GeezerVison is showing github.com — MonoDevelop License: has the source code to be published? · Issue #51 · dotdevelop/dotdevelop
MonoDevelop License: has the source code to be published? #51ActivityAdahel commented on Jan 20, 2021 @lytico MIT is fully compatible with any LGPL version. If you want a 100% MIT project, you can rewrite the LGPL code or replace the LGPL code with SharpDevelop or FlashDevelop, both MIT codes and C#. If you want a 100% LGPL project, you can use old code or code from another LGPL IDE. You can also leave it as is, just don't modify MIT's copyright notices. I don't believe that rewriting for LGPL is an option, MonoDevelop is almost every MIT, including addins. Maybe I didn't understand the issue, could you clarify? Why don't we vote to make a decision? lytico commented on Jan 20, 2021 @Adahel i clarify (see edited comment):
Has the source code of Monodeveop to be published by Microsoft again?
Reacted by Adahel and Александр Adahel commented on Jan 20, 2021 MonoDevelop is software with two licenses. I don't know how contributors can oppose open source MonoDevelop and closed source XamarinStudio, only a lawyer can explain this issue. I do not recommend contributing to open and closed dual license programs, with the exception of forks. Microsoft has probably already assessed this situation with its legal team and may even have an agreement with Novell that maybe own the rights to MonoDevelop. If Microsoft removed all contributions from the community, they can change the license and close the code. The lack of opposition to closing the code is also a problem. If MonoDevelop has a Contributor License Agreement (CLA), the contributor may have donated their copyright.
lextm commented on Jan 20, 2021 Adahel commented on Jan 21, 2021 After a long search:
Facts:
1° Microsoft killed MonoDevelop probably to facilitate the closing of the code. With MonoDevelop dead, there is virtually no reaction from the community. Embrace, extend and extinguish.
2° Changing part of MonoDevelop to MIT may have helped Microsoft close the code.
3° Xamarin had a proprietary version called Xamarin Studio.
4° If Xamarin Studio did not have a community code, this may have helped Micrososft to close the code.
5° MonoDevelop does not appear to have a Contributor License Agreement (CLA), any contributor who finds a code written by him for MonoDevelop may not accept changing the license and require removing the code. Unfortunately, it would be necessary to analyze the VS4MAC code and contact each contributor to cause some damage.
6° To sue Microsoft would be very expensive, practically impossible without the support of an open source organization.
7° Microsoft has a legal team and must have already done some study on the situation of MonoDevelop.
8° The license is something that the owner of the code imposes on licensees; if Microsoft has removed all code from the community, Microsoft may close the code.
9° The alteration of the license can only be initiated by the original copyright holder and this process can be interrupted by the contributors, if the code of the contributors who deny the alteration is not removed.
10° If the DotDevelop team wants an official note from microsoft, I suggest starting by trying somewhere at https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/.
Disclaimer: This is not legal advice. This is my personal opinion as IT student. For legal advice you should contact a lawyer or an authorized legal expert of your jurisdiction Reacted by lytico, Александр and Mizuhashi_Parsee Reacted by Lex Li lextm commented on Jan 21, 2021 @Adahel Try not to use colorful words like "Embrace, extend and extinguish" when you cannot even distinguish facts from opinions.
- The initial relicensing MonoDevelop from GPL to LGPL was requested/assisted by RemObjects if I remember correctly, a long time before Microsoft's acquisition, https://www.techrepublic.com/blog/linux-and-open-source/miguel-de-icaza-removes-all-gpl-code-from-monodevelop/
- Quite a lot of commercial products shipped with LGPL components. So the license itself do not prevent Xamarin/Microsoft from shipping Xamarin Studio or Visual Studio for Mac.
- Projects like dotGNU have died long before. Resources from Novell/Xamarin/Unity/Microsoft keep Mono alive for so long.
- An enterprise/foundation is free to pull its resources out of an open source project if strategies change.. Oracle/Apache does the same, and projects with strong communities like MariaDB can rise again.
You cannot sue an enterprise when there is no wrongdoing throughout the whole process. Reacted by Adahel and ichan-akira Reacted by Александр knocte commented on Jan 21, 2021 But who talked about suing? I think @lytico just wanted to clarify about the license, that's all. Let's not go sideways here. Adahel commented on Jan 21, 2021 @lextm:
@Adahel Try not to use colorful words like "Embrace, extend and extinguish" when you cannot even distinguish facts from opinions.
