Who exactly stands behind Mono after Novell is sold (if and when)? Isn't there a significant risk, beyond the present one of MS making some move against them, that it will be left to stagnate by a new owner? And even the MS risk hasn't been cleared up for me. Please don't give me the stuff about MS promises against suing, it's totally unrealistic. Sure, you can argue it's not probable, but you can't argue that it's impossible or an insignificant risk - it's real. Who exactly has mono installed anyway? All that market share on.... which device or platform? The web? Mobile? Some small percentage of one operating system and basically nothing on the others? The Linux community doesn't just not have it installed they are actively hostile to mono.
What I am peddling here is FUD, but it's warranted FUD, there are too many unknowns for what amounts to a buggy C#. Isn't the C# selling point that it's a better Java? How does that value proposition hold up for a B-grade C# with patchy coverage of the forms et cetera, with a patchy install base and an extremely uncertain future. Mono has totally failed to gain a critical mass, so there will be no openoffice.org=>libreoffice. When the takeover of Novell comes it will die a horrible and withering death getting further and further behind the parity with the MS implementation which it has never yet matched. I am sorry to say it, I wish the legal situation and Novell situation were otherwise and people could just choose on the basis of technical merits: but that's not the case, and anyone basing a startup or business on anything to do with mono is certifiably insane.
What I am peddling here is FUD, but it's warranted FUD, there are too many unknowns for what amounts to a buggy C#. Isn't the C# selling point that it's a better Java? How does that value proposition hold up for a B-grade C# with patchy coverage of the forms et cetera, with a patchy install base and an extremely uncertain future. Mono has totally failed to gain a critical mass, so there will be no openoffice.org=>libreoffice. When the takeover of Novell comes it will die a horrible and withering death getting further and further behind the parity with the MS implementation which it has never yet matched. I am sorry to say it, I wish the legal situation and Novell situation were otherwise and people could just choose on the basis of technical merits: but that's not the case, and anyone basing a startup or business on anything to do with mono is certifiably insane.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novell#Takeover_Bids