Wine c.f. Mono

[Thorsten Leemhuis]

Am Sonntag, den 01.01.2006, 00:40 +0100 schrieb Linus Walleij:
> On Sat, 31 Dec 2005, Andy Burns wrote:
> 
> > Is it largely a question of how far "behind the curve" Wine is perceived to 
> > be compared to how close to "snapping at the heels" Mono is seen?

Well, IMHO there is a large difference between "Allow users to run their
old Windows apps" (Wine) and "make easy to allow (linux) programmers to
use a new technology that might in some parts be protected by
patents/IP-law" (mono)

If there are IP-problems around wine it can be removed easily. That's
quite problematic for all the users that depend on it, but they still
can switch back to windows of use qemu, vmware, xen, ...

But if people start to use mono now and get used to it there might be a
world in five years from now where a lot of applications and a major
desktop-environment depends heavily on mono. What happens if some random
company suddenly says "you have to pay us {don't know} Dollar for using
our IP; See: {long list of patents here}" 

>[...]
> The most common answer that I believe other distributions will give, is 
> that Microsoft is in a very bad position to run lawsuits that threaten to 
> harm interoperability (double so in the EU), so both Mono and Wine are 
> quite safe.

Might be, but

>  However two heavyweight law pillars (antitrust vs IP-law) 
> colliding means the outcome is uncertain at best.

Exactly.

> You can never plan against patent infringement anyway,

You can if you have a patent-exchange or similar agreements with the
holder of those patents.

>  so it might be best 
> to simply include them and wait for the call, if it ever comes.

I disagree. See above. 

>  IP law is 
> not a field of philosophical absolutes, though one wish it would be. We 
> are presumably already shipping thousands of patented routines with the 
> packages in Fedora, though it is highly uncertain if any of them would 
> stand up in court. [...]

That's not a good reason to ignore the problem completely. 

CU
thl
-- 
Thorsten Leemhuis <fedora at leemhuis.info>