How strange: that first sentence was a little aggressive, the criticism went to Microsoft, if I offended you: my sincere apologies. I am such a good person, I took the time to research and my comment was read quickly and by mistake, although I love anger and bad words.
I never criticized the move from GPL to LGPL. I know my English is bad, but I really don't know how MIT became LGPL for you. In part you're right, in the rush I didn't see the commit date that moves the move from GPL to MIT. My sincere apologies!
- Quite a lot of commercial products shipped with LGPL components. So the license itself do not prevent Xamarin/Microsoft from shipping Xamarin Studio or Visual Studio for Mac.
This was good! Yes, microsoft can use LGPL in proprietary programs, but if the LGPL code is changed, it is mandatory to disclose the code, unless Microsoft is the owner of the code. Who owns MonoDevelop: Microsoft or Novell? Did Microsoft remove the contributors' codes? The MonoDevelop repository seems a bit stuck, I think it even created a spider web, but Microsoft may have rewritten the LGPL code and since I didn't decompile the VS4MAC code I can't say anything else. The facts I did was based on the comment by lytico and are possibilities, I have not accused Microsoft of anything. As I am a good person, I will show you:
MonoDevelop.Ide is on LGPL in current mono master:
https://github.com/mono/monodevelop/blob/master/main/src/core/MonoDevelop.Ide/AssemblyInfo.cs
Question: has therefore Microsoft to publish source code of MonoDevelop.Ide.dll at least?
- Projects like dotGNU have died long before. Resources from Novell/Xamarin/Unity/Microsoft keep Mono alive for so long.
It looks like you like Microsoft for taking care of Mono, but parts of Mono will be merged with .NET 6 and .NET 5 will not be implemented on Mono. WinForms pull requests on Mono are also creating spider webs, so I have a theory that Mono may be dying, but don't worry, you can create a Mono fork and call it DotMIT in honor of the late DotGNU!
- An enterprise/foundation is free to pull its resources out of an open source project if strategies change.. Oracle/Apache does the same, and projects with strong communities like MariaDB can rise again.
This is true as long as Microsoft does not use community code without a CLA, although everything I said in the facts is possibilities to complement the lytico's comment. I basically said everything that Microsoft can and cannot do and what attitude the team can try if it finds irregularities in the VS4MAC code. I never said that Microsoft was wrong, the only statement I made was that Microsoft killed MonoDevelop and I will not go back on my statement.
You cannot sue an enterprise when there is no wrongdoing throughout the whole process.
The process is just one of the possibilities and after all the facts I told you, did you believe in the process? This phrase was made just for me to say everything and it was pure irony. I think I made it very clear that a process is practically impossible, even if Microsoft makes a mistake. I have to be less ironic, in order not to be misunderstood. Irony a defect of mine.
As part of your comment was right, I will like it!
I believe you will say more, but for each question I will try to formulate an answer!
I don't know if I crossed the line in my ironies, but the ironies were made to laugh. As I had to write this huge text, I took the opportunity to relax a little, I don't need to answer or take my ironies seriously. I respect you and that is what I want you to believe. Please don't be boring, with my comment you got to know me a little more. I hope I won't be misunderstood again. Remember: members are free to edit my comment and remove off-topic parts and make my comment better. Adahel commented on Jan 21, 2021
But who talked about suing? I think @lytico just wanted to clarify about the license, that's all. Let's not go sideways here.
@knocte It was just a remote possibility, as I explained in the comment above. My sincere apologies if you did not understand the purpose of the list. lytico commented on Jan 21, 2021 lytico commented on Jan 21, 2021 so, i have more questions arisen on the discussion:
-
if a compiled Assembly (eg. MonoDevelop.Ide.dll) has the AssemblyCopyright ("LGPL"), but the sources are not published, is it allowed to disassemble?
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if a compiled Assembly (eg. MonoDevelop.Core.dll) has the AssemblyCopyright ("MIT/X11"), but the sources are not published, is it allowed to disassemble?
Adahel commented on Jan 21, 2021
- if a compiled Assembly (eg. MonoDevelop.Ide.dll) has the
AssemblyCopyright ("LGPL"), but the sources are not published, is it allowed to disassemble?
In the case of the LGPL, unfortunately not. As the copyright holder did not respect the LGPL, the license becomes invalid. In the case of LGPL, practically all rights reserved, I do not recommend touching MonoDevelop.Ide.dll.
