Just as surprising as the agreement itself was the enthusiastic participation and defence of the agreement by the developers Novell inherited from Ximian. This enthusiasm was not unconnected to Ximian's committment to Mono, its own free software implementation of the .Net framework, (which is heavily implicated in future GNOME development), and the fear of many that parts of the Mono implementation may turn out to be patent encumbered, or that support will be compromised in other ways. The participation of Novell's corporate wonks in such an agreement could feasibly be excused on the grounds of ignorance or indifference. It is perhaps less easy to understand the enthusiasm of the participating free software developers.