Microsoft's bid to dispel the patent fears surrounding the open source .NET clone, Mono, has met with little enthusiasm from free software advocates.

With Linux Distros taking sides, this week's announcement that Microsoft promises not to make Necessary Claims against anyone using their patented specifications adds to the confusion. At first glance, this looks like a safe passage for Mono, but as we delve in deeper, we see that not everything is legally in the clear.

The Ubuntu Technical Board recently sanctioned continued use of Mono, the legally ambiguous open-source implementation of Microsoft's C# programming language, as a component of the default software stack on Ubuntu releases.  At the risk of complicating Ubuntu's strategy for the corporate market, this move positions the operating system to take a tough stance against patent trolls, which should se

An in-depth investigation of the Mono controversy. And yes, before you complain, I wrote it. After seeing how much work I'd put into it, I thought it would be nice to have someone other than Microsoft trolls leaving comments .

I’m f*cking tired of hearing random people screaming out why mono is cool or not. These kind of people don’t even know what coding is about, or they just learned Java or C# at university and they’re like “oh shit, I can code!!”. STOP THAT.

More opposition to Mono surfaces, detailed explanations offered

The software freedom community should minimize its use of programming language infrastructure that comes primarily from anti-software-freedom companies, notwithstanding FaiF (Free as in Freedom) implementations.