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Comment by migueldeicaza | Hacker News Reader

Mono is open source, so anyone can continue developing it.

If your concern are licensing the patents, MonoMac only uses the ECMA core and the MS-PL bits. If you want to use stuff outside of this and you are still scared of Microsoft going after your very profitable enterprise, remember that Microsoft is open to licensing their patent portfolio to anyone that wants it.

If Mono were to be discontinued, there is a business right there for an enterpreneur: negotiate with Microsoft a license deal for their patents, add a markup, pocket the difference.

That is the worst case scenario, you have to pay the patent holders.

That being said, you do live in a dark, sad and terrifying place. You harvest what you plant, and this fear and horror that you plant can not be good for anyone's health.

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>Mono is open source, so anyone can continue developing it.

"Can" but who will? You already implicitly concede the point that mono has no community strong enough to survive without the Novell employees. Your hypothetical entrepreneur that fills this gap is charging money. Hasn't that just incurred an extra cost on the person who built their business on a free Mono? That's if this guy turns up on time for the crucial expansion to your business; if he turns up at all. There may well not be enough users of Mono to support such a model: I can't name a single big or medium sized group using Mono besides Novell itself.

Edit:

I think you have conceded my point against using Mono for a startup i.e. there is a real chance you are going to incur future costs of an unknown size. I don't live in a dark place either, please drop that language, I said I wish it wasn't this way. It's just that, given there are plenty of other options, why pick the horse lagging behind with vultures circling it for your business?

Edit2:

Also, to score a cheap point, I will highlight your use of language "fear and horror". Not only am I planting garden variety fear, but also horror. A new, and more terrifying, breed of FUD. FHUD - Fear, Horror, Uncertainty and Doubt. It's catchy.

    I think you have conceded my point against using Mono 
    for a startup i.e. there is a real chance you are going 
    to incur future costs of an unknown size.

And do you think that those (possible/unknown) patents that might apply to Mono cannot be used against whatever platform you're using?

Think again ... at least one of the Oracle patents (IANAL, but have been reading the independent claims) applies to any VM that starts interpreting code before doing compiling, which applies to many tracing compilers (from my understanding, LuaJIT, JavascriptCore are good examples).

You think you're safe, think again.

> I can't name a single big or medium sized group using Mono besides Novell itself.

What about Unity (http://unity3d.com/) and all the games based on unity. I'd say that is at least a medium size group.

Edit, links to relevant information Unity's website:

* List of some of the games made with Unity: http://unity3d.com/gallery/game-list/

* Where it says that unity is Mono based: http://unity3d.com/unity/engine/programming

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