project.com/License

The fact that C# programmers can code for multiple platforms thru easier porting makes them more likely to explore OSS options instead of staying solely in Redmonds garden.

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I see no patent grant that protects users, distributors, or non-Mono/Microsoft developers.

So, again, how does that license protect open source? It is neither GPLv3 or ASLv2, nor will Microsoft stop using patents to attack people.

I'm not sure how I can interpret it any other way. Being sued by Microsoft is something no one wants.

How is that different from any other OSS project? If MS wants, they could look at a projects source code and decide that they've violated a patent and sue them. To my knowledge they're yet to do this.

The difference is that Microsoft created .Net and the patents covering it together, so they're fairly narrow patents and it'd be a hell of a lot harder to find relevant prior art to use against them. (The same's true of OOXML, incidentally; Microsoft even tried to get a patent covering both it and ODF but the examiner narrowed it to just OOXML based on a huge amount of prior art dating back to SGML in the 80s.)

We don't own any patents on Mono, so licensing it under GPLv3 would not provide any additional patent protection to anyone.

That said, the code donated by Microsoft has been under Apache2 which does provide patent protection, just like GPLv3.

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