Ubuntu Wiki

User comments for the No Mono By Default Specification

Comments regarding the No Mono By Default Specification are being moved here, in an attempt to separate what needs to go through review/approval, and what can be added into the spec, or can influence the specification in any aspect.

Please note that the only reason why comments have been moved to a separate page is to clean up the specification. *ALL* comments will be reviewed and considered before the specification can be considered Approved.

• Pro: Alignment with GNOME

  • This is incorrect. Tomboy is a part of the official GNOME desktop, from 2.16. -- raof 2008-10-19 04:39:12

    • Thanks raof, It seems that you are right. "GNOME does not depend on Mono at all. There is one Mono-based application in the official GNOME release suites (Tomboy) that is easily removable if users are not comfortable using Mono." --Jeff Waugh http://www.mail-archive.com/foundation-list@gnome.org/msg02630.html Perhaps it is correct with GNOME, just not with the official GNOME release suites.

Comments start here for pre-October 2008 revision

PaulKishimoto: (Comments here because the forum thread is more ideological than practical) It may not be main-ready, but Conduit could replicate Tomboy's synchronization and HTML export for Sticky Notes. SyncIntegration is a relevant UDS discussion linked from the Conduit homepage. Wikilinks in Sticky Notes and making gThumb as user-friendly as F-Spot would probably need upstream work; also note that Tomboy has some text formatting options while Sticky Notes AFAIK has none.

RobertKnight: (Note: I do not work on tomboy, mono or gnome, nor do I work for an affiliated company, but I am adding my two cents as a programmer and also as a user of the applications being discussed).

The arguments given in the 'Technical Reasons' section are lacking in good evidence. The memory figures are meaningless because there is no information about how the benchmarks were performed, exactly what the test data was and what the stated figure actually means - is it private, shared, rss, vmsize or something else? Despite what the basic system monitor tools that ship with gnome might tell you, there is no single figure that can be called "the memory usage" of a particular process. In other words, the figures given might as well be lottery numbers. I don't dispute the basic argument that a Mono application will use more memory than an identical application written in C/C++ but the question is whether that increased memory usage is an acceptable trade-off given the advantages that Mono provides to developers (whole categories of programming errors eliminated, potentially much cleaner code, less code) and indirectly to users (better applications arising from the benefits to developers).

Secondly, I strongly disagree that Sticky Notes could replace tomboy as a similarly useful application unless there were major changes in its functionality. Sticky Notes just provides pieces of plain text which can have names attached to them. Tomboy is a miniature hypertext system (in other words, it has the concept of links), which makes it an order of magnitude more useful. Not to mention that it does search, rich formatting, printing, HTML export, syncing and possibly many other things depending on the installed plugins. Some of these advanced features may not be useful to Ubuntu's target audience, but I would argue that the linking, search and rich text functionality certainly is.

In tomboy's case, the comments about Mono and "compatibility requirement with .NET create a bad dependency on a competitor" do not really apply. Tomboy uses only the basic system libraries (which provide collections, io, text manipulation, xml). The user interface is written using Mono's GTK bindings. GTK is obviously not part of .NET.

• Is there a better way to measure memory usage? Sticky notes cannot replace Tomboy with those functional requirements however I don't feel that including Mono just for those extra features in Tomboy makes much sense. Both F-Spot and Tomboy have the 39.7 Mb dependency on Mono. Are you saying that Tomboy should have less, or does your argument apply to F-Spot as well?

  • Whether or not including Mono+F-Spot+Tomboy makes sense depends on whether something more useful to a general audience could be included on the CD if they were taken out. I'm not going to answer that. As for measuring memory usage, I took another look at gnome-system-monitor and it is more sophisticated than I thought. The "Memory" figure is actually quite a fair assessment, but it still doesn't tell you very much. If you enable the "Resident Memory", "Writeable Memory" and "Shared Memory" columns, those three figures provide much more useful information. If you right-click on the process and click "Memory Maps" you get a pretty detailed picture. This blog post (which happens to agree about F-Spot using too much memory) from last year gives an idea of what I mean: http://www.aigarius.com/blog/2006/07/31/spot-focus/ . It is worth noting that Mono has had a year's worth of development since then, and the latest release (1.2.6) is supposed to improve memory usage somewhat.

