Embracing the .Beast

Mono allows programmers to program in Visual Basic on Linux and run their applications on Windows, or develop in C# on Windows and run their applications on Linux, but remains a controversial addition to the Linux developers' arsenal.

By By Richard Hillesley, 29 Jan 2008 at 17:58

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Although Mono is based on a published standard and is a clean implementation of specifications that Microsoft has put in the public domain, the doubts remain and are re-enforced by the experience of the Samba team. Like the Mono developers the Samba Team once had a good working relationship with Microsoft but, according to Jeremy Allison: "Once Netware was defeated by Windows NT, their attitudes changed, and the flow of information stopped. Proprietary modifications to core protocols like the Kerberos authentication protocol followed, and these changes were treated as trade secrets, patented if possible, and only released under restrictive non-disclosure agreements, if released at all."

This view may be over simplified, or even unjustified, but will continue to be a significant obstacle to the adoption of Mono. Most computer users don't care about the origins of the software they use, but for all the obvious reasons this has never been the case with Linux users and developers.

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