On Tuesday 24 May 2005 12:34, Dinesh Joshi wrote:

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From: Satya ilugbom@thesatya.com

Dude, you have some major misconception here. Let me clear it up.

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It compares much better, as I can write useful production code without having to pay someone hundreds of dollars. I do this for a living, too. Oh, and the code is usually plain text so you can hack with a text editor and don't need an IDE-- though you can get those, too.

You don't need to pay microsoft a penny to write code, compile it on their .NET platform, sell it, distribute or any kind of commercial activity with *your* software.

Missing a minor detail.M$ has patents on large portions of the .Net architecture. They have granted a royalty free in perpetuity licence to the C# and CLI portion of the technology only. Other portions are licenced on different RAND terms. In short pay for commercial use. You are courting disaster, particularly with a Company as horrendous as M$.

One reason for .Net was M$ losing a court case to distribute their mangled version of java. So now they can use the patented portions of .net for tying in customers to their products and services while anybody else wanting to develop a similiar service pays royalty. At the same time they can shout that the technology is free and open which it is not. Btw IS NOT is patented by M$

Do post any pointers negating the above.

" Beppe,

As one of the inventors on that patent as well as the person heading up the standardization efforts for the CLI, I'd like to explain why I've never felt the two are in conflict.

The ECMA process requires that all patents held by member companies that are essential for implementing its standards are available under "reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) terms" for the purpose of implementing those Standards. This is the normal condition used in all

International Standards organizations, including both ECMA and ISO.

But Microsoft (and our co-sponsors, Intel and Hewlett-Packard) went further and have agreed that our patents essential to implementing C# and CLI will be available on a "royalty-free and otherwise RAND" basis for this purpose.

Furthermore, our release of the Rotor source code base with a specific license on its use gives wide use to our patents for a particular (non-commercial) purpose, and as we explicitly state we are open to additional licenses for other purposes. "

rgds jtd