Any comments on the following, and how it might pertain to future releases?: [quote] I noticed a comment thread on Groklaw about Moonlight, with a link to the license terms on Microsoft's website. They call it Covenant to Downstream Recipients of Moonlight - Microsoft & Novell Interoperability Collaboration . A comment by Microsoft's Brian Goldfarb on Dana Blankenhorn's article about Novell being a lead pony for Silverlight started the discussion originally. Goldfarb represented that anyone can use Moonlight: "Moonlight is usable for anyone on any distribution of Linux (redhat, ubuntu, etc.) -- it is not limited just to Novell as Mono is." And he linked to the covenant, saying it "applies to all downstream recepients of the software." Is that true? ... "Microsoft, on behalf of itself and its Subsidiaries, hereby covenants not to sue Downstream Recipients of Novell and its Subsidiaries for infringement under Necessary Claims of Microsoft on account of such Downstream Recipients’ use of Moonlight Implementations to the extent originally provided by Novell during the Term and, if applicable, the Extension or Post-Extension Period, but only to the extent such Moonlight Implementations are used to provide Plug-In Functionality. The foregoing covenants shall survive termination of the Agreement, but only as to specific copies of such Moonlight Implementations distributed during the Term, and if applicable, the Extension or Post-Extension Period." ... Q: But the definitions section seems to be saying that Moonlight is safe from threat only if you get it from Novell AND DO NOT PASS IT ON, as there are no protections for downstream recipients. A: Correct, unless those downstream recipients get it from an 'Intermediate Recipient' defined to only include authorized resellers. [quote] http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080528133529454 I was particularly interested in the phrase "it is not limited just to Novell as Mono is." ^^^^^^^^^^ I know you don't ship Moonlight, and I sincerely hope you never do, but you /do/ ship Mono, and I have been vigorously campaigning (in various places) for distros not to, without much success. I think this latest revelation is finally vindication of my concerns, and you should drop Mono like a hot brick. On the subject of Microsoft's "covenants", there's also this: [quote] So much quarreling about open standards. Jason Matusow advocates for a document format with RAND licensing conditions for the patents. What does he mean when he talks about RAND? RAND stands for "reasonable and non-discriminatory". But Jason Matusow's company Microsoft lacks honesty when it talks about "reasonable and non-discriminatory" conditions. ... Reasonable and non-discriminatory in patent licensing means "we apply a uniform fee". ... RAND patent licensing conditions are a tool to ban Free Software, which is entirely incompatible with RAND licensing conditions. Now one side of the debate blames it on the patent licensing conditions, the other side on the software licensing conditions. "The reason I agree with the statement about patents and Free Software not mixing is that there have been terms written into GPL licenses that explicitly conflict with software patents. Okay, that is the choice of the authors and users of those licenses." [quote] http://www.digitalmajority.org/forum/t-54546/reasonable-and-not-non-discriminatory It seems clear to me that the cloak of ECMA's RAND, that Microsoft hides their .NET and OOXML patents behind, has been exposed as a sham. IOW the Emperor has no clothes. Why are you still shipping Mono? Then there's this new debacle over Firefox: [quote] I decided to upgrade my copy of Firefox 3 Beta5 to the recent Release Candidate today and was greeted with something quite unexpected. Instead of my browser window opening as it was supposed to do I was given a End-User Software License Agreement (EULA) screen which would not let me use Firefox until I agreed with the terms and conditions. While Mozilla has had a EULA since Firefox 1.5 or so they have never brazenly shoved it into the end-user's face until now. It immediately set me on edge because this behavior is indicative of proprietary software and not something you would expect to see when using something that is open source. [quote] http://www.linuxinfusion.com/firefox-3-rc1-forces-you-agree-eula-usage Why are you still shipping Firefox instead of GNU IceCat, which is after all exactly the same software - but without the additional restrictions that make Firefox® non-Free? -- Regards, Keith G. Robertson-Turner -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
