For advocating the position of not taking tools out of Microsoft’s toolbox, you are taking the worst one, and the one most effective on the general population. People _cling_ to FUD. This is why it is an effective tool that Microsoft uses on its customers. Have you seen the “Get The Facts” campaign? You have generated this FUD by throwing many (unsubstantiated) dysphemisms at Mono, instead of talking about it from a technical standpoint—whether that technical standpoint is on legal issues, whether that technical standpoint is on implementation issues, or whether that technical standpoint is on some other facet of Mono.

I call you on your argument that Mono is “dangerous” and therefore call on you to submit proof—hard, irrefutable proof for your statement. A patent which does not become invalidated under the current (e.g., today, not three or six months ago) legal climate. At present, I can find no such patent. Any patent I can find that pertains to it does not satisfy the current legal test of being tied to a particular machine which is not a general-purpose computing device, nor does it satisfy the test of modifying something tangible in the physical world.

A few quick minutes of Google searches should provide the information you need to read about the current state of patent law in the U.S., including statements made by the USPTO and United States federal courts. The most current of the combination of these are what has established these tests. Particularly of note is in re Bilski, the case heard in the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which was ruled on 30-Oct-2008 and clarifies the situations upon which a patent claim is to be deemed valid under United States patent law and the Court’s previous affirmations that abstract ideas—which are the root of *all* software—are held unpatentable.

Mono does not represent a violation of copyright. This is because it is an _independent_ implementation. This is not a matter of debate. Mono is an independent software creation, started by Miguel de Icaza (the same person who started GNOME, and the same person who wrote the Midnight Commander software). His work then carried through with his company’s acquisition by Novell.

Now, Novell _did_ make some sort of agreement with Microsoft regarding patent protection. Novell figured it to be cheaper to do that, since at the time, there was nothing to say that software patents here in the United States were illegal. (Note that there was nothing to say that they necessarily were, either; the in re Bilski decision made that clarification for us upon the Court’s evaluation of patent laws.)

As there are presently no (valid, enforceable) patents on the framework that can be found, and the Mono implementation of the framework is not copyrightable by Microsoft Corporation, it becomes quite clear that no license is necessary from Microsoft Corporation to use the Mono implementation of the framework. Should you maintain your claim to the contrary, the burden of proof is quite clearly on your shoulders, particularly since I have provided mine (see the aforementioned court case decision in particular; the court cases referenced by that case may also be helpful to read).

Fear is something healthy as it helps you ‘avoid’ dangers.

Simply saying someone is opposed to something because it comes from a convicted moonopolist, does not remove the burden of said monopolist to prove to those who might use its services that its all of a sudden trust worthy of services and products it puts out, not to mention the fact that some of those products we all know full well are tied to only SLED. ( see 1)

THose 3 apps you mention, fspot tomboy yadda are hardly ‘thriving’, I dont know where you are seeing that, and if there is any indication of what support something has, you can look here amoung many places to verify that:

http://www.mail-archive.com/foundation-list@gnome.org/msg02666.html
http://ometer.com/desktop-language.html

^ There is the power of your support for mono, and again given who its coming from, you will understand those whom are very slow, if ever to support it fully

It’s also a fact that moonlight is not a done < ahem, GONE) deal with no support for it in debian & fedora nor are mono apps installed by default in either of those distributions and for good reason, – as if you want to ‘take the risk’ yourself, your more than welcome to, but most of us have long given up , ‘forcing’ people to do something just because they think its righteous. Nvidia is a ‘choice’ for users in ubuntu, so why not mono and its restricted apps as well ?

The easiest route away from the mono intrusion is using apps that dont depend on the dangerous mono , and instead going with already working and superior apps like gthumb and zim, unless of course you have some reason to want to stay with a patent encumbered, monopolistic, OOXML peddling, linux threat sounding company ? If so, fine go for it , but it will be a lonely road you walk on your own because most foss supporters understand why free is worth protecting.

1
….they are not licensed by Microsoft to run anywhere but in SLED. Not in OpenSuSe, not in Ubuntu, not in Fedora, not in Debian, not in Slackware, not in Gentoo, not anywhere but SLED.

….When you install Mono 2 on any Linux system, you are installing software which includes Microsot proprietary technologies without having a license from Microsoft to do so (unless you run SLED).

….What is worse, if you use Mono to port to Linux programs originally written in .NET for Windows, then any such ported programs on your Linux system will include and rely upon the unlicensed Mono libraries on your system.

Mono is _not_ derived from Microsoft’s product. It is a fully independent implementation.

Do you also have a problem with GNU Portable.NET?

I am not sure what patents you’re referring to. But, the United States Supreme Court ruled that software patents must not cover only an algorithm, but also a particular means of implementing that algorithm. See Diamond v. Diehr (1981).

It still sounds to me like you’re fundamentally opposed to the technology simply due to its origin. That’s your right, of course. But, that really has very little to do with any technical argument for or against Mono (or any implementation of the CLR or CLI).

I have problems with Windows.Forms and ASP.NET, but for sound technical reasons. ASP.NET is a very bloated mechanism for doing the work of a Web application, and Web applications can be implemented far more efficiently using only the facilities from the core CLR and class libraries. Windows.Forms is awkward, from what I have seen of it, and I’d much rather use Gtk# or a wrapper around something like WxWidgets as opposed to program in something like WinForms.

