I'm not sure 99% use .NET, but yea, I'd say it's likely pretty safe to say that 99% don't care one way or the other. .NET is pretty huge on the Windows development side and more are using it for Mac, iPhone, XBox360, Wii, PS3 and Linux development all the time (thanks to Mono). Most of the people who are loudly screaming against it are poorly informed non-programmers who like to think they know more about programming than actual programmers.

Why else do you suppose they scream so loudly?

There's a saying: the more powerless you are, the louder you scream about things.

Some of us have been writing C in Linux for ~12 years and decided enough is enough. C++ is not any better (in many ways worse), Python doesn't really scale and is not statically typed, and Java is in many ways inferior to C# (C# is basically Java-done-Right - altho it too has some problems, but largely it really is Java-done-Right imho).

So what other options do we have?

C#, imho, fits the bill nicely, so I worked on Mono and MonoDevelop because the better these tools are, the more productive I am (as well as many other devs) when I (we) write other free software.

If you don't like C#, fine, don't use it. Use Java or Python or whatever it is you prefer. I'm not going to badmouth your choices simply because I prefer some other language, and I expect the same in return.

We are also not "injecting patent bombs into FOSS". Microsoft has issued a legally binding statement saying they will not sue. While this promise is not perfect (ie. it won't cover partial implementations of ECMA 334 & 335), but it *does* cover Mono because Mono is a full implementation.

Besides, even if this were not the case - you've obviously chosen not to use any apps built on Mono, right? So what "patent bombs" related to Mono are you worried about?

As with all things on the Linux desktop, every app has a bajillion alternatives (some better than others). The worst thing that can happen is Microsoft attacks and everyone switches to one of the alternatives and instantly everything is resolved and Microsoft walks away with nothing (because everyone switches to something else). Woopty-doo.

Damn, wish I could mod you up because you hit the nail on the head.

You're obviously also pretty embarrassed to be against GNOME and Mono, seeing as how you are posting anonymously ;-)

Considering the same can be said for 99% of the people who badmouth Mono, I can rest easy at night knowing that we on the Mono team must be doing the right thing.

For that last 1%, well, no one can please everyone all the time.

As someone who actually knows Miguel de Icaza and someone who was there when Mono began, I can tell you with absolute certainty that he started Mono because he truly believes that it's a good platform. As do I and all of the other Mono developers (none of whom get a "fat paycheck" from Microsoft or anyone else). The Mono team is underfunded at Novell, so I and likely other developers have taken a pay CUT in order to work on what we believe in.

We are not paid to parrot any opinions from Microsoft or Novell. Our opinions are our own and we stand by them.

Attacking Mono forces .NET developers to move to Windows, it doesn't mean an exodus from .NET.

Wrong. Developers programming for Linux are not going to move to Windows to continue programming, they'll switch languages. If they are developing for an OS, then they have a vested interest in continuing to do so. If their preferred language gets taken away from them, they'll just switch languages. And they won't take kindly to Microsoft removing their choice.

Let me ask you this, if somehow programming in C became illegal on/for Linux and the only way to write C would be on/for Windows, would you switch to Windows?

No, you wouldn't. You'd switch languages.

You are also quite disingenuous when you call in the parallels of FAT. Microsoft sued TomTom, not Linux, not even a Linux company, but rather a hardware company that they directly competed with and who threatened Microsoft with patents of their own.

If Microsoft had tried to sue Red Hat or Canonical or Mandriva, you'd have a point. But they didn't, so you don't.

There most definitely is a logical argument. In a word: patents.

Patents affect every piece of software. So no, that one word is not a logical argument. Try again.

Unlike GNU C, Linux, etc, which either implement published standards or have been OSS from the very beginning

As was Mono. It has always been OSS.

Mono implements and relies on stuff patented by Microsoft.

Just like GNU tools implemented alternatives to software heavily patented by the monopolists at the time (namely companies like AT&T). Every piece of GNU software likely infringes on many patents, from Microsoft and others. You and Richard are living in a fairy land if you believe otherwise. There are millions (billions?) of software patents out there that cover nearly every corner of software algorithms, tricks, and features. It is naive to think that every piece of software on your desktop doesn't infringe on someone's patent somewhere, or at least infringed at some point during their development and use (e.g. if the patent just recently expired).

Patents that Microsoft has shown signs it wants to sell to patent trolls (with an understanding that they'd use those patents to sue). In other words, there's good reason to think MS wants to use Mono as a Trojan Horse to enable lawsuits against OSS organizations such as the FSF, Debian, and Ubuntu.

This is a conspiracy theory if I ever saw one. No proof, just FUD. This does not make a logical argument. This is fear mongering, exactly what Miguel was talking about in his blog.

MS already tried one legal tack to go after OSS, namely the SCO lawsuit.

Again, no proof. Just theory. Remember that "our friend", Sun Microsystems, also bought licenses from SCO at the beginning of the SCO fiasco.

There's no reason to think they wouldn't try another.

There's no reason to think they ever tried. It's what you want to believe in order to justify your foaming-at-the-mouth hatred of Microsoft.

Even if it were proven to be true, past behavior is not proof of future behavior - especially in the business world where the people change, the markets change, etc. All of which have an effect on what a corporation does.

For those who have not bothered with a reality check, Microsoft has been changing their ways with regards to Open Source. They have been releasing huge amounts of code under Free Software licenses which grant patent rights to the recipients (sort of like the GPLv3). People like you don't want to recognize these changes because your fantasy world where Microsoft is black and you are white would come crumbling down around you. You'd be forced to reevaluate your entire existence which you have staked to the idea that Microsoft is Satan.

I meant to link this in my previous comment:

http://videos.visitmix.com/page8

The relevant part is about 17:30 into the talk.

Unfortunately, having re-viewed it, I can't find any mention of support for getting browser shots/doms from browsers running on Linux, so maybe that's not supported after all :-(

According to the MIX09 talk on Expression Web, it also supports Chrome - I forget if it supports Opera, but I wouldn't doubt it.

A feature the Slashdot summary also forgot to mention was that they made it so that the developer could have it overlay a snapshot of the website as rendered in any browser on a remote host (which can be running Mac or Linux, for example).

So even if they don't support Opera natively, you could use their remote host feature to get what you wanted.

Like what features is it lacking? Have you submitted feature requests for the features you think it was lacking? Did you offer to contribute? Did you even email the mailing-lists?

Mono has all of the C# 3.0 features in current releases (2.0, 2.2 and 2.4 (which is about to be released)) and the development branch, 2.5, already has some 4.0 features and Microsoft hasn't even released 4.0 yet and won't until late 2009 or 2010 (by which point Mono 2.6 will have been out for half a year or more).