by Richard M. Stallman
Debian's decision to include Mono in the default installation, for the sake of Tomboy which is an application written in C#, leads the community in a risky direction. It is dangerous to depend on C#, so we need to discourage its use.
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lozz
14 years 43 weeks 4 hours 36 min ago
Straight from horse's mouth
In spite of various claims, Richard Stallman doesn't encourage the use of Mono and realises the inherent risks involved with C#.
Mr. Psychopath
14 years 43 weeks 21 min 28 sec ago
You're Right.
I guess the video I've been sharing is indeed outdated, although Stallman's point still carries across.
A free implementation of C# is usually highly encouraged BECAUSE of the fact that the FSF likes free implementations of any software language. However, after reading RMS' words and thinking about the core problems of Mono, I have to admit he (Stallman) is correct.
The problem is not just implementation, nor just who's developing it. At the end of the day, the problem is: PATENTS. Mono is, sadly, pretty darn locked down when it comes to patent deals. Although it doesn't necessarily affect the end user at first, it affects the distributors that don't adhere to Microsoft's license agreement. This initially is a downer, as there are quite a few good Windows .NET programs that would be great in a Mono port. (Off of the top of my head, Chris Jones' Adventure Game Studio Editor and Runtime would be a great candidate for this), however such is life.
On the other hand, I've been looking at some of the FOSS implementations of existing Mono apps. There are plenty of Banshee replacements, and Gnote is really quite good. This leaves a decent GTK photo manager, Solang looks promising but I believe it needs more time in the oven.
lozz
14 years 42 weeks 6 days 23 hours ago
Hit the nail
You've hit the nail right on the head.
PATENTS!
I used to think they were justified until I realised that they didn't encourage struggling inventors by the promise of a "just" reward, but were all owned by powerful corporations who used them like weapons.
In this case, PATENTS have been used to try to stifle innovation in software in order to protect the monopolies and powerful positions of corporations.
I think that PATENTS should be scrapped in all fields of human invention.