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Ok, I certainly hope he received more than just that before he began proclaiming to the world that Microsoft is doing such a thing.

The optimist in me is excited. The skeptical in me is dubious, confused and does not trust blogs. It's not listed on Microsoft's list of products under the Community Promise so I'm going to refrain from breaking out the champagne until all the facts are finalized.

Anyone else got a better source for this than a loosely affiliated blog that bills itself as "Communication from the Open Source Community at Microsoft" ?

Microsoft love us and want us to be happy :-)

It sounds promising, and it may end up meaning Stallman was wrong all along and that it was safe to implement .Net/C# (which GNU have done anyway). It's be useful to have somewhere slightly more authoritative to hear it from (like Microsoft themselves) but at least people don't need to worry about "arrrghh, it's a patent trap" and can get on with "hurrah! I can focus on coding for the desktop in a decent language rather than having low-level memory concerns etc".

Not that I ever cared anyway. Stick to the registered standard definition of C# and Microsoft couldn't exactly kill off Mono anyway, as they'd probably have ended up breaching the "fair and non-discriminatory" part of the patent licensing or been forced to give Mono a free license anyway.

Now Microsoft is estopped from going after people using c# and .net technologies.

This is the answer I've wanted from Miguel ever since the Novell brouhaha.

Promissory estoppel serves as a "consideration substitute" in contract law that renders certain promises otherwise lacking in consideration binding and enforceable. In such cases, the promisee's reliance is treated as an independent and sufficient basis for enforcing the promise. Promissory estoppel can be viewed as a legal device that prohibits the promissor from denying the existence of a contract for lack of consideration.

http://www.lawnix.com/cases/promissory-estoppel.html [lawnix.com]

"Q: Is this Community Promise legally binding on Microsoft and will it be available in the future to me and to others?

A: Yes, the CP is legally binding upon Microsoft. The CP is a unilateral promise from Microsoft and in these circumstances unilateral promises may be enforced against the party making such a promise. Because the CP states that the promise is irrevocable, it may not be withdrawn by Microsoft. The CP is, and will be, available to everyone now and in the future for the specifications to which it applies. As stated in the CP, the only time Microsoft can withdraw its promise against a specific person or company for a specific Covered Specification is if that person or company brings (or voluntarily participates in) a patent infringement lawsuit against Microsoft regarding Microsoft's implementation of the same Covered Specification. This type of "suspension" clause is common industry practice."

tl;dr they can't sue you, ever, unless you sue them over patents.

Also, Mono contains
1) parts that are covered by the ECMA standard (C# and the CLI)
2) original namespaces (like Mono.Simd)
3) open-sourced Microsoft stuff (like ASP.NET, under the OSI-approved MS-PL license)
4) parts that are in .NET but not covered by the standard (like Winforms)
which is why Miguel de Icaza says they'll be splitting their distribution up into now definitely safe (1 and 2) and potentially dodgy (3 and 4) packages, which is what already happens on Ubuntu for instance.

Why do people think C# is some new amazing language? Clearly MS took Java and gave it a MS framework.

If you would just use java you probably wouldn't have this fear of MS trying to undermine the OSS movement. When a multi-billion dollar company other than google tries to "help" OSS, you can only be suspicious.

http://www.javacamp.org/javavscsharp/getStarted.html [javacamp.org]

Here's why:

There is no mention of other components [nyud.net] the extend .NET!

From the document...

"...We introduce instructions newdata, lddata, stdata, castdata, isdata and
switchdata to create and manipulate classunion values..." (emphasis mine).

In fact, this announcement is not much different compared to the one 7 years ago!

Watch out folks. Microsoft's classic Embrace, Extend, Extinguish paradigm is very possible here.

This is nothing new and nothing we didn't already know. It still says nothing about ASP.NET, Windows Forms and all the other parts of .NET that are not part of the ECMA standard. Mono implements many, many things outside the ECMA standard, so anybody but Novell who distributes or otherwise uses Mono is at risk of patent shenanigans.

I have been following Mono for a while but I am currently still using Java.

The question is which do I commit to?

The way I understand it is:

Java has less "patent liability" than Mono.
All of Java is under an open license including "essential" libraries (e.g. data access, gui).
Only the "core" (including the framework libraries?) of .net are covered by the Communtiy Promise but not some of the supporting libraries (e.g. ado.net, winforms).

I know that these .net libraries have been implemented in Mono but would we have to write new open-source libraries to replace thier functionality and remain "patent-threat" free?

If this is the case then I would imagine that Java would be the preferred choice IF you had to chose one.

What are the overheads of both the Java and Mono virtual machines running at the same time? Would we be better getting behind just one environment and using that.

For what it's worth I really like and prefer Mono - especially Banshee (is there an equivalent for Java?) and I want to develop for it but the Community Promise only covers the ECMA part of .net. Without the other libraries I fear Mono is hamstrung.

At least with Java I know where I stand, all the libraries are included and the functionality is already there.

OK, first off it's excellent news if MS are doing this. It would be nice if they did the same for the parts of Mono / .NET that are outside ECMA.

