Mono winforms is patented and classified as potentially harmful by Novell itself

[TAC one]

According to: http://www.mono-project.com/FAQ:_Licensing#Patents

"For people who need full compatibility with the Windows platform, Mono's strategy for dealing with any potential issues that might arise with ASP.NET, ADO.NET or Windows.Forms is: (1) work around the patent by using a different implementation technique that retains the API, but changes the mechanism; if that is not possible, we would (2) remove the pieces of code that were covered by those patents, and also (3) find prior art that would render the patent useless.

Not providing a patented capability would weaken the interoperability, but it would still provide the free software / open source software community with good development tools, which is the primary reason for developing Mono.

The patents do not apply in countries where software patents are not allowed."

Despite the claim to be read right next in the document:

"With the new Novell/Microsoft agreement, will the patent policy change?

Mono is a community project, and as such, we will continue to implement the policy of not integrating knowingly infringing code into Mono.
And we will continue to follow the steps outlined in the previous topic if code that potentially infringes is found: finding prior art, finding different implementation techniques, or if none of those are possible, removing the code from Mono."

Winforms appear to be a harmful in those countries where software patents are allowed.

Notwithstanding that Ubuntu packages it the Main repository, not in the restriced/multiverse/medibuntu.
Reproduce with:
apt-cache show libmono-winforms1.0-cil
apt-cache show libmono-winforms2.0-cil

[Alexey Borzenkov (snaury)]

Sorry, but bug description and bug title don't seem to be telling the same thing. Quoted parts from FAQ imply that either there is currently no infringing code in winforms implementation, or if any infringing code is found it will be dealt with up to removal of such code. So bug description fails to show where Novell classifies winforms as potentially harmful, perhaps better quotes should be found.

[TAC one (tacone)]

Alexey: true, I'll try to find better references.

[Jo Shields (directhex)]

Winforms removed from Main in Jaunty (and was never part of the default install, merely a build-dependency for an optional capability of a binding to a Java library available in main)