I also have a major problem with Java: it’s memory consumption is _very_ large, and it isn’t nearly as efficient in its JITting processes as Mono is, for example. At the end of the day though, it’s another virtual machine and language environment, is what it amounts to. And development is likely to generally head in the direction of VM-based systems even moreso in the next 10 years than it has in the past 10. We’ll see native code for some time yet, of course, but I don’t think that we’ll still be seeing it throughout the entire duration of my life, either. And I certainly wouldn’t want to see Java come out as the winner. We’ll probably see another framework and environment come out in the next decade that will host multiple languages on a hopefully even more efficient framework than Mono or the .NET CLR—there is the Parrot project, which if it accomplishes its goals, will be a very nice system for languages such as C# to run on top of.

And, of the three technologies which you claim are patented, I don’t think that F-Spot, Tomboy, Banshee, or Beagle use any of them; I could be wrong, though I am relatively certain that they don’t.

FWIW, I happen to think that Tomboy and Banshee are _excellent_ applications, as well—and I think that many GUI-oriented programs on many different systems could use them as excellent examples of what a GUI program should be like. This is, of course, just my opinion. Obviously, I’m not alone in that opinion since the applications are available and absolutely _thriving_ with a great deal of support behind them. Furthermore, Banshee and friends aren’t glued to Microsoft’s “intellectual property,” and since law in the United States favors software interoperability, and the USTPO’s stance on software patents is changing for the better, fear of software patents from Microsoft is getting to be less and less justified.

In many cases, Microsoft can be a bully. But you know what? Bullies always lose, in the end—and fearing them only helps to contribute to their power.

I’m not sure what you find so difficult to understand.

Microsoft, who are the originators for several of the public standards that Mono supports (and who lest not forget, totally fscked the ISO with their puppets ECMA and OOXML) and some that are not public standards and *are* protected by patents (Windows.Forms and ASP.NET and ADO.NET), regularly use their arsenal of IP to threaten their customers, partners and squash competitors.

I have no need for 60Mb of a Microsoft derived application framework which gives me just two applications on Ubuntu: F-Spot and Tomboy. There are better alternatives frankly, and two of the previous Mono based that shipped with earlier versions of Ubuntu have since been dropped: Beagle and Banshee. So I get a camera manager and a note pad. Big deal.

I also do not wish to encourage the creation of any new applications that will be glued into Microsoft’s IP. They are a convicted monopolist and a company that myself and, seemingly, most of the readers of this Blog seem to want nothing to do with.

I am not sure what you disagree with.

* Mono _is_ decent quality software, in the measurable terms of stability and speed.
* Mono _is_ both open-source *and* free software.
* Software patents *are* patents which cover mathematic operations in a particular order.
* Software patents *are* losing relevance, including in the United States, because people in important places are finally beginning to see the previous point and understand it better.
* One piece of software you seem to single out, Banshee, is really a *very* nice application—it’s solid, versatile, quick, functional, and the UI is quite elegant and easy-to-learn/use.
* The comments here and even some of the “information” presented range from what could be seen as simple misunderstanding to outright falsehoods. For example, “Microsoft infested software” in reference to Mono is simply untrue. It’s GPL, free software. Fancy that. Bypassing the subsequent religious reference, and skipping ahead to where you describe Mono as “tainted”, this is another stretch of the truth, to say the very least. Lastly, talking about Microsoft’s tax situation is a strawman to the point, and has _nothing_ to do with Mono, and is (very indirectly) an argumentum ad hominem (in that you correlate Mono to Microsoft, when it never was about that in the first place).

Classic FUD—one of the weapons that free software writers and advocates should never use. Well, if you want to remove all things Novell from your system, that’s your right.

Just don’t forget GNOME, which was largely driven by Novell’s VP of DP.

And, FYI, I only came across Mono around the time I started using Ubuntu (well, I’d heard of it before then, but never actually used it). I was very interested in the C# language after seeing it, and some of the software written in it. My decision had everything to do with the utility of the framework, and nothing to do with the inventor of it. If we decide to do things based on who is involved in them, I don’t think we’d be anywhere productive.

I live in a [relatively] free country and all are entitled to their opinions. I don’t happen to agree with yours and I exercised my rights by removing Mono from my computer and telling others about it.

For some reason, it seems to attract quite a lot of attention and many supportive comments. The minority supporters of Mono seem to be either employees of Novell/M$ or people who make [expect to make] a living from writing .net applications.

There are two ways to do everything in life: in fear, or not. It seems that of the ~3,000 people that hit here, at least _some_ of them are probably completely unaware that they have this “crap” on their system (and, from a technical standpoint, let me tell you—crap it is not). So, they learn that they have this “crap” and they want to remove it. Of course they do! If it’s “crap”, then obviously it is of no value!

“The Open Sourcer” and the advocacy to remove a quality open-source product from people’s systems is nothing more than a set of contradictory terms. If you fear patents and you fear anything that has even the smallest scent of proprietary nature to it, I’d suggest running something like gNewSense; then you’ve nothing to worry about, and nothing to try to stir up a commotion about, since there is a system that is tailored for you out there.

But the post Hardy? I missed that one, and I am going to hazard a guess that I didn’t really miss much. FUD is so not my cup of tea; it is unprofessional, and I daresay rather embarrassing to see it coming from the open source/free software world in yet another direction. It is definitely not appropriate for aggregation on a web site whose goal it is to foster community—FUD does not create robust communities, just temporary ones made out of stacks of cards.

mono is too heavy and sloooow
that’s why I don’t want it on my pc