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Comment by 8plot | Hacker News Reader

This is strange:

"Q: What if I don’t implement the entire specification? Will I still get the protections under the CP? A: The CP applies only if the implementation conforms fully to required portions of the specification. Partial implementations are not covered."

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Otherwise you could build an app with a feature that infringes a single patent of theirs, and claim your app is protected because it is an implementation of a tiny one-feature subset of CLI.

The CP is then more or less useless for free and open source software---the freedom to modify and redistribute the software is worthless if any feature you choose to add, remove or modify makes you fair game for a patent lawsuit. The users have no real control over this sort of software, because they can't legally distribute modifications which violate the letter of the specifications.

It sounds like C# and the CLI is still best avoided for open source software.

It is not just a specification, it is a standard. Why would you even want to implement something violating the standard?

>It sounds like C# and the CLI is still best avoided for open source software.

Why? How does the language or compiler matter for writing open source or not? I think the sentence should read:

It sounds like Mono is still best avoided if you are paranoid

And moreover this news is about microsoft promising not to sue mono. It has nothing to do with microsoft suing or not suing you for writing code.

My kernel is pure .NET, but it will most likely never be a complete implementation. Why? Because many parts of it (e.g. the file stream APIs) are completely extraneous with my design. It may eventually have the unimplemented parts as wrappers for other components, but I find it highly unlikely it'll ever be a completely standards-compliant implementation.

Sounds like a way to enforce a standard, for compatibility, so that (eg) a C# program will run on any C# implementation. Java has similar with its runtime redistribution policy, and licensees.

Which Microsoft famously tried to circumvent with J++.

You have to remember that Java sucks. Sun was very closed to suggestions and improvements, and until C# came along wasn't really doing much with the language. J++ with improvements eventually turned into C# which is far superior to Java.

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