What's Your Take On Mono?
I'm curious as to what our readers think about Mono. Some seem to think it is non-Free because of the Microvell deal. The truth is, it's still licensed under libre licenses. The only issue is whether Microsoft can/will assert its Mono-related patent(s) - at least as far as I know. As for the technical merits of Mono vs Java (or anything else), I'll leave that for another flame war. ;-)
My understanding is:
<> Mono is licensed libre
<> Microsoft holds patents that it might one day assert against Mono
<> Novell is probably the biggest sponsor of Mono development, but probably does not control the licenses.
<> The Microvell deal cannot change the nature of the Mono license(s), to make it non-Free.
I really think most people don't like Mono because it's an implementation of a Microsoft technology. But I don't think that makes it non-Free.
Mono is Free Software
I totally agree. Here is what can be read on https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Gobuntu/pkg-non-free :
Software patents are a threat, but they don't make a software non-free as such. Software patents are legal only in some countries, and it can be argued that the software patent system is so flawed that it impossible to create any software without possibly violating some patent. The following packages are examples of packages which have been reported because of potential patent-related problems: Gnash, Samba, Mono, Mono dependants (ex. Beagle).
I personally use a few softwares built on Mono (in particular F-Spot) but will never choose it to develop a new one. I think that Mono fits in the "Embrace & Extend" perpetual threat. Some C# "advanced" classes only exist on the win32 platform. If a Free Software is modified to take advantage of these classes, the win32 platform takes advantage on GNU/Linux.
Technically, C# is very (very) similar to Java which is about to be entirely relying on Free Software tools and libraries (icedtea is close to it). Furthermore, Java is designed to be portable.