LCA 2010: Allison warns of patent traps in Mono

Sam Varghese
Thursday, 21 January 2010 06:07

Opinion and Analysis

Patents are the only threat that Microsoft can brandish against free and open source software and that is exactly why people should be wary of the Mono project, free software advocate and Samba hacker Jeremy Allison told a packed auditorium at the 11th LCA today.


Allison's presentation, titled "Microsoft and free software: the elephant in the room" was held in the second largest auditorium but it was difficult to find standing room once he got going.

Sporting a T-shirt with the Samba logo on the front, and "opening windows to a wider world" on the rear, Allison presented a meticulously prepared set of arguments to show that patents were the only way which the word's largest software company had left to attack FOSS.

Mono is an attempt to create an open source clone of Microsoft's .NET development environment; the project was begun by Novell vice-president Miguel de Icaza who claims this will pull Windows developers over to GNU/Linux.

Allison said the patent war would be a never-ending conflict. "All the patent promises about Mono count for nothing," he said. Other methods of harming FOSS had not borne the expected fruit.

Why not leave Microsoft alone, apart from pitying its users? "The problem is that Microsoft will not leave us alone," Allison said, answering his own question. "Else why should we care? GNU/Linux does not need any code from Microsoft and can run perfectly well on its own."

He pointed out that the first indication from Microsoft that it had realised that FOSS could be a danger to its continued domination of the software business was the set of memos known as the Halloween Documents which surfaced in the late 1990s. They were leaked to open source luminary Eric S. Raymond and he placed them on the web.

"The strategy that they would later follow was outlined in those documents," Allison said. "Microsoft's business model depends on maintaining their monopoly.

"They leave Apple alone because they need at least one company to point to as a desktop threat when they are accused of being the sole desktop operating system. GPL-licensed free software is to them as garlic is to a vampire."