Re: Where we stand in regard to the future platform / desktop technology

[Luis Villa <louie ximian com>]

On Mon, 2004-03-29 at 15:41 +0100, Alan Cox wrote:
> > They got help from Sun too. Neither side is saintly here.
> 
> These things aside I think there is a perception that Microsoft would
> see Mono accidentally fouling one of their related patents as a
> "business opportunity", possibly to be 'noticed' a few years hence,
> while Sun/IBM at least are likely to say "Uhumm.. don't do that it
> causes issues", not least of which because by shipping it they would
> probably be deemed to be accepting the situation by dint of estoppel.

estoppel! Man, I need an MBA too ;) 

[seriously, they would not be shipping gcj, so I'm not sure why that
would protect us against anything.]

> It seems unwise to take a trip down a dark alley with a criminal even if
> they have promised to nice.

Oh, of course. I'm not happy with that either. I just think with Sun
we're walking down the dark alley with Jekyll and Hyde. Might work out
nicely, but might get very, very ugly. 

I'm a touch frustrated that the Java proponents here seem to believe we
are only dealing with Jekyll, when we have no firm legal or even
strategic assurances that that is the case. [I might add that it would
be trivial for Sun to do this, and more believable to me than similar
utterances than MS, so Sun does have an advantage there.]

Luis