moonlight ms conditions not to sue http://www.microsoft.com/interop/msnovellcollab/moonlight.mspx http://www.microsoft.com/interop/msnovellcollab/moonlight_definitions.aspx#intermediate
"Intermediate Recipients" means resellers, recipients, and distributors to the extent they are authorized (directly or indirectly) by Novell or its Subsidiaries to resell, license, supply, distribute or otherwise make available Moonlight Implementations (whether the resale, licensing, supplying, making available, or distribution is on a stand-alone basis, or on an OEM basis as bundled with hardware or other software of the reseller or distributor, or otherwise, so long as it is not bundled with a Linux operating system other than Novell-branded operating system software), except for resellers, recipients, or distributors who are in the business of offering their own branded operating system software. Notice something here Debian does not have protection. So it is the end user downloading from Novell we need a old style wrapper .deb that was done with java for a long time for moonlight if I am reading this restriction right. Since that way it was not bundled with debian so avoids the clause and was directly provide to user by Novell. On mono there is no http://www.microsoft.com/interop/msnovellcollab/default.mspx protection for commercial users again unless acquired from Novell. So I believe to follow debian requirements even that mono is open source code it license does not provide patent protection. There are known patent threats here so it should move to restricted for non commercial development only. For commercial usage Novell will have to provide. This is going to cause upset I know pushing all the .net applications out of mainline. My problem here is legal status. Debian has to protect all its uses commercial and non commercial a like. Mono is going to have to be treated like patent restricted formats. Mono just happens to be one. If there is some legal document proving I am wrong and debian can ship mono and moonlight to all users without putting users at risk it would be great to see. So far I have not found one. Peter Dolding -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
