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.

In response to the open letter written by free software guru Richard Stallman about the Mono problem, Alexander Schmehl, Debian developer and spokesperson for the GNU/Linux distribution has pointed out that Debian has no plans to include the controversial programming environment in the default GNOME installation.

Just have a look at what will be gnome 3.0...here is it.. And along with the controversy found with Mono. Richard Stallman, a member of the GNOME Foundation, has said that GNOME 3.0 will include more applications made with Mono: "The only application that Mono is now part of the whole launch is Tomboy

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.

Richard Stallman's advice against Mono (by default) has made the front page of Slashdot where it received over 700 comments, which is exceptional even for Slashdot. The updated summary also links to an overview of Gnote...

Tomboy does not fancy Gnote; Jo Shields keeps promoting Mono in Debian and Ubuntu

"Move over, Richard, we'll take it from here" - that's the sort of message embraced by parts of the Mono community

Jeremy Allison from the Samba team argues that Mono and applications that depend on Mono should be put in "restricted" repositories

The Debian GNU/Linux distribution may include Mono in its default install, with the project leader Steve McIntyre telling iTWire today that "there's a chance that it might do, but it's under discussion at the moment."