Tom <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Could we please have some clarity whether or not standards-conforming > C# implementations fall under some Microsoft patent?
Are you volunteering to underwrite a lawyer's legal opinion on this? Companies make a lot of patent claims. Some are justified. Some are not. Sometimes the claims are justified by patents which could be invalidated. Only a court can definitively say which is the case -- and then only for one <patent,product> pair. A lawyer can give an opinion, but that would only be relevant to the extent that the lawyer says there is infringement. If the lawyer does not believe a product infringes, the patent holder can still file suit. Whether Microsoft has enforceable patent claims on Mono or not is irrelevant to the mono mailing lists; the proper forum to decide that is the courtroom (and informed by lawyers' opinions). Even if they do have enforceable patents on technology that Mono uses, they may do the surprising thing and license them to the Mono project under terms compatible with Mono's license.[1] The article does allude to this possibility, before engaging scare tactics. (NOTE: I am not a lawyer; the above is just my understanding of the facts -- both of law and the software. I could be wrong, but I think the last paragraph of the article hits the nail on the head about what Microsoft can and cannot do with patent claims on .NET technologies.) Michael [1]- IBM has done this for certain of their patents (for example, graph coloring register assignment as used in recent gcc). _______________________________________________ Mono-list maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/mono-list