    • 1.2.6 still isn't in Hardy. But if it does land I will retest with it. As far as I can tell the Memory usage reported is the writeable plus X-server. gThumb and Sticky Notes both report a good amount of shared memory (13 and 8 respectively). As far as I can tell, shared memory is a "good" thing. The memory reported seems to be a fairly good test in my (IS not CS) opinion. Memory Maps are interesting, but a bit over my head right now. UPDATE: 1.2.6 just made it into hardy and I just quickly tested it on my desktop. It didn't change enough to warrant me to retest it on a liveCD. (Tomboy was at 15mb and F-Spot was 30ish)
• I would highly appriciate that you make not only Mono packages but also packages to easily install dotGNU in Ubuntu, so I can introduce Ubuntu in our company who works on frontends build on .NET! Mono is to big, the legal issues are unclear and its not an option for us.
  • There is a dotGNU package in Ubuntu (it's called pnet).

RossPeoples: For starters, I just want to say that I don't develop in Mono, but its reasons for being included by default in the first place are still clear. Having said that, I don't think "possible legal issues" is a good reason to not include Mono. If you want to talk about possibilities, a mouse cursor "could" in fact, cause legal issues. OpenOffice "could" be a legal issue. Using Terminal "could" cause a huge meteor to destroy Earth. Besides, there are several large companies (Google, Novell, Sun) that have said they are willing to back the free software community if Microsoft were to claim patent infringement on Linux. And since Mono is backed by Novell anyways, you know they would put up a good fight if it were Mono-specific.

• That is exactly the cause for worry. Novel is protected by MS-Novell deal. So they will not think twice before infringing MS patents. Also, Mono class libs are under MIT license. So there is absolutely no protection from patent suits even from developers of Mono.
  • Mario: One would need a lawyer to look at it, but AFAICT, Mono might well be excluded from the deal by the "clone product" clause. Did you thoroughly research the deal (or, preferably, have a lawyer analyze it)? It might not be as clear-cut as you make it look.

As for memory usage, Mono only runs when you start an application that uses Mono. So, if you stayed away from Mono-based applications, then memory usage becomes a moot point. I agree with RobertKnight that Sticky Notes is no replacement for Tomboy. One of the features that makes it very useful for me is its syncing feature.

Your reasoning for "Microsoft changing the .NET implementation creating more work for both Mono developers and application developers" is also unfounded. Mono is written to suit the ECMA standard, not Microsoft's implementation. They do, however, include the System.Windows.Forms library as a compatibility layer only. Looking at the development of Mono suggests they are moving in their own direction, away from Microsoft. Your other reason, "helps Mono become more popular as more people will use it by default", should be considered a good thing. If it brings good developers and helps those developers use their Windows knowledge on the Linux platform, I'd say that's an accomplishment and leads to more and better applications.

In summary, it seems as though you just hate Mono and you want it removed for your own self-gratification. Using Mono, or any other framework/program/etc. is a preference. You have the option to NOT use it and to even uninstall it if you really hate it that much. But not giving end users the ability to run software they might already be accustomed to out-of-the-box is a huge leap backwards.

• Please refrain from personal attacks. Please elaborate on the clear reasons for including F-Spot and Tomboy. I see note synchronization as an advanced feature that does not deserve an entire language for itself, especially on the default Ubuntu CD.

