Let me start this up....

Story: ASP.NET: Is It Too Difficult?Total Replies: 13
Author Content
hchaudh1

Dec 22, 2006
11:22 AM EDT
WTF!
djohnston

Dec 22, 2006
1:16 PM EDT
Agreed. Does MS web development software news have a place here?
DarrenR114

Dec 22, 2006
2:21 PM EDT
Well - with mod_mono, Apache can be used to process ASP. I believe there's a ::ASP module to PERL as well.

As for .Net framework, using Mono, you can develop applications on Linux that will run on MS-Windows as well.

Not that these are something that Java and JSP can't do as well, but you did ask how the article might have a place on this website.

Check out Mojoportal for a pretty nice application using Mono and PostgreSQL: http://www.mojoportal.com/
swbrown

Dec 22, 2006
4:50 PM EDT
"Well - with mod_mono, Apache can be used to process ASP."

Note that .NET's aspx stuff isn't covered by the ECMA .NET standard or any patent agreement, no matter how weak (the .NET patent covenant is GPL incompatible btw). It's one of many "here be dragons" areas of Mono, like System.Windows.Forms, ADO.NET, etc.. Miguel always said (and is in the FAQ) that one of the options if Microsoft decided to sue over those features was to encumber Mono and license the patents from Microsoft. Funny they're now effectively doing that, despite a lot of people who insisted they never would. Surprise? :)
DarrenR114

Dec 23, 2006
4:35 AM EDT
Quoting: if Microsoft decided to sue over those features was to encumber Mono and license the patents from Microsoft. Funny they're now effectively doing that, despite a lot of people who insisted they never would.


MS is suing someone over Mono using their patents?
swbrown

Dec 23, 2006
7:04 AM EDT
> MS is suing someone over Mono using their patents?

They've stated they consider their IP to be being violated if you aren't a part of the covenant they signed with you guys, that it's an 'undisclosed balance-sheet liability' to be using such software if you aren't covered by the covenant (so they /are/ threatening to sue everyone but Novell users, or there would be no grounds to say it's a liability), and that covenant specifically includes Mono:

"Under the patent agreement, customers will receive coverage for Mono, Samba, and OpenOffice as well as .NET and Windows Server."

So there's a MS threat to sue anyone but Novell 'customers' over Mono using their IP, which likely means patents.
dinotrac

Dec 23, 2006
7:51 AM EDT
>They've stated they consider their IP to be being violated if you aren't a part of the covenant they signed with you guys

Ummm....not exactly. They consider their IP to be violated if you use their IP without permission in some form. If you don't use their IP, you are not violating it, with or without a covenant.

The question, then, is whether mono infringes on any Microsoft IP. If not, nothing Microsoft says matters, and neither do any covenants anybody has signed except, perhaps, to avoid the expense and bother of defending a groundless lawsuit.

If you object to people not being sued, that is your right.
swbrown

Dec 23, 2006
8:18 AM EDT
> The question, then, is whether mono infringes on any Microsoft IP.

By the following sentence, Microsoft considers the infringement to be in at least one of the following (excluding .NET / Windows Server of course):

"Under the patent agreement, customers will receive coverage for Mono, Samba, and OpenOffice as well as .NET and Windows Server."

Seeing as Mono crosses all sorts of boundaries into core Microsoft technology Microsoft has not submitted for standardization or covered with any Open Specification Promise / Covenant Not to Sue (System.Windows.Forms, ADO.NET, ASP.NET, the undocumented internal structure of objects required for some forms of marshaling, etc.), it's the most likely candidate amongst the three listed.

> The question, then, is whether mono infringes on any Microsoft IP. If not, nothing Microsoft says matters

It does matter in that Novell has basically excused itself from having to defend its own product from attacks from its partner by making a deal to prevent financial harm from allowing that attack to continue. The GPL was designed to prevent there being a profit motive for this by restricting your own distribution of the software. Novell would be unable to distribute, so would have to defend.

