Of Monopolies and Mono

“Is merely including such applications in a Linux distribution a
real problem? Nope, not according to the Ubuntu Technical Board.
The committee decided that “We will ship the best available free
software applications, in the judgment of the relevant development
team; the desktop team has responsibility for desktop application
selection, as is natural. In a small number of cases, Mono
applications have been selected there on their merits. At present,
were there to be an issue, Mono would be easy to extricate. Making
it more of a core requirement is likely to encounter some
performance concerns at present anyway, since the budget for
desktop startup is increasingly tight as we work on boot
performance.” So, as far as Ubuntu is concerned, “Mono is very
well-maintained in Ubuntu and there appears to be no significant
cause for concern over its IP [intellectual property] situation. We
will attempt to clarify in suitable places what developers and/or
rights holders should do in the event that they have evidence of a
problem.”

“…But, leaving aside for now how trustworthy Microsoft is, how
dangerous is Mono really?”

Complete
Story