Markba: zim is an alternative for Tomboy. For starters, it does have wiki-style hyperlinks thus seems to be more feature complete then Sticky Notes. From the feature comparison between Tomboy and Sticky Notes:

• Tomboy has note synchronization: (already mentioned) to be accomplished with conduit or any other generic sync framework (e.g. rsync, etc.)
• Tomboy has export to HTML: zim includes this feature
• Tomboy has Wiki-like linking in notes: zim includes this feature
• Tomboy can do rich text formatting.: zim includes this feature

See: http://pardus-larus.student.utwente.nl/~pardus//projects/zim/

Alan: As a programmer who does use mono, i want to throw in my 2 cents. I also realise that because i admitted to using mono some people may immediately disregard everything i have to say, but i believe it helps to declare that.

* Possible Patent issues Every major piece of software has possible patent issues. Until there is evidence one way or the other as to what patents mono may infringe, it should be viewed the same as any other piece of major software - innocent until proven guilty. Also note that the mono team publicly claims that they will work around any patent issue by reengineering the code. Under Irish law (and maybe European law) this is legally binding statement when issued by the mono team.

• I have removed the patent issue. -Bryan

* Memory Usage* with the example content loaded (F-Spot) It's quite possible that fspot uses more memory because it preloads images into memory whereas gthumb doesn't. That could also explain the performance advantage to Fspot. As memory used is still quite low in both cases, it's no reason to decide between them.

• Maybe not with F-Spot vs gThumb, but for a note taking application, that's a ridiculous amount of memory.
  • * Yes, i agree. Tomboy does use more memory than might be expected. This might be worth raising
    • with the developers rather than ditching it for a less capable and/or less intuitive application.

* Feature comparison It's easy to look at a list of features and decide what application is better, unfortunately this is the worst possible way to compare software. The only way to compare software packages is to use both and figure out why is more intuitive. Which offers a better *user* experience. If i can burn a custom photo CD in fspot in 3 clicks but it takes 8 clicks in gthumb, then that's a win for fspot. However by your comparison, they would be equal.

As both applications are aimed at *organising photos*, i would benchmark the features based on the relevance to that task. Having the ability to execute an external application (which may or may not exist on the target system) isn't the killer feature you make it out to be. I personally never use Totem.

• Do you use F-Spot or gThumb?
  • * Yes, i use Fspot. I used gThumb once or thrice, but i preferred fspot as i said below. - Alan

* Whether the applications should be switched The only reason i see to change a default application is if the new application offers either a better user experience in the common tasks the application is targeted at, or it offers more *useful* features based on the target usergroup, or some other distinct advantages over the existing default. I don't see gthumb offering those, and (personally speaking again) i've used fspot since before i ever became involved in C#, i prefer it's interface. It's prettier and intuitive.

• As the update I just added, gThumb is being removed (and F-Spot appears to be staying)

Alan: Only getting binary codecs from Microsoft for Moonlight Firstly, Mono has no dependency on moonlight. So that makes it's inclusion here irrelevenat. Also (I'm not 100% sure on this), i believe Moonlight (when released) will rely on an internally bundled mono runtime and so won't even have a dependency on mono. That needs to be checked though. Either way, Moonlights existence has no bearing on either Fspot or Tomboy or Mono. Also, if you were so worried about bundled binaries, I hope you don't use or need binary blobs for your wireless card or graphics card. But this is a separate discussion and if you want to discuss Moonlight inclusion, we need a separate wiki page.

• Moonlight is using a subset of the mono runtime. You are correct in saying that moonlight has no bearing on F-Spot or Tomboy, but it definitely has a bearing on Mono. By including Mono we are positioning ourselves to easily be able to include Moonlight by default (it would be trivial to include as it is a subset).
  • * Moonlight will not use a system installed version of mono. It will use it's own bundled mono. Whether you have
    • mono installed or not, you can still install and run moonlight. This can be verified with the mono developers i assume, i can't find explicit documentation on this as moonlight hasnt been released officially yet - Alan.
  • "By including Mono we are positioning ourselves to easily be able to include Moonlight by default". That's the same to say that including Linux we are positioning ourselves to easily be able to include Oracle by default (because Oracle runs on Linux). Or that you shouldn't buy a knife because that way you are positioning yourself to easily be able to kill your wife in the middle of the night.

