Firefox and Moonlight (Mono) "Free Software" Status?

[Rahul Sundaram]

Keith G. Robertson-Turner wrote:

> 1. The decision to allow Mono to enter the tree seems to have been made
>    arbitrarily by Red Hat, with no community consultation, and in spite
>    of protests (including some by high profile Red Hat personnel -
>    mostly expressed as a rejection of Mono before the announcement).

The complete risk is for Red Hat as the legal entity behind Fedora and 
the legal team has evaluated and taken the decisions they have.

> My final conclusion is that Fedora includes encumbered, non-Free
> software, that is covered by patents owned by Microsoft, and assured by
> a patent covenant that is not worth the (metaphorical) paper it's
> written on, since Moonlight, which is also covered by this same type of
> covenant by the same company, has recently been exposed by Groklaw as
> undistributable 

* Patent encumbered code is not the same as non-free code
* There is no specific patents owned by Microsoft that you have listed
* It is definitely not the same type of covenant.

Rahul