No surprise, and why should it make a difference? XobotOS is an interesting
project, even if just proof-of-concept with no commercial intent. What their
Sharpen tool allows is the machine translation of programs written in
Android/Java into C#/Mono. Presumably C#/.NET with perhaps a modicum more
effort. Not translate "just" the APIs. Translate the whole thing. Not being a
lawyer, my question is
Fascinating. Does that make C#/.NET in some
way a derivative work of Java?
It should make no difference if the
languages themselves, including the API/SSO of their standard libraries
(packages) cannot be copyrighted.
BTW, I hold neither Miguel nor Mono in
quite so low esteem as some these parts. I feel it unfortunate he got so far
down that rabbit hole with no more than Microsoft's partial promise-not-to-sue.
But I also agree with Stallman, that as a practical matter it really makes
little difference save to open source projects (e.g. Linux distros) that might
perhaps unwisely rely on the Mono runtime remaining eternally freely
distributable for a critical component of their product. (That would just be
fitting Mr. Ballmer with hob-nail boots and a-fixing a "kick-me" sigh to one's
backside.) Apart from that special case, should for any unfathomable reason
Microsoft chose to pull the plug on Mono, for estoppel reasons any commercial
Mono user could undoubtedly probably negotiate a license for
their existing runtimes on a very RAND basis.
Again, I'm no lawyer, but
think the risk there is not exactly huge.
Also, I can't help but suspect
Sun was ultimately prodded to finally open-source Java by Microsoft's decision
to place at least the ECMA portions of C# under their Community Promise, thereby
giving those queasy of the latter an easy excuse to embrace the former.
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Real Programmers mangle their own memory. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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