Members of the open-source community are becoming increasingly concerned by ongoing moves from Microsoft to acquire a range of software patents that the company can potentially use down the line to attack and try to restrict the development and distribution of open-source software. And much of that concern is being directed toward open-source desktop company Ximian's Mono Project, an open-source initiative to replace part of Microsoft's .Net product line, including a way to run C# programs and the .Net Common Language Infrastructure on Linux. Leading the charge is Bruce Perens, Hewlett-Packard's open-source and Linux strategist who helped to craft the Debian Social Contract, which later became the Open Source Definition. Perens told eWEEK in an interview on Monday in San Francisco ahead of the LinuxWorld conference that an increasing number of people in the open-source community are very concerned about the Mono Project and by Microsoft's initiative to buy software patents and to patent as much of its own technology as it can. "If I were in Microsoft's position, I would be looking through all the patents I had been buying that are potentially being infringed by open-source software," Perens said. "They are going to hold onto these patents until they see what happens with the antitrust case against them. Once that is resolved, they will then use them against the open-source industry." But Doug Miller, the director of competitive strategy for Microsoft's Windows division, told eWEEK he was unaware of any intended move by Microsoft to acquire software patents. "Not to say it isn't happening, but I'm not aware of any such planned attack," Miller said. "With that being said, we strive to protect our intellectual property, and holding patents is one of the ways we do that. But nothing has changed, we're certainly no more aggressive now about filing patents or other copyright protections than we have been over the past couple of decades," he said. But Perens isn't buying this, saying that with regard to the Mono Project, Ximian needs to draw up an advance agreement with Microsoft that states the Redmond, Wash., company does not intend to assert its patents on this technology. "If we don't get that agreement, I'll be happy to see Ximian implement this stuff, but I'm not sure I'll touch it," Perens said. "I'm also not sure I want to let it touch the rest of GNOME [GNU Network Object Model Environment] very much because if GNOME becomes dependent on it, it would have a potential weakness there." Ximian is an active contributor to the GNOME Project, which has built a desktop environment for the user and a powerful application framework for the software developer. Ximian in fact this week launched two versions of the boxed Ximian Desktop, which includes the GNOME desktop interface. But Miguel de Icaza, the chief technical officer at Ximian, disagreed with Perens, saying that any application that runs on Linux could be infringing on some hidden and unknown patent owned by Microsoft. "Microsoft has not historically used its patents in an aggressive way," he said. "They've previously used it to defend themselves. While I suppose they might use it for attack purposes going forward, I don't think they'll go after Mono as we are only in the early stages and are sticking to developing technology from existing concepts. There's nothing new in .Net; it's just a combination of existing technologies." Nat Friedman, Ximian's vice president of product development, also stressed that Ximian is not co-operating with Microsoft on the Mono Project. "They are not assisting us in any way," he said. "We have talked to them twice - that's the extent of it. "We believe this technology and infrastructure is too important to be controlled and wholly owned by Microsoft. We believe there has to be a free implementation of it out there," he said. But while Perens acknowledged that Microsoft has largely not invoked its patent rights to date, he said, "Past performance is not predictive of future behavior. Microsoft's [senior vice president] Craig Mundie has previously said the company intends to enforce all its patents." An example of a patent held by Microsoft that could be detrimental to open-source initiatives going forward was clearly demonstrated in the password change protocol found in Samba, he said. Microsoft had modified the password change technology and then patented the new protocol of the password change. "This means you cannot make a compatible implementation without potentially infringing on a Microsoft patent," Perens said. "We went ahead and did it anyway, and Microsoft hasn't enforced that patent, but it doesn't mean they never will. This is a telling case as they've taken what was an open protocol and deliberately put in a patent to close it and then introduced the patented feature in all new systems." Samba, which develops open-source software that lets a Linux machine share files or manage print jobs like a Windows file server or print server, has included this patented technology. "In the climate of antitrust it would be nice to force them to overplay their hand, and Microsoft overplays their hand consistently," Perens said. But while Jeremy Allison, a lead developer for Samba, confirmed that Microsoft holds the patent for the password change protocol, he believed this "was done with no malicious intent at all. All big companies patent software for protection. I also think this is probably a defective patent anyway," he said. Microsoft's Mundie said he wasn't familiar with the Samba example, "but in any case where someone reverse-engineers technology -- and there's certainly lots of this in the Linux world -- there's always the risk they'll infringe on someone's patent. We highly value intellectual property and the laws created to protect this," he said. But Samba's Allison said the Mono Project is "a very bad idea -- in fact, it's a terrible idea. By doing this they are helping .Net become a standard. ... .Net will become important if a majority of the clients use it, but it will not be mandatory if only, say, 50 percent use it, as Web sites will then still have to do Java stuff," Allison said. "By implementing an open-source version of this, they are making it easier for Microsoft to get to that magic monopoly figure. "And when they've got that on the client, all the servers are in trouble. Look at the way they leveraged their client base to take over services like authentication, e-mail with Exchange, and DNS services by tying Active Directory to DNS. It's a continual case of taking their monopoly on a client system and tying servers to it," he said. See the Operating Systems News Section for the latest headlines on Linux, Windows and other operating systems. Have your say instantly, and see what others have said. Click on the TalkBack button and go to the ZDNet news forum. Let the editors know what you think in the Mailroom. And read other letters.