Last week, Microsoft extended the terms of their Community Promise to implementations of the ECMA 334 and 335 standards. You might think this means it's safe to write your software in C#. However, this promise is full of loopholes, and it's nowhere near enough to make C# safe.

Novell's development of Mono steps outside the sandbox defined by Microsoft's Community Promise

First the big news: Microsoft will be applying the Community Promise patent licensing to both C# and the CLI.

The Free Software Foundation has issued another statement on Mono, C# after the recent Microsoft extension of the terms of their Community Promise to implementations of ECMA 334 and 335. Is is safe to go back in the water now, as so many have been saying? FSF says no, that the "promise is full of loopholes, and it's nowhere near enough to make C# safe."

FSF: Last week, Microsoft extended the terms of their Community Promise to implementations of the ECMA 334 and 335 standards. You might think this means it's safe to write your software in C#. However, this promise is full of loopholes, and it's nowhere near enough to make C# safe.

We've all heard the rants: Mono has patents, Microsoft releases community promise, community ignores, flamewars continue. Enough to make any developer want to stop programming out of sheer annoyance. Mono is an excellent language and platform; there's nothing anybody can do to change that. People will continue to develop C# apps, and those that continue to hate Mono will continue to complain.

Microsoft's bid to dispel the patent fears surrounding the open source .NET clone, Mono, has met with little enthusiasm from free software advocates.

Many a vigorous debate has been fought over any possible legal threats that might be inherent in Mono. Now that Microsoft has extended its Community Promise to cover select parts of the C# programming language, which is what Mono is built on, it is being hailed as evidence that Mono is safe. Bruce Byfield tries to answer the question, is it really?

Microsoft has updated its Open Specification Promise page as of July 25, and it now says in the FAQ that the GPL is covered, including commercial:
Q: I am a developer/distributor/user of software that is licensed under the GPL, does the Open Specification Promise apply to me?