Alan: I seem to have lost my last comment, let me write it again except more briefly.

• Mono is implemented to be compatible with Microsoft's .NET instead of the standard.

Mono is compatible with the ECMA specification, you imply it's not. I think this point is invalid and should be removed. Mono also aims to be compatible with MS.NET, but not when that clashes with spec compliance. This could be better clarified by mono developers.

• Providing Mono on the Default Ubuntu Desktop CD helps Mono become more popular as more people will use it by default.

I don't see an issue here. Having people use mono is neither good or bad unto itself. It is just a fact. If people use mono, it becomes popular. This is only an issue if mono itself is 'Bad'. As mono is not 'Bad' unto itself, except in personal opinion, this point doesn't make sense.

• By writing Free applications in Mono/.NET you put yourself at risk from Microsoft changing the .NET implementation creating more work for both Mono developers and application developers.

If microsoft break spec compliance, that won't affect mono being spec compliant. All your code will still run fine, even if microsoft completely butcher their runtime. Of course, if they did that they'd also lose all their existing business customers. This isn't an issue.

Do we know why Redhat wont endorse MONO, and is that applicable to ubuntu at all ?

• The fact that they are Novel's direct competitor, and that they purchased JBoss may have something to do with it.
• Now that Java is free software this debate is no longer relevant.

I also think that: https://bugs.launchpad.net/f-spot/+bug/34074 < having a current open bug and no further reply to a launchpad members concerns should be addressed at the very least, and needs to be dealt with if indeed f-spot is to be considered for being default image viewer.

• Apart from the fact that that bug is a feature request (that could be filed against 99% of the software used today, btw), it has indeed been replied. Lots of other bugs receive similar attention and thus would position a lot of other packages in the same place.
• In your opinion, of course. Fabián Rodríguez would not agree with that assessment, but your free to discuss it with him.

why are we so quick to embrace software from Microsoft, when its clear from their own actions against their customers that their intentions are less than honorable ( vista capable anyone).

-- Directhex - Good god, what a huge pile of FUD. Point by point deconstruction:

• Mono is implemented to be compatible with Microsoft's .NET instead of the standard.
  • Mono is implemented to be compatible with ECMA-335 and ISO 23271:2003. I'm not sure how much more "standard" you can get than "international standards bodies"
• Mono's compatibility requirement with .NET create a bad dependency on a competitor.
  • It's a published spec. There's no "dependency on a competitor" for any Mono apps - only on the ECMA and ISO standards bodies.
• Providing Mono on the Default Ubuntu Desktop CD helps Mono become more popular as more people will use it by default.
  • Which is the real agenda - making a decision on behalf of other people, and forking Gnome (Tomboy is part of Gnome, like it or not) because of personal feelings?
• By writing Free applications in Mono/.NET you put yourself at risk from Microsoft changing the .NET implementation creating more work for both Mono developers and application developers.
  • This point shows a gross misunderstanding of how .NET works. .NET 1.1 exists, is published, and is immutable - any 1.1 apps written today will continue to work as long as Mono continues to include the 1.1 class libraries. Which will be, erm, forever. Same goes for 2.0 - any 2.0 apps (like Tomboy or F-Spot) written today will work now and forever, regardless of what Microsoft put into .NET 4.0

• "the era of 'open computing,' the free exchange of digital information that has defined the personal computer industry," to end. [http://www.gnu.org/software/dotgnu/danger.html]

  • Mono is not a TPM chip, and you're using a straw-man argument. Mono supports open computing, by implementing a widely published standard, allowing developers to write quality code which runs across multiple platforms with ease.

