@David: Your post had some very interesting ideas. I doubt that they will be enacted, but perhaps that in itself that the technical people who are actually building the software have better things to do.
@Bob: I’m glad that you’re making your decision based on technical merits and that you’re respecting the right of others to do as they choose.
@Bernd: I fall into the trap of confusing open source and free software. Thanks for calling me out on it. Your point is interesting and I’ll certainly be thinking more about what you said,

IMHO a lot of guys would need an injection of pragmatism. This is a problem that we have outside of the computing world, too. Someone is willing to sacrifice reality and practicality in favour of idealism, and someone else are doing the exact opposite (a comparable mistake I think).

The only thing that really matters in the end are the *results* in *reality*. Otherwise you can make a big mistake: being blind to reality and to holding back the computing world in favour of some idealism that should be instead contribute to a better world. A world that is “free” (”you MUST be free”, do you see something wrong with this one?) but less productive.

You may not agree with him on many things, but let’s show the man some more respect than lumping him in with the Open Source crowd. And let’s let go of the Hurd straw man, shall we?

“if you are trying to tell people that they can’t use or distribute some piece of software, then …” – no, you are better than MS, since you [the Free Software idealists / dictators] aren’t locking anyone into your system, unlike them. Nobody’s holding a gun to your head and MAKING you not use Mono/whatever; they’re simply declining to make it easy for you to sell yourself into slavery. (I don’t necessarily agree with the Mono-is-evil point, FWIW.)

@Simon
“…hark back to the days of yore when Microsoft was guilty of unpleasant behavior…”?

Ha! You make it sound like 100 years ago Microsoft got a bit tipsy and spoke out of turn at a company picnic. Microsoft is still – as in this current year, 2009AD infringing treaty rules, abusing its position, and generally up to no good. Maybe a short read (PDF) would bring you up to date?

But don’t come crying foul if some big bad and ends you, your software, your users, your project and the community at large.

But honestly, who really cares. If someone is really as misguided as to want to develop in C# on linux, then go for it. Rock it. Ill judge by the app that I want or need to use, not by what a pack of open source ambulance chasers tell me to do.

Seriously, linux needs to shed a few lawyers, its getting ridiculous.