Licensing Issues

[Mythran]

Was wondering...the following site provides a compiler for C# and soon, VB.Net on
a linux box:

http://go-mono.com/c-sharp.html

What legalities should be made aware in order to use this legally? Are there any
legal issues that should be made aware before jumping the gun?

Thanks,

Mythran

 

[gabriel]

Are there any legal issues that should be made aware before jumping
the gun?

No. Computer languages cannot be copyrighted, so there are not even those
issues. As a user of Mono you would not be liable for any infringement.

As a programmer (if you wanted to contribute to the Mono project), you
would risk the project if you had any knowledge of how .NET is written by
MS. For example, if you quit your job at MS working on .NET, and then go
contribute to the Mono project and use some of your inside knowledge (or
worse, source code from MS) for the project.

Bottom line: As a user of Mono, you have nothing to worry about.

 

[bruce barker]

it depends on how you will use it and what parts (different components have
different licenses). are you in-house, selling a product? if you are selling
a product or service based on mono - see your lawyer, to know what rules you
must follow.

-- bruce (sqlwork.com)

 

[Guest]

The CLI and C# itself is ECMA driven, MS dowt own it technically once its
ratified, they just did the "initial design" and submit drafts to the
commitee. If you can better them, go submit a draft, nobody is stopping
you.

Sure they can add extensions etc to anything they want but if you want
compliance you choose compliant tools.

The choice is yours, stick to standards and have choice or box yourself in.

 

[Mythran]

No. Computer languages cannot be copyrighted, so there are not even those
issues. As a user of Mono you would not be liable for any infringement.

Bah, computer languages can't be copyrighted eh? Here is a good example of
a computer language being copyrighted and Microsoft being sued for using it
..... Visual J++. Read up on it Computer languages can be because they
are written and copyrighted as intellectual property.

Mythran

 

[Mythran]

it depends on how you will use it and what parts (different components have
different licenses). are you in-house, selling a product? if you are selling
a product or service based on mono - see your lawyer, to know what rules you
must follow.

-- bruce (sqlwork.com)

I work for the government (local) and are selling a .Net application and am
wondering if there are any legalities with writing this application using
..Net and running it in a Production environment for another department for
funds.

Mythran

 

[Rob Teixeira [MVP]]

ANY intellectual property can be (and is by default in the U.S.) copyrighted
to the originator, unless otherwise specified.
This includes languages. In fact, the entire open source world is having
issues right now because of feelings like the one expressed here. You can't
just make a "free" copy (functionally speaking) of something and expect that
the owner of the copyright isn't going to have an problem with that.

Luckily, in this case, for those who want to use Mono, Microsoft created the
various pieces of .NET (the CLI, BCL, C#, etc.) and submitted most of it to
open standards by filing with ECMA. Anyone is free to create an
implementation based on those standards, and MS has itself created a free
shared-source version of this material called ROTOR, which will run under
Unix as well.

However, look closely at the licensing for any software you use. For
example, while you are free to use Mono, if you use Visual Studio or the
..NET SDK from Microsoft, the program must legally be used only under
Windows.

-Rob Teixeira [MVP]

 

[Jon Skeet [C# MVP]]

Bah, computer languages can't be copyrighted eh? Here is a good example of
a computer language being copyrighted and Microsoft being sued for using it
.... Visual J++. Read up on it Computer languages can be because they
are written and copyrighted as intellectual property.

No, in the case of J++ Microsoft were sued for breaking their contract
with Sun, not for copyright infringement as far as I can remember.