Our strategy in dealing with patents in Mono is the same strategy that any other software developer would take. In the event of a patent claim, we will try to find prior art to the claim of the patent.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The software patent problem is not limited to Mono. Software patents affect everyone writing software today.
Software patents are dangerous to software developers because they impose monopolies on software ideas.
After releasing Mono 1.0, we started work on a new edition of Mono that will be released later in the year.
If you patent a discovery which is unique, say a human gene or even just one particular function of a human gene, then you are actually creating a monopoly, and that's not the purpose of the world of patents.
I think software patents are a bad idea. Many patents are given for trivial inventions.
Every piece of software written today is likely going to infringe on someone else's patent.
Software patents, in particular, are very ripe for abuse. The whole system encourages big corporations getting thousands and thousands of patents. Individuals almost never get them.
Patents are basically rights to try and develop a commercial product.
We're not going to make Evolution or any of our other products depend on Mono anytime in the near future.
Fighting patents one by one will never eliminate the danger of software patents, any more than swatting mosquitoes will eliminate malaria.
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