While the three points you raised are relevant, they are not important enough to justify your conclusion about "language polish".

* Adding extension methods without also adding extension properties
The objective of extension methods was to support LINQ, with the capability to extend a class being just a bonus.
It was not the primary motive.

* Refusing to implementing covariant return types
Covariance and contra-variance are addressed (somewhat) in the upcoming version 4.0 (out March 22nd, 2010)

* Adding type inference, but disallowing it for class method return types
Important, but considering that type inference works in the vast majority of cases - this is not such a big pain.

Scala is not without its problems
1) Performance (Though not an issue in most projects, but perhaps more important than the arguments above)
2) C# Expression trees are insanely powerful; eg: Type Safe SQL.
another possibility: Code that gets automatically distributed across machines if the dataset is more than 1GB.

If you know LISP, you know that Code-as-Data is magic. And C# brings that to a mainstream programming language.

The numbers don't add up.

About 35 million netbooks are on track to be shipped in 2009.

That's about 20% of all shipments.

If linux is a third of netbook volume, overall linux market share (through netbook sales alone) is about 6%.
Add 2% for Linux on regular desktops and notebooks.

Linux share @ 8% of all new PCs shipped calls for celebration. But I doubt it.

Google this - "c# expression trees"

In our current project, we optimize C# code at runtime to run database queries faster. This is possibly only because the C# compiler turns that code an expression tree that can be analyzed at runtime (and then compiled, converted to sql etc).

But why was this attack needed when Mono is trying to split itself into "Guaranteed, patent free components" and "Gray areas"?

The Patent Free parts are covered by the legally Binding Microsoft Community Promise

Some parts of it:
Microsoft irrevocably promises not to assert any Microsoft Necessary Claims against you for making, using, selling, offering for sale, importing or distributing any implementation, to the extent it conforms to one of the Covered Specifications, and is complian....
To clarify, "Microsoft Necessary Claims" are those claims of Microsoft-owned or Microsoft-controlled patents that are necessary to implement the required portions (which also include the required elements of optional portions) of the Covered Specification that are described in detail and not those merely referenced in the Covered Specification.

Is this Community Promise legally binding on Microsoft and will it be available in the future to me and to others?

A: Yes, the CP is legally binding upon Microsoft. The CP is a unilateral promise from Microsoft and in these circumstances unilateral promises may be enforced against the party making such a promise. Because the CP states that the promise is irrevocable, it may not be withdrawn by Microsoft. The CP is, and will be, available to everyone now and in the future for the specifications to which it applies.

Having the Linux version of
Microsoft's standard be clearly inferior will just make Linux seem clearly
inferior (and justifiably so).

Mono isn't chasing compatibility with proprietary Windows Libraries. Instead, the focus is on the language/compiler implementation, runtime and important parts of the Base Class Libraries. You should read this post, which was quite popular recently.

Actually the bigger Mono projects don't even work on Windows. So, doesn't that suggest that developers who write code on Mono don't really care about proprietary Windows mechanisms?

Microsoft needs to make the first move.
Why? There are doing well considering there was a recession, and Windows 7 looks like a winner.

Note that Windows is more proprietary, more shackled than ever before.
Err. How? Hasn't it always been closed source? Or is there an "Extremely Closed Source" classification?

I love open source, and use linux on my primary desktop. But I am not going to whine about Microsoft not doing enough for open source.

So your world is divided into "people who agree with me" and "mindless zombies".

I read it twice. Miguel was not saying that. Who modded you +5?

Stallman is a functional programming stalwart. Unix in general has had functional programming for a very very long time.

Not disputing either, but Stallman's statements had nothing to do with how useful Mono is. I was just pointing out what Mono brings to the table.

The reason C# is remarkable is that there are millions who are familiar with it (perhaps not the functional parts, which is somewhat new). There is no purely functional language (on any platform) with enough mind share to qualify as "popular". Popular sometimes has its advantages when working in a team; documentation, resources, tooling, availability of developers ... etc.

We have Java, as well as Python and various other languages on Linux for the niche Mono wants to fill

Actually Mono fills a niche not satisfied by any other language on Linux.
1. Python - too slow for any processor intensive tasks (I do a lot of python myself.)
-- not strongly typed, if the project decides to go that route.
2. Java, the language - No closures, lambdas, generators. Impossible to do any declarative programming. Many, many people hate it.

C# brings functional programming to the masses, and Mono brings C# to Linux.

I have great respect for America's determination to protect freedom and free speech. That word means a lot to you, as it does to me.

But wait, before you call it a Tiananmen square "massacre" - do you consider that ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND people are now dead in Iraq. Last week, a drone killed 140 people in Afganistan, mostly innocents.

So, as opposed to thousands of their own people killed by the Chinese, you went to another country and killed much much more.

I am not saying it is worse; just saying that taking a stance on moral issues is difficult. And often becomes very subjective.

Moonlight 1.9 is available as a preview, and is compatible with SilverLight 2. Not that there are any SilverLight websites I visit, but it is available if you badly need it.

SilverLight 2 is a massive departure from version 1 (for instance, it now includes the CLR), but going forward changes are expected to be minimal. Meaning MoonLight will easily keep up with SilverLight. And besides, since its a mini-CLR now, you could derive a lot from the original Mono effort.

Where can I download the source code from? Or, am I missing something here?

Though voice is more accessible and helps blind people, for the vast majority of non-blind users it is simply very inconvenient.

Many years back, I got a shuffle when I wanted a tiny MP3 player. It drove me nuts, and I bought a Sansa; same size, but comes with a screen and some useful features.

Just about every tiny MP3 player has a screen these days, but Apple is probably having the NIH syndrome.

.NET might be OK, if you are restricted to some very simple func.... 8859-1 coding, and the XML interface used.... Python and PyQt

All .Net strings have been unicode since it launched (in 2002), Python got there recently (yes, I write Python for a living these days). And .Net's XML support can only be compared to Java, and the newer releases (3.0 & 3.5) move beyond java in performance and capabilities. Just about everything, from Framework Configuration, to Serialization (pickle?), to Remote Method Calls use XML in .Net. In fact, there is so much XML that I hate it.

You made a very lame comment, and possibly got modded up by some people who have never ever used .Net.