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Apart from broad sweeping statements like that, do you have any specific arguments to counter any of the points raised in the FSF statement?

Well, we could start with their logical fallacies and work from there.

They take Ballmer's quote of "So how do we somehow get the appropriate economic return for our patented innovation...?" as proof positive that "The company has been quite clear about its intentions since late 2006." Of course, they take for granted that someone would make the jump from 'trying to get appropriate economic return' and 'will attempt legal action to gain recompense for what they have lost.'

Never mind that between this and other actions, the way Microsoft has been dealing with "getting "appropriate economic return" on GNU/Linux's use of their works lately is to work more and more with the open-source community. (Sure, it's burning the company's long-term survival for short-term gain, but it wouldn't be the first time a company that had recently switched management, changed from sustainable but low-margin goods to short-term high-margin goods, and then wondered why management left town when the bill came in.) Logical fallacy: Hasty generalization (Because Microsoft wants to make money off of their work, they must want to sue).

Not to mention the preface lists other companies with patents for things that have since been released under copyleft licenses - Sun and IBM. Why are we to lose sleep over Microsoft working with open source, yet give no thought to other companies (in IBM's case, larger) doing the same? Why - because this is Microsoft. The reason Microsoft can't be trusted is beause it's Microsoft, and the reason Sun and IBM can be trusted is because they're Sun and IBM. Logical fallacy: Circular logic (Microsoft can't be trusted because Microsoft can't be trusted).

And it ends with the continual assertion that things would all be better, somehow, if Microsoft gave away their patents or patents for everyone were taken away. Logical fallacy: Appeal to belief (The FSF is correct because most people reading their argument would assume it was correct).

For the document as a whole, we can add the fallacy of Appeal to Fear (the assumption that the reader will be afraid of the target from the beginning) and Bandwagon (The FSF is right because everyone knows Microsoft is the devil).

It's FUD just as much as MS' actions and vague Community Promise are. There's no specific threat, there have been no actions against Mono or companies using Mono (there's a commercial game IDE and engine called Unity3D that uses Mono for scripting, for example).

C# and .NET are good technologies, despite the source; I'm much, much more productive in C# than in Java and I won't even consider using C/C++ anymore unless I need to fix something that's already in those low-level languages.

FUD like this helps hold back the free software community, which is a Microsoft goal, not an FSF goal. Using C# and Mono might help force the issue and give us a concrete response or even help bring down software patents.

MS' claim to a huge pile of their patents in Linux is ridiculous; if they had a case, they'd be going after Oracle, RedHat, etc... all of the big players who are stealing their database/enterprise/whatever sales.

- chrish

Well, Microsoft has announced itself as the enemy. Can't blame the FSF for not trusting them.

You must be joking. Microsoft considers the FSF to be an "enemy" in the same way that a St. Bernard would view a hyperactive Chihuahua as an enemy. In other words - for all of Stallman's unwarranted self-importance, he and his lackies are nothing more than an easily-ignored minor nuisance.

In fact, the blind knee-jerk hatred from Stallman and his lackies will probably help Microsoft in the long run. Dot-net is the future of software development, as much as the Freetards hate to admit it; shunning Mono just further guarantees that the FSF (and anyone dumb enough to listen to them) will always be stuck two or three decades in the past.