Mozilla has actually been carrying out a major deCOMtamination project over the years to remove as much use of XPCOM as they can. Supposedly, they were planning to strip it out totally in a future release. It uglifies the code and leads to unnecessary bloat, apparently.

OpenOffice.org – well, anyone using that as an example of good code is probably insane. It works, don’t get me wrong, it’s just a bit of a nightmare internally.

Michael Z :

Back to the original post – Miguel is a pretty easy target in the fawning over MS front. Must’ve been the only human on earth who thought COM was a good idea for example

If COM is a bad idea, why does OpenOffice.org (UNO) and Mozilla (XPCOM) use it?

Jason :

@Anonymous
Thanks for the considered post.
One small point: If you link to your own project you aren’t exactly anonymous anymore. Which means you don’t need the disclaimer at the bottom. Drop me an email if you want me to fix things up.
@Miguel
“There is no “exclusivity” in access to Microsoft.”
Really? Anyone can implement Silverlight? The Covenant is for “downstream” receipients of Novell.
Anyone can distribute Moonlight? The Covenant says “so long as it is not bundled with a Linux operating system other than Novell-branded operating system software”
Sam Ramji seems to think that Moonlight is a joint effort between Microsoft and Novell..
Those sort of things sure do read like “exclusivity”. And this post is about how things looks from the outside. I don’t think it is “hate” to read things that way.
“Nothing is preventing you, or anyone else to engage Microsoft.”
Well, except dignity and integrity.
Sorry. Seriously though: I don’t have to “engage” Stallman to hack on emacs, why should I have to “engage” Microsoft?
They (and you) are the ones talking about how they are suddenly all about Open Source. So why all the Covenant/Promise/Patent Deal stuff?
I don’t want to engage with Microsoft if it means NDAs, patent agreements, and setting myself in conflict with the community. If it means stabbing an Open Source company in the back to gain a bump in this quarter’s profits. That is not the FLOSS way. That is the good old fashioned corporate way.

I think what Miguel tries to say is that we don’t get protection because we’re in a hate bubble. IOW, if you learn to love thy master instead of criticizing him, you can benefit from his indulgence.

This is poppycock. c# is just like Java, except more complicated (all that syntactic sugar might make using it easier, but it is a more complex language). The libraries even have the same sorts of issues – except Java’s have gotten somewhat better simply because they’ve had longer to get better (e.g. deprecated `first-runs’ at container classes and the like).

C# (and Java for that matter) is pretty much like any other procedural language when it comes down to the nuts and bolts. And the GUI toolkits are no better than any other modern toolkits (including the C ones like gtk+). And to top it off the documentation is really awful, now I think about it. After coming from the GNOME world, using .NET in visual studio was a very unpleasant shock to the system.

Back to the original post – Miguel is a pretty easy target in the fawning over MS front. Must’ve been the only human on earth who thought COM was a good idea for example

Now, funny thing is that a lot of devices probably violate these patents. A friend of mine who’s studying IP Law and is interning in a law firm told me that this is pretty common: If a company ever does decide to sue, then they bring the entire arsenal out so the rulings are in their favor.

He followed the Tomtom case earlier, and he mentioned that the main patents infringed were the one on vehicle systems or something – yet nobody mentions that. If you have to sue someone regarding something, you probably want to bring out everything you’ve got. Some people felt that FAT is trivial and common, and seemed like a potential threat.

While I’m not worried about MS using Mono to take us down, I am concerned that it will add to the number of patents that they can use to incriminate other companies if they ever choose to.

For some reason the company seems to be interested in leveraging open source to whatever they do. Since they’re a publicly traded company their goal is to make lots of money. While they could’ve done some nasty stuff in the 90’s and early 00’s, it’s hard to say whether such mass eradication of a platform is possible and is seen as a strategically positive move by anyone.

… MS will still sue if you don’t stick to the standard. Where’s the forking freedom of free software and open source in that?

To the lack of forking freedom I would add the lack of freedom to implement just a subset of the specification. The lack of these freedoms makes Mono non-copyleft for all intents and purposes.

What I don’t understand is that if any company could sue us regarding Mono why haven’t they done so already for nearly seven or so years.

Someone on the legal team at TomTom might have asked a similar question up until a couple of months ago.
“If anyone could sue a Linux using company over patented VFAT file name extensions, why haven’t they done so already for nearly xyz or so years?”
Just because something hasn’t happened so far doesn’t mean it will never happen.

Thank you for covering that point!

I often say that IF Microsoft wanted to sue for patents, now is not not the time! It would make no sense whatsoever! Better – much better – to wait for the suit to do the most damage.

I’ve been thinking on why some people think the other way (“If they would have sued they would have sued by now”), and I think it is because there are two basic ways to think of the situation:

1. Microsoft wants to “protect its intellectual property” – these people think Microsoft would sue as soon as possible

2. Microsoft wants to “destroy Linux” – these people think Microsoft will sue as late as possible

That’s best way I can sum it up right now, at least.

What I don’t understand is that if any company could sue us regarding Mono why haven’t they done so already for nearly seven or so years.

I can think of a few different reasons a patent holder might wait several years before openly threatening lawsuits, or even choose never to litigate at all.
Firstly, they might wish to encourage widespread adoption of their technology before exploiting it for financial gain (AKA a free introductory offer). For example, the GIF image file format employed LZW compression methods that were patented in 1985, yet it was not until 1994 before they chose to enforce those patents (after it had been deployed extensively on CompuServe and elsewhere). A more recent case involves the MPEG4 video format built upon technology patented in around 2001 and yet has since been under a permissive, royalty-free license which is set to expire at the end of this year, meaning websites hosting MPEG4 files will need to pay royalties until the patents expire about a decade from now.

Alternately, a company holding a patent might opt to use the patent to convince clients to choose their products rather than a competitor’s which hasn’t provided proper licensing. In this scenario, it doesn’t even have to be the same product; for example, a salesman for the patent-holding company might offer a customer promises not to sue over their use of a competitors unlicensed product in exchange for them purchasing a completely unrelated application.

I didn’t explain this to you before but I did attempt to implement such a program in C#. I didn’t get very far. Granted, that was C# 1.0, and I’m sure there have been many improvements since then.

At that point (1.0) I felt like I wasn’t seeing what all the hype was about. This was on genuine .NET Windows stuff.

I got real far real fast under Ruby and Python, but Ruby performance was too slow. Python is a little slow, but I haven’t attempted any real optimization at all, either.

To be half-serious, I’m scared to try Mono for my pet project! What if I like it!?!

I will make a suggestion to you – try and write a simple scale calculator (you know what I’m talking about) in C#. I assure you that you’ll notice a significant difference from what you’ve worked with before.

Patents will always exist, and after you’ve tried your hand writing some code using this stack, you might change your opinions. There seem to be two battles that are going on – one with people who are cautious regarding mono and advice against it, and the other with companies who might have patents over it.

What I don’t understand is that if any company could sue us regarding Mono why haven’t they done so already for nearly seven or so years.

I’m not worried that Mono is safe or not. I just feel that even if there is a risk, it’s worth that risk. I’m sure that once you just give it a shot you might change your perspective on how the battle must be fought, and your idea of victory might be altered.