We've had a lot of debates recently on the merits - or dangers - of Mono. We've had troubles with how Microsoft views Mono and whether or not everyone is safe using it, but we also had a public back-and-forth among Debian maintainers. During all this, Richard Stallman remained pretty mum on the issue, today he broke the silence on the FSF website.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2006-01-04
Exactly. You can say a lot of things about RMS, but he certainly does not have a low IQ.(Remembering all the emacs commands alone will raise your IQ 20 points 
)
Basically what he says is: Use it to run windows code or if you must, don't if you can help it.
Edited 2009-06-30 22:17 UTC
Member since:2007-05-28
Member since:2005-09-27
Having a high IQ doesn't make you right, or even smart. It just means you can learn things faster then other people. RMS views are in essence pure academic and not based on real life. Tools like Mono really helps more then it hinders. We see a benefit from mono, RMS is worried about a possible backlash in the distant future. Heck SCO showed us that such a backlash can happen even for an all Free product.
Real life you need to be vigilant about trends but not paranoid about them. Free Software is here to stay and so is commercial software.
Member since:2006-07-26
Right, its like supporting Flash in web-browsers. Avoid it at all costs, but if you need it there are free crappy implementations.
Don't include those implementations by default because that will encourage people to use C# or Flash.
Member since:
2005-08-12
"He's arguing against writing Free applications in C#, but he's happy there are Free C# tools. I'm sorry, but I just don't get it."
If you have a choice in the matter, there are better choices. If you don't, something is better than nothing.