Mono Licences and Microsoft
Monday, January 23rd, 2006This is fairly funny.
http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/productfeedback/…
Resolved as Not Reproduced by Microsoft on 2004-07-30 at 16:11:56
Unfortunately, because of legal restrictions, we are unable to download and compiler mono source.
If you can give a more reduced test case, we may be able to look at it.
From a few people I know on the inside (who shall remain nameless) tell me that Microsoft won’t allow anyone to even look over any code from most open source projects out there because they are afraid of the trouble they might get in (SCO anyone?). I understand that in a broader perspective.
Mono too has a policy that if you seen the Microsoft Shared Source released code (like shared source version of the .NET runtime, codename Rotor) that we might not be able to accept any contribution that you submit. With the several scary clauses in the shared source license that prevent commercial use and redistribution, who wouldn’t be scared about getting caught with that clause?
However, I really don’t get why Microsoft has a problem with the reverse, by taking a look at Mono’s source code I mean. More specifically, our framework class libraries. All of them are released under MIT X11 based license. I don’t think there exists a more liberal license in wide scale use (Its just like public domain, minus the act of really releasing as public domain). Its even less restrictive then the original BSD license and Microsoft has openly looked at BSD released code in the past without issue.
The source code to the class libraries is literally sitting there, open for the picking. Of course you need a runtime to make use of the libraries and if you don’t care for ours (maybe because you or your company is unnecessarily scared of the LGPL), you can use Microsoft’s or DotGNU’s perfectly good runtime for that part. You could even break out Mainsoft’s C# compiler (check out their grasshoper project), and compile all our C# based libraries to Java byte code instead.
It would be awesome if they could use our class libraries to compare to their own code when bug tracking, or when considering new features for .NET and to use as a base line when they are afraid of making breaking changes. Maybe if all else fails on that front, instead of looking at the source, just test against our binary releases.
Shoot, maybe even someday, I would love to see some microsoft.com email addresses submitting bugs reports in our bugzilla. It would sure would be nice to see someday, since I see our contributors posting bugs to Microsoft’s product feedback all the time.
I don’t know. Just a thought.
(Might be good to point out too that any opinions expressed above are purely mine. The above might not reflect the opinions of Novell, the Mono Project, or any of the other contributing developers, even though I know a few people who feel nearly the same way.)