> If you object to people not being sued, that is your right.

"We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately".

DarrenR114

Dec 23, 2006
9:51 AM EDT
Quoting: "Under the patent agreement, customers will receive coverage for Mono, Samba, and OpenOffice as well as .NET and Windows Server."


Two out of those three aren't even Novell sponsored projects - something about what MS says here stinks to high heaven.

How could an MS spokesman specify that an agreement between Novell and MS provides coverage to software that Novell doesn't even have nominal control over?

If we stripped away all comments by MS regarding this deal with Novell, since we can't trust them even in court, where would the negative against Mono be? I mean, I could say that the moon is made of green cheese, but that doesn't make it true. I could say that all nuclear planning for SIOP is done by flipping a coin in a bunker 300 feet underground near Omaha (that is a subject I *do* know about firsthand.) That doesn't make it true.

Just because MS is saying that Mono is protected by that patent agreement, along with OpenOffice and Samba, doesn't make it true. Because mention of OpenOffice and Samba was made, I'd be willing to bet that MS doesn't have a strong case for IP infringement in Mono, either.
dinotrac

Dec 23, 2006
11:33 AM EDT
>How could an MS spokesman specify that an agreement between Novell and MS provides coverage to software that Novell doesn't even have nominal control over?

What is the difficulty? Novell has control on nearly none of the software in its distribution. That's the way distributions work: Somebody packages up a lot of software that other people have written.

Microsoft has merely promised not to sue Novell's customers for any instances of infringing Microsoft patents that might occur from using the software. This does not require any cooperation of any kind from the copyright holders.
swbrown

Dec 24, 2006
2:52 AM EDT
> If we stripped away all comments by MS regarding this deal with Novell, since we can't trust them even in court, where would the negative against Mono be?

That it implements Microsoft technologies that are covered by the .NET patent but not part of the .NET ECMA standard and as such are not part of any Covenant Not To Sue (the pre-Novell one for .NET, but it's GPL-incompatible anyway) nor ECMA required RAND licensing (which is GPL-incompatible anyway) or Microsoft's additional "Royalty Free but Non-Transferable" licensing (which is GPL-incompatible anyway) and the rights holder is actively funding legal attacks on other grounds against the same groups as would be Mono's users. In short, it's a bomb with a lit fuse due to the Mono team playing it loose. No one but Microsoft knows how fast that fuse will burn, or maybe they'll just continue to threaten people with it when advantageous like they're doing now.

I'd also point out Mono's licensing FAQ where it said for years that one of the ways they would deal with a patent issue in this code is to potentially license the patent from Microsoft and take Mono semi-proprietary where'd they'd distribute it directly with a non-transferable patent grant, but that part has been removed from the FAQ. How odd, considering that's basically what Ximian has now done. People were right to red flag that.
swbrown

Dec 24, 2006
2:54 AM EDT
> What is the difficulty? Novell has control on nearly none of the software in its distribution. That's the way distributions work: Somebody packages up a lot of software that other people have written.

You clearly don't understand Novell's relation to Mono.
dinotrac

Dec 24, 2006
5:34 AM EDT
>You clearly don't understand Novell's relation to Mono.

I absolutely understand it. At this point, I am beginning to wonder what, if anything, you understand.
swbrown

Dec 24, 2006
6:05 AM EDT
> I absolutely understand it. At this point, I am beginning to wonder what, if anything, you understand.

Back before GTK# was usable and considered the right way forward, I did the merge and fixing up of SharpWT's (SWT for .NET) win32 and GTK+ backends for use with Mono as directly encouraged by Miguel, amongst other Mono stuff during its development like fixing the Mozilla widget and various class issues / test cases. I'm pretty clueful about the situation with Mono. :) So, what's your background re Mono?

Posting in this forum is limited to members of the group: [ForumMods, SITEADMINS, MEMBERS.]

Becoming a member of LXer is easy and free. Join Us!