Mono Platform

[Gain Paolo Mureddu]

seth vidal wrote:

>  
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>>(2) I uderstand Red Hat's position, but why _Debian_, SuSE or Ubuntu
>>don't have that concerns? What's the difference?
>>    
>>
>
>Debian, SuSE, and Ubuntu do not have the same lawyers that red hat has.
>They see things differently.
>
>-sv
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>  
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Exuse me for saying this, but weren't Debian (and thus Ubuntu) folks 
unconditional defenders of Free Open Source Software? According to what 
I've been able to make out of this discussion (which is by the way, way 
over my head), the concern of Red Hat lawers is that the conditions on 
which this particular package has been made available are not so clear, 
to say with all its words, because of Microsoft's .NET patents that may 
pevent the use of the package due to infringement (key word here, 
"may"). The legal dept. at Red Hat have said that until the situation's 
clear, it may be included into either Fedora or RHEL, but not before... 
Well, my question here is: How can it be determined if it does not 
infringe any patent, if the patent itself is not revised along side said 
conflicting package?

I think I'd adopt Red Hat's position if I were in that situation... 
That's why I'm concerned.