• Only getting binary codecs from Microsoft for Moonlight [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonlight_%28runtime%29#Codecs_integration]

  • When did the live CD get Moonlight by default? Firstly, Moon is a separate project. Secondly, it can be compiled against the ffmpeg of your choice - as long as you fear the evil codec patent lawyers, why not file for removal against http://packages.ubuntu.com/intrepid/ffmpeg ?

• Mono/.NET being successful will not benefit free software.
  • Que? How does an open, published spec not benefit free software? .NET was published and "free" long before Sun decided to release parts of their JVM in retaliation. The high-quality standard allowed Mono to catapult itself within a couple of years well past the point non-Sun Free Javas were at after orders of magnitude longer. You don't think that benefits Free Software? Are you going to contact the authors of quality Linux desktop software like Tomboy, Beagle, Muine, Banshee, F-Spot, Smuxi, and so on, to let them know they're destroying freedom?

Windows ( Vista or othewise ) has no Tomboy app, and no one misses it; Beagle is passe as now we have tracker, and anything else that is based on mono is worthless because we all know the patent it contains for which you must get from Novel is a disaster waiting to happen to linux ( not to mention the fact that Redhat never got any patent verification for using mono, and has now 'removed' mono apps and mono altogether from its 'livecd' ). The 'promise' not to sue is NOTHING even close to a 'in writing' patent agreement, which never

Sorry, but this page has 0 to do with technical reasons, it has 0 to do with Free Software (which you're actively working against, given your distaste for published standards or software selected as best-in-class by the Gnome project). It's a regurgitation of boycottnovell.com with all the same half-truths and outright lies to support a nonsensical hatred of well-engineered Free Software.

Sorry, but your arguement is just that, with no reasoned information contained anywhere, just alot of FUD to fill up a wiki . Saying something has 0 to do with this or that, or that a given website contains half-truths yadda yadda, does not make it so, and your attempt to show that with nothing useful to back it up just shows you have no intention to showcase truths, but just the opposite, and that is not what linux needs. https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2007-November/msg00772.html < clearly shows its not just those here in ubuntu that find this a nasty mess for linux,but amoung the Redhat developer commuity as well. http://boycottnovell.com/2008/04/25/gnome-functionality-wo-csharp/ < and then there is this lovely bit of information. I mean how much more does it take to show people that what is going on, is not in linux best interest, but M$ coorporate types and those that hang with them and share their agenda of software domination to the exclusion of all others.

JonDavis: Guys I'm really quite appalled by this discussion of the ubuntu community. I've never seen so much FUD in the last decade of watching the Linux community. The premises by which the initial discussions are based are rediculous and in some ways frivolous. I can fully and completely, 100%, understand why the Linux community wants to stay as far away from anything to do with enabling a certain not-so-micro software corporation. However, the refusal to support certain open source technologies just because their initial implementation originated by said corporation is in itself not particularly sensible.

