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Microsoft provides legal umbrella to Mono developers

By David Worthington

July 7, 2009 — Microsoft may have just provided legal assurances that it won't sue developers who implement Mono, the popular framework for Linux desktop applications.

Yesterday, Microsoft placed ECMA-based implementations of the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) and C# programming language under its Community Promise, a promise by Microsoft not to assert its intellectual property rights for covered technologies.

The caveat is that Microsoft has not yet included any of its .NET development frameworks under the Community Promise, said Anne Thomas Manes, research director with Burton Group. "I'm not sure how many people write C# applications without also using the frameworks. To date, Microsoft has looked the other way regarding licensing of their frameworks."

The Mono project is an open-source implementation of the CLI, a technology that was created by Microsoft and subsequently standardized by ECMA and ISO International. Microsoft supports the Mono effort with technological assistance. Mono implements ASP.NET, ADO.NET, WinForms and other frameworks that are not covered by Microsoft's Community Promise.

In response to Microsoft's addition of .NET technologies to the Community Promise, the Mono project will branch its source code into two separate source code distributions: one that is based strictly upon the ECMA specification, and another that includes Mono's implementations of the .NET frameworks, said Mono project leader and Novell vice president Miguel de Icaza in his blog.

Despite the absence of legal assurances for licensing the frameworks from Microsoft, Mono is already thriving on desktop Linux.

"Mono thrived without the [Community Promise], but it was always a pain to be criticized non-stop over the lack of this explicit statement," said de Icaza. "So it is a relief to not have to deal with this."

Related Search Term(s): Microsoft, Mono

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