[illumos-Developer] [illumos Mono Integration - Feature #210]

[Gary Driggs]

It sounds like the same flap over Debian awhile back. There is fear (uncertainty? doubt?) that Mono is a patent trap despite its licensing. But as others have pointed out[1], the same concerns have not held back the inclusion of other technologies with the same potential. This kind of frothing at the mouth zealotry seems to originate from the FSF hardcore acolytes that rarely wander far from their strict GPL monasteries. So I would wager that few of the folks commenting on your post actually subscribe to the lists but rather form a cadre of FSF flashmob zombies that come out of the woodwork whenever chicken little cries for their support. But that's just a random guess on my part as a sole observer of such things in the past. 

FWIW, I work for a small, proprietary software company that uses a lot of open source tech in its end product and infrastructure. But I come from a telco background that had strict requirements that all mission critical apps had to have a support contract. I'm digressing but what I'm getting at is that I'm a sysadmin that grew up with early Solaris 2.x at college while running 386BSD, nascent Linux distros, DOS/WfW, and AmigaOS on my personal machines -- the end result being that I see a place for all flavor of OS & licensing models.

My observation has been that Illumos' primary concern is centered around ABI compatibility with Solaris. So if you have any qualms over starting your Mono project, my opinion is that you should consider it from that angle before any others.

-Gary

1. http://m.itwire.com/opinion-and-analysis/open-sauce/25683-debian-may-include-mono-in-default-install