I know what Mono is but I don't understand why it exists. Why do Novell sponsor the project? I ask the question because I would like to use Mono but I have concerns over its future/commitment. If I better understood why the projects exists I'd feel better about using/recommending it.
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I will. I tried doing the registration dance on the mono forum but nabble gave me a 500 servlet exception thingy..... will try again later. – user195166 Apr 21 '11 at 13:30
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How else would any .NET code run on Unix/Linux/iOs?
It exists because Miguel De Icaza saw .NET, liked it and wanted to have it available on Linux. Knowing that Microsoft will probably not port the platform, he decided to do it himself.
Since the code is open source, it is not going away anywhere.
Oded
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About the "how else to run .NET": There is/was the dotGNU project, but it's now abandoned. At a time, it had a few advantages over Mono (better System.Windows.Forms support for instance), but those days are long gone by. – DarkDust Apr 21 '11 at 13:14
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thanks Oded - I guess that covers why it happened (Miguel liked it) but what keeps it going? There must be some motivating reasons?? – user195166 Apr 21 '11 at 13:24
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4@user195166: I think the rationale behind business decisions of a particular group are beyond the scope of Stack Overflow. Try to get yourself invited to a board meeting. – Lightness Races in Orbit Apr 21 '11 at 13:42
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I don't have any inside dope, but I'm not aware of a story other than an interested party that knew Microsoft was unlikely to port .NET to *nix platforms took on the task. It started as open source and picked up Novell sponsorship after it achieved some measure of success.
I don't believe a "better" story would help you feel more comfortable about recommending it. No one knows the future, and Novell's sponsorship isn't a guarantee of success.
duffymo
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