• "Mono is implemented to be compatible with Microsoft's .NET instead of the standard." Frivolous. Mono is built against the ECMA standard instead of reverse engineering .NET. That ECMA standard was established by many people outside of Microsoft, including many proponents of Ubuntu and the Linux community at large. Effort is made by Mono's developers after implementing the standard to test Mono assemblies against .NET to maximize compatibility in general, but the only purpose of doing that is to enable people to get away from Windows and begin transitioning to an open source environment. As was stated by other people in this discussion, this can only mean good things for ubuntu, Linux, and everyone who wants to transition people away from Microsoft Windows. Long and short, the goal of the Mono team is to make their stuff work in as many places and environments as possible.
• "Mono's compatibility requirement with .NET create a bad dependency on a competitor." Frivolous. Compatibility is not dependency. Note that Microsoft Windows has a UNIX compatibility layer that can be installed onto Windows so that UNIX-compatible software can execute on it. Does that make Windows itself dependent upon UNIX? Absolutely not.
• "Providing Mono on the Default Ubuntu Desktop CD helps Mono become more popular as more people will use it by default." Pointless. There is no ethical rationale point being made here. Personal disfavor is not an ethical discussion.
• "By writing Free applications in Mono/.NET you put yourself at risk from Microsoft changing the .NET implementation creating more work for both Mono developers and application developers." Ignorant, frivolous, and irrelevant. Microsoft does not manage nor control the Mono team. The Mono team is independent. Should Microsoft introduce breaking changes to the .NET Framework, which is extremely rare anyway, they will versionize it, and then the Mono team will have the option of introducing the changes in different versions of Mono. That, however, would be a Mono (open source) decision, not a Microsoft decision. Regardless, it's completely superstition that there will be breaking changes in the future in the first place. But this entire matter is irrelevant anyway because Mono developers will make their own decisions regarding .NET version adaptation regardless of what ubuntu chooses to do.
• "'the era of open computing, the free exchange of digital information that has defined the personal computer industry,' to end." Rediculous, superstition, and opinion, and not an appropriate point to be made on behalf of an entire OS community. There is nothing more open about open computing in other parts of ubuntu than in Mono, which is 100% free and open source.
• "Only getting binary codecs from Microsoft for Moonlight". Irrelevant. Moonlight is not Mono. It's a browser plug-in, with a dependency on Mono, not Mono itself. Inclusion of Mono would not mean inclusion of Moonlight any more than inclusion of GNU C++ compilers would mean inclusion of gedit (of course, this comparison assumes that gedit is built on GNU C++).
• "A lot of the functionality provided by Tomboy Notes and F-Spot are already included on the default CD by Sticky Notes and gThumb. Both Mono based applications use more than 4X the memory of their non-Mono equivalent." Lacking merit and contradictive of precedents; ubuntu and other distros often have many variations of the same kind of applications, each with pros and cons. Memory utilization is one measurement of a software application's value, but there are other aspects to weigh, such as usability, appearance, and overall feature set. Regardless, there are hundreds of other stable applications that are currently written in Mono or that are compatible with Mono, and to present a discussion of whether to include Mono on the basis of only two potentially bundled applications is extremely ignorant.

Furthermore, the Linux community has a huge history of supporting people who are migrating from or interoperating alongside Windows, including Samba, the Windows-compatible network file sharing protocol, and WINE, the Win32 compatibility API which, unlike Mono, is built using reverse engineering rather than an open ECMA / ISO standard. While the Ubuntu distro CD may not include the latter (WINE), it does, as far as I know, include Samba. All of the quoted arguments above would apply better to Samba than to Mono, yet it is Mono being discussed here and not Samba. My point is that the precedence is not being weighed, and the stability and integrity of the community leaders here are questionable.

All these things said, overall, after reading this one page alone and namely the above quotes, I have lost a HUGE amount of respect for the ubuntu community on the whole, and feel forced to view those representing its members as myopic, prejudiced, melodramatic, ignorant, and unhelpful to the overall computing industry. However, I know that none of these adjectives correctly describe the ubuntu users and most of the Linux developers contributing to ubuntu, so as an observer I would suggest those attempting to lead these directions to be very careful about how they go about these specifications and discussions.

What about the users?

I believe that removing Mono and applications that our users have become accustomed to would be a mistake. It is already difficult to convince individuals to switch to Linux. What do you think will happen when a novice installs a new version and discovers that all the familiar applications are missing? Let us not forget that we are striving to be the most user-friendly desktop distribution.

aldebx: It is exactly for the final user convenience not providing applications for which we cannot guarantee an user-friendly, threats free lifecycle.

• Worse would be, one day, having to prune dozens of popular desktop apps from Ubuntu because of Microsoft legal threats.

• Better would be to not provide those apps by default from the beginning so that most costumers don't even get the chance to get accustomed to them. Providing users with software not possibly threatened in its existence is guaranteeing users a truly user-friendly experience now and in any future perspective.

By the way this blueprint does not imply removal of existing mono applications. The aim on this blueprint is simply to not provide any mono library and application by default (i.e. ubuntu-desktop does not depend on mono). Until any threats came along the user will be able always granted the right to install his favorite mono app. through Applications Add/Remove.

