Should We Depend On Mono?
// June 28th, 2009 // No Comments » // Linux, Programming
Ok, firstly I’m going to say I’m a C# developer, so partially biased, although I do think my views are quite fair. I’m only a C# developer by profession (from Java). I only use Linux at home, C# is purely for web development.
Right with that out of the way now I can get to commenting on Richard Stallman’s opinions regarding Mono. We should systematically arrange to depend on the free C# implementations as little as possible. In other words, we should discourage people from writing programs in C#. Therefore, we should not include C# implementations in the default installation of GNU/Linux distributions, and we should distribute and recommend non-C# applications rather than comparable C# applications whenever possible.
For me there are many things wrong with this opinion. Ok, so the patents issue is a touchy one, but “encouraging” people not to use C# is just restricting the open source movement, innovation, and competitiveness. In terms of development, you couldn’t be putting a more negative signal out there.
