YESTERDAY we showed that Microsoft's “promise” to Moonlight has at least 10 holes in it and an ongoing discussion at LWN finds even more holes which are inferred from the original text of the “promise” (the FSF found the Mono “promise” to be unacceptable).
For the curious, Microsoft has posted the new "covenant not to sue" covering Moonlight 3 and 4. It is still quite narrow. "Microsoft, on behalf of itself and its Subsidiaries, hereby covenants not to sue End Users for infringement under Necessary Claims of Microsoft and its Subsidiaries on account of such End Users' use of Moonlight Implementations to the extent originally provided by Novell during the Term and, if applicable, the Extension or Post-Extension Period, but only to the extent such Moonlight Implementations are used as Conforming Runtimes." Microsoft can also discontinue it at any time.
* MonoDevelop code is now LGPLv2 and MIT X11 licensed. We have removed all of the GPL code, allowing addins to use Apache, MS-PL code as well as allowing proprietary add-ins to be used with MonoDevelop (like RemObject's Oxygene).
Comments
kreshwolf
2009-12-25 03:50:04
This is the reason people run from Linux, it is the religious cooks and their visions of "Free"!
dyfet
2009-12-25 11:40:22
GNU/Linux would not even have existed without freedom, which ultimately includes the freedom to participate on an equal basis it's development. That is an important part of how functionality arises from freedom in the first place. Freedom and user centered also always converge in the long run. Removing freedom means removing future development of functionality as well as dis-empowering users. It is a long-term way to reduce, rather than increase, GNU/Linux adoption, and we all know in who's agenda this really serves, whether done by some proxy like Novell or by people who say freedom has to be sacrificed for functionality because they do not understand what either freedom really is or why freedom is essential for GNU/Linux to be successful.