[Opensim-dev] Mono considered harmful

[Mike Dickson]

The TomTom thing is far more complex than it might seem and a good
example of how companies use patents these days.  I wouldn't be as quick
to claim TomTom is the only one at fault here, there was a counter-suit
and we don't have details on how it was settled.

IMO,there's essentially zero risk to OpenSim.  Even if Mono gets
attacked for patent infringement (which is extremely unlikely IMO, I
won't go into details) the worst case scenarios is that you'd not be
able to run it on Linux using Mono. If you're inclined towards floating
anxiety then this is something to worry about. Otherwise from an OpenSim
perspective there are bigger fish to fry. Like getting to 1.0...

Mike

On Fri, 2009-04-03 at 14:58 +0000, Nebadon Izumi wrote:
> personally the only wolf in sheeps clothing i see in this case is
> TomTom for not aquiring permission to use software, sounds to me like
> they tried to steal something that wasn't not theirs and sell it
> without aquiring permission, so if Microsoft is a wolf in sheeps
> clothing for protecting is own creations, then I guess thats just how
> things are, personally I dont see anything that microsoft did wrong or
> is even un-ethical in this situation, quite the opposite, in my eyes,
> TomTom were the one with questionable ethics, you cant just steal from
> microsoft because everyone hates them and they are a huge entity, if
> we start using these kind of tactics successfully againts large
> heartless corporations where does it end? the answer is it wouldnt if
> microsoft lost this case it would be open game on all protected code,
> and while i love and am a huge promoter of open source, I am a bigger
> fan of protecting the laws of the land, and as much as everyone would
> love to see microsoft burn, in this case the law was on their side and
> thats just the facts, if you are to survive in the open source world
> you have to thick skin and expect the companies that your "Open"
> software is competing with their Retail software that keeps their
> employees paid to be quite defensive when you intrude on their
> creations.
>