Ximian-Led Mono Project Selects New Flexible Licensing Model In
Move Lauded By Industry Leaders Intel And Hewlett-Packard
BOSTON, Mass.–January 28, 2002– Ximian, Inc.,
the leading open source desktop company, today announced a change
in licensing by the Mono Project. With this change, the class
libraries produced by Mono, an open source community initiative to
deliver a Linux and UNIX compatible version of the Microsoft .NET
development framework, will be released under the X11 software
license, rather than the GNU General Public License (GPL). Under
the open source X11 license, the increasing ranks of corporate
contributors to the project can subsequently build Mono-based
products without the constraint of publishing final source code.
This approach, supported by Intel Corporation, Hewlett-Packard and
the Mono Project community, will have the effect of expanding the
pool of potential contributors to the project, further speeding its
already impressive progress.
The Mono Project, initiated by Ximian last July, is a community
initiative to develop an open source version of the Microsoft .NET
development platform. Incorporating key .NET compliant components,
including a C# (pronounced C-sharp) compiler, a Common Language
Runtime just-in-time compiler, a precise garbage collection (GC)
system based on the Intel® Open Runtime Platform (ORP) and a
full suite of class libraries, the Mono Project will enable
developers to create .NET applications and run them on Windows or
any Mono-supported platform, including Linux and UNIX. The license
change relates to past and future development on the Mono class
libraries, and does not affect the C# compiler and Common Language
Runtime, which will continue to be licensed under the GPL and LGPL
(Lesser General Public License) respectively. (For more background
on the Mono project, visit the Mono web site at www.go-mono.com.
Miguel de Icaza, Ximian co-founder, CTO and initiator of the Mono
project, will be presenting an update at LinuxWorld Expo in New
York on Thursday, January 31 at 2:45 p.m. in Room 1E12.)
Increasing Momentum
The announcement of the change to the X11 license for the Mono
class libraries will serve to accelerate developer support for a
project already making great progress toward delivery during the
second half of this year. Earlier this month, for example, the C#
compiler became self-hosting, allowing it to compile itself on
non-Windows platforms such as Linux. The run-time (JIT) engine is
also nearing completion. In addition, over 50 developers are
regularly contributing to the Mono Project, and many of them are
Windows developers previously not involved with the open source
community. Substantial progress is also being made on porting the
thousands of .NET class libraries to the Mono platform. As a
result, the project is on track to deliver the complete Mono
execution environment by this summer.
“We believe the move to the X11 license for the class libraries
will benefit Mono by encouraging greater corporate-sponsored
participation,” said Miguel de Icaza, CTO and co-founder of Ximian.
“Contributors from leading hardware and software companies need the
flexibility to customize and enhance the class libraries for their
own unique embedded and OEM development. The X11 license ensures
that the Mono project will attract a growing pool of talented
developers, while enabling their companies to control and protect
their Mono-based products and services.”
The MIT X11 license is certified by the open source initiative
(OSI). It grants permission, free of charge, to any person
obtaining a copy of the software and associated documentation files
to use that software for other purposes, including copying,
modifying, merging, publishing, distributing, sublicensing, and/or
selling copies of the software. By contrast, under the GPL, any
changes or alterations to the software must be submitted to the
public forum, a barrier to companies pursuing embedded software
development or the provision of software to OEM partners.
Support from Industry Leaders
While Ximian has spearheaded Mono, the project has drawn increasing
contributions and support from developers at Intel, Hewlett-Packard
and other companies actively involved in .NET and Web services
development.
“We are very excited to see Ximian and open source developers
implementing the ECMA Common Language Infrastructure (CLI)
standard,” said Colin Evans, director of Intels Distributed Systems
Lab.”The Mono Project, along with similar projects like Intel’s own
Open CLI Library and ORP reflect industry commitment to
internationally recognized and open programming standards. The ECMA
standards and open implementations like Mono will enable a broad
base of research and development that should accelerate
innovation.”
“HP supports all implementations of the ECMA standard and
believes that the Mono Project will ultimately benefit our
customers and the computing world as a whole,” said Martin Fink,
general manager, Linux Systems Operations, Hewlett-Packard Company.
“HP has been a strong driver around the standard and supports the
license change as a practical move which will enable developers to
leverage community efforts and offer companies greater flexibility
and competitive differentiation when creating new products.”
[ Thanks to Tomáš Marek for this
link. ]
“Ximian, a company working to improve the Linux
operating system for ordinary computer users, has made a
philosophical shift in a key new open-source software project that
now will be governed by a less restrictive license.Ximian is changing the license for a key part of Mono, a project
designed to duplicate Microsoft’s .Net software. Mono had been
covered by the General Public License (GPL ), the same license that
governs Linux, but a newer version of reusable software modules
called “classes” stored in “class libraries” will be changed to a
license that permits the software to be used in closed-source
projects.The change was made to accommodate Intel, which wanted to
contribute to class library work but chafed at the GPL’s
requirement that software remain open-source only, said Ximian
co-founder Miguel de Icaza. That provision of the GPL helps ensure
that the work of open-source programmers–often volunteers–isn’t
appropriated for others’ gain, but companies that want to adopt the
software don’t always want to reveal all their software
secrets.”