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C# and CLI Now Under Community Promise

July 6th, 2009 19 comments

I just read here and here regarding a move by Microsoft to put the ECMA 334 and 335 specs under the Community Promise. From the Port25 blog:

ECMA 334 specifies the form and establishes the interpretation of programs written in the C# programming language, while the ECMA 335 standard defines the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) in which applications written in multiple high-level languages can be executed in different system environments without the need to rewrite those applications to take into consideration the unique characteristics of those environments.

This means that the core C# programming language and the Common Language Infrastructure are now legally free to use, without fear of being sued. For those interested, the full terms of the Community Promise are found here.

One major point that you’ll notice in the Community Promise agreement is this:

Q: Is this Community Promise legally binding on Microsoft and will it be available in the future to me and to others?

A: Yes, the CP is legally binding upon Microsoft. The CP is a unilateral promise from Microsoft and in these circumstances unilateral promises may be enforced against the party making such a promise. Because the CP states that the promise is irrevocable, it may not be withdrawn by Microsoft. The CP is, and will be, available to everyone now and in the future for the specifications to which it applies. As stated in the CP, the only time Microsoft can withdraw its promise against a specific person or company for a specific Covered Specification is if that person or company brings (or voluntarily participates in) a patent infringement lawsuit against Microsoft regarding Microsoft’s implementation of the same Covered Specification. This type of “suspension” clause is common industry practice.

I find this to be a big step forward for the pro-mono camp in that they now have a document to show that the implementation of and distribution of mono applications is not and will not be a legal issue. This gives them reassurance as individual developers, and distribution maintainers that their work will not be called into question by the patent holders in the future. While this should mean that the mono wars should finally stop, I have no faith that they actually will. I know full well that the people on the anti-mono side of the fence will grasp for something else instead. It is the same infighting the community has been doing since the beginning, and if it isn’t mono it’ll be something else. As a group I don’t think we are capable of simply getting to work without bickering about something.
To the folks in the mono camp I say congratulations. Keep up your hard work! For those that are still determined to fight against it, please try to find something productive to do with your time.
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Requesting Apache2 Tuning Tips

January 15th, 2008 11 comments

In a continued effort to keep this site online all the time I’m looking for some help in tuning apache2.  Earlier today we ran into some serious performance issues based on what I had it tuned to, which caused 3/4 of the total swap to be used.  NOT a good idea.

In the meantime I have turned things down a bit in the prefork MPM section, but I’m wondering what other tips the community has.  What values do you suggest in prefork MPM for performance tuning?

The box is a quad-core xen vps with 512M.  I have 5,000+ unique visitors a day on this site in addition to the dozen other blogs hosted (none near as popular).  What can I do to keep up with the traffic, yet keep the load down on the machine for performance?

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