Maverick Meerkat will drop the Mono-based F-Spot image organiser in favour of Shotwell, reducing the number of Mono-based apps in a default Ubuntu install to just one. Change is afoot. Ubuntu developers have already said that Chromium will be the default browser in the Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR) 10.10 release and now news is in that Shotwell will be the default image organiser in Maverick Meerkat.

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.

As criticism of Novell's Mono keeps rising, Mono entanglements seemingly continue to spread further (even in a KDE distribution)

We have received some mail recently from developers who are concerned about issues that are covered here, including OOXML and Mono. One person, for example, was concerned about pressure on KDE to implement support for OOXML (a big no-no). Coming from Debian, a concerned developer spoke about the problems surrounding Mono. Together, we ought to at least try to inform.

A bizarre decision is made just weeks before the final release of Ubuntu 10.04 because an F-Spot (Mono) competitor is removed and Banshee (Mono) gains integration with Ubuntu One
Steven Rosenberg has just published a rave (finally!) about Ubuntu 10.04. He particularly likes gThumb, which can help remove Mono from Ubuntu.

There has been a wide range of discussion on the subject of Mono and its inclusion in Ubuntu by default. Some people believe that Mono may infringe on Microsoft patents while others believe that it is useful to include. Personally, I have no idea about whether Mono does infringe on Microsoft patents, but I see other reasons why Ubuntu should remove it.

Further analysis of the response to Mono criticism and the abuse directed against those who dissent against Mono

Debian and Ubuntu Mono packager Jo Shields has come up with a Mono-free remix of the last released version of Ubuntu, version 9.04, which he has chosen to call Chicken Little Remix.

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...