Re: [DotGNU]Propoganda starts at home...

[fitzix]

David Sugar wrote:
> 
> First, we will absolutely use and work with other freely licensed software
> projects that offer components which are already underway or completed,
> assuming they are usable and that have or impose no legal implications or
> burdens.  There is some concern about how to correctly impliment the runtime
> environment, and a belief that the development must be done by people that are
> seperate from and not by those that have directly used .net technology, .net
> tools or that have performed direct examination of .net code, decompiling of
> any .net class libs, etc.
> 
> If proper assurances are made that this has been or will be done correctly
> only from published (draft) EMCA standards documents and specs, and that there
> is no legal risk from using any of the existing Mono work, that it has not
> been contaminated in the process it was created by, then certainly it would be
> both beneficial and absolutely desirable to do so, and would save a tremendous
> amount of time.
> 
> I point this out now because this is one of the legal risks in initiating this
> work, and was going to be one of the points I was going to bring up on tyhe
> list for those that do want to run off and develop that part of the system.
> 
> David
> 

Do you think that there might be any legal recourse to this?  I mean,
just on concept alone - I reject Microsoft's authority to say that
someone who has "used" a program can't create something LIKE it.  I've
never used nor personally seen a .Net implementation (even though we
have one where I work) and I will sign any documentation necessary to
show that.  However, there's something really insidious at work here
(which I think we can all agree on) and I reject this principal
outright.

I mean, is this legal?  

        -Barry