As far as motivation for this goes, they're a business for whom pure co-operation seems to have dubious benefits. I assume that they believe that in this case more people using .NET is good for them and that they can compete well on the quality of the implementation and debugging tools (probably true if only because they'll have a head start on new features).

But the question I'm really curious about: CLI / C# / Mono seems to have generated a massive amount of controversy and therefore a lot of noise. Some fairly popular new apps have been written using it. The whole situation seems to suggest that, whilst using the technology was generally considered to have many downsides, it must have pretty large benefits too: it's not just being suggested as a compatibility library but as a foundation for some pretty cool new stuff. So ... is this really the case? Is it that good that you'd want to write your note taking app in it (Tomboy) even though it's possible to write it in another language (i.e. Gnote)? Are the development tools that much better?

Or is it the case that a few "killer apps" happened to be written in C# as demonstrations of its abilities - even though another language would have done the job - and those apps are sufficiently desirable that Mono is getting pushed hard so that everyone can have these killer apps by default?

Personally, although I've not programmed in C#, I'm familiar with a variety of languages and implementation strategies. Different languages are certainly good for different things and more modern languages are typically less painful to work with. C# sounds quite nice. But what I'm wondering is: is the noise and push over Mono as a popular platform a result of it being particularly strong, or a result of a few particularly desirable apps depending on it? Obviously some (much!) of the noise generated is simply due to concerns over leveraging MS technology. But I do wonder how good the technology must be to justify this much noise and controversy!

The lawyers amongst us are leaping for joy. I happen to be a law convert. So ill try and explain why we're happy!

Promissory estoppel is a legal defence (a so called shield). When a party (A) intending legal relations promises not to assert their strict legal rights, and another party (B) moves to rely upon this promise, that party (A) is estopped from enforcing their rights (against B) by way way of promissory estoppel.

It goes something like this: Now MS has promised not to enforce their C#-rights , and people rely on this promise, such as start development/deploying C# applications because of this promise, if the case came to court, MS's argument would be estopped by a defence of promissory estoppel.

It's a little more complicated. For instance it must be inequitable for B if A reneges on their promise (fairly clear if they suffer a disadvantage or loss as 'one who comes into equity must come with clean hands'), the promise must be clear and unequivocal (I'd say yes), there must be a change in reliance on the promise (yes), and it is a shield not a cause of action (in other words, we can't sue MS for revoking the promise, we can simply aovid being sued).

However, things get a little confusing. MS have declared that this promise is unilateral, in other words, it is a promise to the world without the need for a formal agreement. Such things are valid in the eyes of the law, and enforced by the fact promissory estoppel acts as an equitable remedy - there is no need for consideration, a key ingreediant to the traditional offer/acceptance/consideration contractual model.

Promissory estoppel is a common law principle. It's basis in England is from Lord Denning's High Court decision in High Trees.

Law bit:

In High Trees, due to WW2, the claimant ("High Trees") agreed to reduce rent for a block of flats. After the war, the claimant brought action seeking the past and future rent. Lord Denning said "When a promise is made that is intended to be acted upon, and is acted upon, you are estopped from going back on it."

In High Trees Denning referred, not to a previous case of Foakes v Beer (about the part payment of debt), but Hughes v Metropolitan Railway to establish his basis for promissory estoppel. In Hughes, it was held that the opening of negotiations for sale of a property had an implied promise not to enforce an outstanding notice of repair that would forfeit the respondents lease.

Key to the criticism over Denning's decision is that Hughes only suspended rights, whereas High Trees may extinguish them. This position has recently been approved in the UK by the House of Lords in Tool Metal Manufacturing Co. Ltd - the promisor may revive rights by formal notice, unless it is impossible for the promisee to resume his original position.

Is it impossible to resume the original position prior to this agreement? We're talking about computers here. The agreement has come now, not several years ago. Consider Mono as it is now, as the original position. This is such a contentious area when you consider MS can revoke the promise, creating ambiguity, and because under Coombes v Coombes promissory estoppel is not a cause of action, the Mono community cannot sue MS to enforce this promise!

Matt

This isn't meant to be helping Microsoft's competitors, such as Linux. Quite the opposite - it's meant to be helping Microsoft.

Proprietary lock-in the key to Microsoft's business model, whether we're talking about Office document formats, proprietary Internet Explorer extensions and incompatabilities or C#/CLI.

In this case it seems Microsoft accrues multiple benefits from open source developers who can't resist the free candy being offered:

1) It helps spread adoption of Microsoft's proprietary standards

2) It stops open source developers from pushing and developing alternative open source standards

3) It sets anyone (Mono) reimplementing these standards up for the future rug-pull when they change and/or extend the standard in the future, which will be done according to the needs of Microsofts business model

There's a reason the document format for Microsoft's office applications often changes from release to release, and it's not simply because new features are added. This is to force people to upgrade - which is the basis of Microsoft's business model. You can be sure that C#/CLI will be managed in the same way - don't expect Microsoft to keep these standards static now that they have "kindly" encouraged you to adopt/reimplement them. Quite the contrary, once there is significant open-source reliant upon them, then they have more incentive than ever to churn them.