Intel and HP partner with Ximian in Mono Project

[Ray Strode]

>
>
>Got any data on "changed the license from GPL to..." stipulations?  Also,
>what about owners of GPL'd stuff, could one distribute GPL while making own
>amendments closed source?  How long does the license last?  Or is just new
>stuff going to be xfree license?
>
Miguel de Icaza (the founder of Ximian) requires that all code 
contributors give
copyright to Ximian.  Since Ximian owns the source, they can license it 
and relicense it
however they want.  They could even choose to close the source up, but 
if that
happened anyone with copies of the source code a priori, could still 
distribute the source.

As a matter of fact, if someone (rms or similar) wanted to, they could 
fork the Mono source
code and start a project that stays strictly GPLd.  This not because the 
MIT/X license is less
restrictive than GPL, but because previous versions of the software were 
GPLd.

Actually what I said isn't completely true.  The Mono C# compiler is 
GPLed, but the Mono
runtime (corlib) is LGPL'd.  The LGPL has a clause, however, allowing it 
to become GPL'd
at anytime.

The only things that will become MIT/X licensed are the class libraries. 
 This is more than for
just HP and Intel, too.  Over the past couple of weeks on mono-list 
there have been various
grumblings among people who didn't want to write for GPL/LGPL'd software.

The majority of people working on Mono do it independently of Ximian, so 
it is important that
they get what they want.

Besides, there is nothing wrong with the BSD type licenses.

--Ray