Mono-Nono's opinion on bad treatment of Mono dissenters and Mono resistance from Groklaw

My recent post about Mono was sincere, and Boycott Novell has the story about Debian wrong, but Gnome actually is pushing an alternative. Before I introduce you to the programming language Vala, let me give you some background on programming for Gnome as I understand it (note that I am not a programmer and haven't done anything real since the mid-80s).

Mono is a trap. It is a divisive topic if ever there was one in the Linux community. There are anti-Mono and anti-Novell sites and there is no shortage of strong opinion. This distracts us from what we have traditionally done which is to lead and set our own course.

Many a vigorous debate has been fought over any possible legal threats that might be inherent in Mono. Now that Microsoft has extended its Community Promise to cover select parts of the C# programming language, which is what Mono is built on, it is being hailed as evidence that Mono is safe. Bruce Byfield tries to answer the question, is it really?

We've all heard the rants: Mono has patents, Microsoft releases community promise, community ignores, flamewars continue. Enough to make any developer want to stop programming out of sheer annoyance. Mono is an excellent language and platform; there's nothing anybody can do to change that. People will continue to develop C# apps, and those that continue to hate Mono will continue to complain.

There has been a lot of pro-Mono and anti-Mono arguments assaulting the community of late. The debate is not new but both sides have taken up arms since some distributions have decided to either remove Mono or include Mono by default.

Why programming with Mono (or with MonoTouch) is a risky thing to do, especially now that Novell is up for sale and Apple blocks .NET/Mono

Mono is an open source project led by Novell to create a .NET-compatible set of tools that include, among others, a C# compiler and a Common Language Runtime. Mono can be run on Linux, BSD, UNIX, Mac OS X, Solaris, and Windows operating systems.

When you think mono, you think tired. You think sleepy. You think shut-yourself-up-in-your-bedroom-for-two-weeks-and-snooze-like-Rip-Van-Winkle. You get the idea. But that is not how it should be. Mono isn’t boring. Mono should excite people!