AFTER persistently ignoring those who warned about Mono, Canonical finally follows Fedora's (Red Hat's) footsteps and takes a closer look at the Mono licensing question. Here is a new statement...

Canonical's Gerry Carr said that Ubuntu was not deliberately looking for Mono-based applications nor is it excluding them. The Canonical Board has yet to make a policy decision on Mono. He said that there will be one more piece of Mono based software called Banshee in 9.10. Banshee is an audio player and might replace Rhythmbox.

Canonical's route to escaping Microsoft's patent extortion is simple owing to gThumb and Gnote, but will it manage to see Mono's agenda?

I must concede: Sometimes I worry Canonical is trying to do too much too soon with Ubuntu. ... But just when I get really worried, the company makes a major move that impresses me. A case in point: Open source expert Matt Asay has joined Canonical as chief operating officer. It's a big move for Canonical, Ubuntu and Asay. Here's why.

SparkleShare is Mono (and proud of it), Ubuntu still under threat of having Banshee spread throughout the project, putting in it code which Microsoft explicitly stated is a patent problem

Here in Europe we do not care about software patents, at least not yet. As Canonical is based in the EU this should not give the Ubuntu community any issue by itself. So keep any patent related problem for United-States based distributions and leave Ubuntu alone. Or move to a country that enforces your freedom all-day-every-day!

Clarification regarding common misconceptions when it comes to Mono drawbacks

Another explanation of the Mono problem; Miguel de Icaza makes Windows software

From Novell's SUSE to Ubuntu and what it may all mean to Mono