mono just say no

Seth Nickell - Design Fu : monoAn interesting article on Mono and the danger it poses for Free Software, here he is looking at the licencing that you have to get for the CLI and class libraries (these are the bits that where standardised under ECMA) and the fact that you must get a licence as they are covered by patents. This is not ADO.NET or ASP.NET or any of the other parts that where never submitted to the ECMA but the core parts that where.

Remember Microsoft considers Linux and the Free Software movement to be it's number one threat, and they have a history of doing anything, legal or illegal, to remove threats. They may not be doing anything at the moment but it is not a good idea shoehorn a time bomb into your products, even if the bomb does have lots of nice lights and ticking things.

A better solution to getting a enviroment with everything that c# and .NET offer would be in the completion of the GNU Classpath project. Java may not have been sent to a standards organisation like ISO or ECMA but the licence is GNU compatable for complete implementations and does give full patent clearance as part of it, Sun also a much better history of working with standards and not breaking the law.