Editing Common Language Infrastructure (section)

==Standardization and licensing==
In August 2000, [[Microsoft]], [[Hewlett-Packard]], [[Intel]], and others worked to standardize CLI. By December 2001, it was ratified by the [[Ecma International|Ecma]], with [[International Organization for Standardization|ISO]]/[[International Electrotechnical Commission|IEC]] standardization following in April 2003.

Microsoft and its partners hold patents for CLI. Ecma and ISO/IEC require that all patents essential to implementation be made available under "[[Reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing|reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) terms]]." It is common for RAND licensing to require some royalty payment, which could be a cause for concern with [[Mono (software)|Mono]]. {{as of|2013|January}}, neither Microsoft nor its partners have identified any patents essential to CLI implementations subject to RAND terms.{{cn|date=October 2024}}

{{as of|2009|July}},<ref>{{Cite web
|url=http://port25.technet.com/archive/2009/07/06/the-ecma-c-and-cli-standards.aspx
|title=The Ecma C# and CLI Standards 
|website=Port 25
|first1=Peter |last1=Galli
|date=2009-07-06
|access-date=September 26, 2009
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090709232640/http://port25.technet.com/archive/2009/07/06/the-ecma-c-and-cli-standards.aspx
|archive-date=July 9, 2009
|url-status=dead
}}</ref> [[Microsoft]] added [[C Sharp (programming language)|C#]] and CLI to the list of specifications that the [[Microsoft Community Promise]] applies to,<ref>{{Cite web |last=v-alje |title=[MS-DEVCENTLP]: Microsoft Community Promise |url=https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/dev_center/ms-devcentlp/8b8d1b7a-a10a-4667-9558-6d9c43adf60d |access-date=2023-05-01 |website=Microsoft Learn |date=March 16, 2023 |language=en-us}}</ref> so anyone can safely implement specified editions of the standards without fearing a patent lawsuit from Microsoft. To implement the CLI standard requires conformance to one of the supported and defined profiles of the standard, the minimum of which is the kernel profile. The kernel profile is actually a very small set of types to support in comparison to the well known core library of default .NET installations. However, the conformance clause of the CLI allows for extending the supported profile by adding new methods and types to classes, as well as deriving from new namespaces. But it does not allow for adding new members to interfaces. This means that the features of the CLI can be used and extended, as long as the conforming profile implementation does not change the behavior of a program intended to run on that profile, while allowing for unspecified behavior from programs written specifically for that implementation.

In 2012, Ecma and ISO/IEC published the new edition of the CLI standard.<ref name="iso_iec_23271_2012"/><ref name="ecma_355_2012"/>