Miguel (Mono Fame) On MS and Sun Patent Issues

Responding to concerns raised by Havoc's article, Miguel posts on the Ximian forums (emphasis mine):

“The fear that people have on Mono's legal issues apply equally as well to everything else.  Let me explain.

Sun owns various patents on Java, and they might just feel at some point threatened enough to use them as a weapon against open source.  In the same way people feel that Microsoft might pull that trigger.

Just to put things into a different perspective: Sun has litigated over Java in the past (against Microsoft) over a contractual dispute and has done threatening legal moves against JBoss at some point (which I do
not claim to understand) over bits of J2EE.

If Java on Linux became a threat to Sun, would they use their patents? I do not know, and I hope not.  Am only illustrating the point, just like other people have vehemently illustrated the Microsoft patent risk before. 

There is nothing in Java that makes it any safer than Mono at this point.  We do not have any guarantees, any written statements, any guarantees that Java on Linux will not be sued under certain conditions.

Microsoft has granted RAND+Royalty Free licenses to any patents they might own that are required to implement the ECMA 334/335 standards.  So at least our core VM, classes and compilers are safe from any
litigation from *Microsoft*.  Now, pay attention to the above, because it is important...“ [1]

Paolo also has some very well thought out arguments [2] specifically addressing the C# vs Java side of things in relation to the possible GNOME C# port.

[1] http://lists.ximian.com/archives/public/mono-list/2004-March/019042.html

[2] http://www.advogato.org/person/lupus/diary.html?start=10