Mono promise is nice, Microsoft. What about Linux?

Microsoft has divided opinion in the open-source world for years with its love/mostly hate relationship with open source. While the company has seemingly warmed up to open source in the past two years, its continued patent club has hung over projects like Linux. On Monday Microsoft sheathed the club for the open-source Mono project, but arguably needs to go much further to justify celebrations.

Despite Microsoft's patent claims against open source over the years, it has chosen a few favorites to exclude from the taint of infringement, Mono chief among them. Mono enables .Net applications to run on Linux and almost certainly steps on Microsoft patents in the process. In November 2006 Microsoft and Novell, the primary company behind Mono development, consummated an interoperability agreement that included protection of Mono developers, but under fairly strict terms and only for Novell customers.

Mono was open source, in other words, but only usable for a select class of developer.

It therefore surprised some when Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu Linux distribution and an ardent opponent of software patents, decided to include Mono in its standard distribution. The company publicly defended its decision and, in my opinion, was right to do so. It's simply a matter of pragmatism, as John Mark Walker points out because "if we ditched all free software for possible patent violations, we'd have nothing left."

Now Microsoft has ostensibly made everything easier for Ubuntu and the rest of the Mono-using world, by pledging not to assert its patents against Mono developers, distributors, and users (i.e., those that implement C# and CLI, ECMA specifications 334 and 335, as Mono does).

While Mon's chief developer Miguel de Icaza celebrated Microsoft's decision ("I am overflowing with joy right now"), Dana Blankenhorn asks if Microsoft's Mono moment will end up fracturing the open-source movement (or, at least, the Free Software Foundation and Ubuntu). Meanwhile, Sean Michael Kerner queries whether Mono will benefit from Microsoft's promise not to be Microsoft and threaten the world with patent-infringement suits.

Ultimately, however, the real question is, "Who cares?" As IBM's Bob Sutor, vice president of Linux and Open Source, suggests, Mono is small change compared to Linux:

With Microsoft making promises about Mono, they should pledge that they will not assert their necessary patents against the Linux kernel.

Bingo. Mono is small change. Linux is big money. If Microsoft can overcome its allergic reaction to Linux, we might actually be making progress.

Microsoft's Mono decision is an example of Microsoft discovering it needn't squash the small child it has already invited to play in its sandbox. Extending its "Community Promise" to Linux would demonstrate that the company is committed to joining the 21st Century and competing on the basis of its technical merits against Linux, rather than its patent portfolio.

The U.S. patent system being as messy as it is, it's certain that Linux violates Microsoft patents...just as it's certain Microsoft violates Linux-related patents held by IBM and other Linux proponents. It's time to call a cease-fire and get back to delivering value, not intellectual property promises and threats, to customers.

Update 9:17 a.m. PDT: I inadvertently conflated Microsoft's Community Promise to extending to Mono, rather than the ECMA standards 334 and 335.

Carlo Daffara, an open-source consultant, rightly notes that Microsoft's patent promise is not directly on Mono, but rather on these ECMA standards, which leaves "most of Mono...encumbered as before (WinForms, ADO.NET, ...)."

Mono founder Miguel de Icaza recognizes this and plans to deal with it:

Astute readers will point out that Mono contains much more than the ECMA standards, and they will be correct. In the next few months we will be working towards splitting the jumbo Mono source code that includes ECMA + A lot more into two separate source code distributions. One will be ECMA, the other will contain our implementation of ASP.NET, ADO.NET, Winforms and others.

It's a useful distinction, but doesn't detract from the original premise (if anything, it amplifies it): Microsoft has taken baby steps toward competing with open-source projects like Mono and Linux on technical merit, but it needs to do far more. Granting its "Promise" to Linux would be a big step in the right direction.

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.

[fredholahan]

Matt, good read, as usual. Some software patents probably do represent the spirit of what patent laws originally set out to protect. Mostly, though, companies like Microsoft (and others) use their patent libraries to muscle the industry and destroy competitive innovation. Litigation constipation.

I'm glad to see the baby steps around Mono. Small progress is better than no progress. But much more is needed.

[pentest]

Mono is poison and Miquel de Icaza's ties to MS make it even more suspect.

If MS wants to support its crappy 'me-too' .net in Linux, let them do it. mono will never support new .net api's, therefore it does not exist to support Windows apps in Linux. I am not sure how anyone could even think that, unless they are clueless about software development. A good example is moonlight, it does not even close to supporting the simple silverlight 100%.

It also is not good for writing Linux apps, there are much better technologies that can be used in place of mono.

[Sumatra-Bosch]

Every company that has had dealings with MSFT and not assumed they are being lied to, deceived and set up for ruin has regretted it. MSFT is not telling Canonical the whole story and likely is playing the company to position it for the killing strike. It's like going to dinner with Jeffrey Dahmer. No matter what he says, and no matter how graceful his table manners, at some point the guy is going to want to saw open your skull and eat your brains.

[jwildeboer]

Matt,

it took years and years to convince SUN to put JAVA under GPL. It will take a similar amount of time, pressure, discussions to get Microsoft to do the right thing ;-)

Jan

[jtjt145]

To all those who suddenly think the wolf dressed in sheepskin has lost its appetite for raw meat are deluded.
Any dealings with Micro$oft are bad! After all that happened there must not be co-operation!
To all those meddling in mono - you are fools!
Like children playing with toy-shaped hand grenades.

[obvio-capitao]

It's a trojan horse.

Microsoft gives a little IP away, while stating that their other patents are valid. (If you accepted the gift, you acknowledge their claim).

When they finally want to collect royalties they will just say: "hey, we let you use ECMA standards 334 and 335 -- but that didn't cover all our other IP. Pay now or be sued".

Then, Microsoft will to be able to charge a fee from every device embedding Mono. (From cellphones and GPS systems -- think of TomTom).

In other words: DON'T USE MONO.