What about the Repos?

bigolewannabe: Seems to me, IANAL though, that if there were ever a patent claim made against Mono or distributors of Mono if wouldn't really matter much if Ubuntu had done the distribution through the CDs or through the repositories. If that is true then the discussion should switch from whether Mono should be on the CD to whether Mono should be included inside the official Ubuntu repositories at all. If we start there we should probably include Wine too and I'd be interested to see how somebody would be able to discuss including Wine in the repos despite the obvious potential for patent issues versus the same kind of issues with Mono.

Comments from launchpad

vperetokin: According to the stats available on popcon, ~14% of Ubuntu users regularly use tomboy, and ~5% use f-spot. Ticking off a possible fifth of your users isn't a great idea, especially when tomboy delivers excellent note-taking features and Gnome integration that there are no equivalents for yet.

danny.piccirillo: on the other hand, we're not actually ticking off any users. (and you can't just add the percentages together to get one fifth, who's to say the 5% using f-spot aren't all included in the group that uses tomboy). Also, aren't there applications that aren't installed by default that 14% or more users chose to install? Either way, the users of mono dependent software don't lose the applications-- if they're already using them then they will simply install them upon installation. It's not like we're making the software unavailable. I think the reasons to do this (read full spec) far outweigh the reasons not to.

josmar52789: It really has nothing to do with little apps like FSpot, or Beagle, or Tomboy.... The reason we need to make Mono an integral part of Ubuntu is the fact that .NET and ASP.NET are huge frameworks in the business world. If we expect our business potentials to move to Linux, you're going to have to give them the tools they need to run their businesses - do you really expect them to rewrite their entire .NET infrastructure just to make it "Linux compatible"... If you expect them to rewrite their business apps in PHP or even Java (a close relation to .NET) and that costs them anywhere from $50k on up to $1m, do you really think they'll switch to Linux? By the way, the recent public announcements from the USPTO means that it's likely in the next few years that there won't be any more software patents. And if Microsoft does produce a lawsuit, then the case will probably be invalidated just like the most recent software patent lawsuits presided over by the USPTO. We really don't have to worry as much about patent problems as much as we once did. AND, FYI, the .NET framework, along with ASP.NET is an ECMA standard - so how could Microsoft claim a patent violation if the standard calls for the use of a certain procedure to be taken in order that the standard could be valid? It would be Microsoft's own loss to even consider a patent lawsuit...

neighborlee: Anyone who wants to use Mono, is free to install it from the Repositories, just like in Fedora and redhat enterprise and other distros that dont adopt mono out of the box.

Or you could make it a 'restricted' choice, just like the nvidia driver is ?

Linux is about choice last time I looked, and therefore it should not be forced onto anyone in the default install, because while mono is 'described ' in intrepid as 'open source' we all know it is not. The ecma standard is nothing but a promise, and if you believe that from Microsoft we all have some swamp land for you, because their track recored alone is hardly worthy of trust. If they showed some signs to the contrary you might see a different story , but the novel/MIcrosoft deal along with the OOXML problems etal, are clear evidence they are not online with such efforts at this juncture.

To infer also, that there are no alternatives to the mono apps in ubuntu atm, is to have a one sided debate and that is against democratic principles.

I wish to reiterate, that choice matters, and if you really care about choice mono should be made one, not forced.

trilliji: I've always used ubuntu because it is a Gnome distribution. It's not about having the best application, but the best gnome applications. Otherwise I wouldn't have to keep installing Amarok ( maybe Exaile Soon! ). Ubuntu should be the best gnome base to customize your system upon. I don't understand how mono meshes with the ideals of the GNu Object MOdel Environment. Since some distributions are starting to exclude mono I am certain that developers will raise to the challenge to provide a mono-free photo album and sticky notes, with no loss of functionality.