2. if a compiled Assembly (eg. MonoDevelop.Core.dll) has the AssemblyCopyright ("MIT/X11"), but the sources are not published, is it allowed to disassemble?
If the module was declared MIT, Microsoft is wrong. Microsoft will likely correct this error and may take legal action, even if Microsoft has no chance of winning. I recommend finding another way to get this DLL from VS4MAC: eg. Direct link, never installer. With a direct link, Microsoft legally cannot do anything, but it may be able to process continuously until the costs become too high for the DotDevelop team to handle. Without the support of an open source organization, it is risky, not because Microsoft can win, but because Microsoft is worth a trillion dollars, it can easily crush an unsupported team. Legally, you can, but it is at your own risk. I'm making an apocalyptic prediction, but Microsoft can pretend that nothing happened and fix the problem. If you follow this path, I strongly suggest you leave GitHub and I believe that everyone knows why.
1° warning: I don't know if crushing processes through litigation are still allowed, as I don't live in America (USA).
2° warning: the direct link can be encrypted.
Disclaimer: This is not legal advice. This is my personal opinion as IT student. For legal advice you should contact a lawyer or an authorized legal expert of your jurisdiction lextm commented on Jan 22, 2021 @lytico Finally find enough time to dig into the archives to locate the necessary information for some serious discussion.
Your initial post contained several issues, as you only analyzed was quite limited and failed to capture the very important aspects of the previous relicensing event in Dec 2009.
MonoDevelop 2.2 Relicensing
Original announcement at https://tirania.org/blog/archive/2009/Dec-15.html
"MonoDevelop code is now LGPLv2 and MIT X11 licensed. We have removed all of the GPL code, allowing addins to use Apache, MS-PL code as well as allowing proprietary add-ins to be used with MonoDevelop (like RemObject's Oxygene)."
Like I commented earlier, in 2008-2009 there was enough attention around Mono and MonoDevelop due to the collaboration with Unity (called Unity3D at that time) and the promising product MonoTouch (later Xamarin.iOS). The previous GPL coverage of the MonoDevelop code base prevented external firms (like Unity3D and RemObjects) from shipping closed source extensions.
MonoDevelop 2.2 relicensed all code under LGPLv2 and MIT X11 so all those licensing issues were resolved (Mono runtime was still licensed under a more restricted license then).
After this, commercial distributions of MonoDevelop started to rise,
- MonoDevelop-Unity, a game IDE by Unity
- MonoTouch, an iOS IDE by Novell
- Xamarin Studio, a mobile centric IDE by Xamarin
- Visual Studio for Mac, a macOS IDE by Microsoft
RemObjects initially requested the relicensing and shipped their Oxygene language to MonoDevelop, but later they created their own cross platform IDE, a separate story.
Contributions to MonoDevelop
In recent years, there was no CLA set up for MonoDevelop, but a different approach was used to govern the patches,
All new code and modifications to existing code should be licensed under MIT X11. The MS-PL and Apache 2 licenses are acceptable for new libraries and new addins.
Code and libraries licensed under version 2 of the LGPL license are acceptable under extraordinary circumstances.
Code licensed under the GPL cannot be accepted.
Although addins that do not follow these rules cannot be accepted into the MonoDevelop source repository, they can be hosted elsewhere. However, this generally means that they are much less likely to be maintained and distributed.
https://www.monodevelop.com/developers/#a-note-on-licensing
As patches were released under MIT X11 by their authors, they were suitable to be shipped with other code in MonoDevelop.
Sidenotes
If everyone accepts the fact that the relicensing in Dec 2009 is valid, then there isn't much more to discuss further here. Microsoft has no obligation to publish any of its private patches, as LGPL/X11 dual licensing allows such private patches.
I think Microsoft still holds the copyright of most MonoDevelop code base due to its acquisition of Xamarin (along with other assets like monodevelop.com domain and the GitHub repo). Any attempt to revive MonoDevelop (or create a new variant) should respect that and follow the requirements of LGPL/X11 dual licensing. The various contributors still hold copyright of the public patches, but since those patches were released under X11 in general, following the requirements won't be any different.
Based on the public roadmap of VS for Mac, Microsoft is clearly replacing many components with new code, such as "Move the IDE to fully native macOS UI". Ultimately VS for Mac should share a lot with VS for Windows (might include the extension system), so making it a closed source product early in 2020 can be explained well.
Reacted by lytico Reacted by Adahel and Piotr Karczmarz
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