The announcement that there is now a “line-by-line port of Sqlite to C#” is travelling around all the planets.

“Funny thing here”,  the man says as he taps his chin and looks upward thoughtfully.

I had heard that porting something line-by-line was really a “ripoff”; that is was a “bad reason” if your code  “was written purely to duplicate an existing program in a different implementation language.” But, I’m not hearing that about csharp-sqlite? I’m sure Team Mono and the Dilligent Defenders are simply proof-reading the condeming posts they have been slaving over. Fact-checking and whatnot.

Note that the licensing has changed to from Sqlite as well! Scandalous! I once read “you can’t change an app’s license” or that “You can’t change a source’s license without explicit permission to do so”. Oh my, that’s two for two! Well, at least I know I can count on everyone to roundly criticize this new “ripoff” with me! I mean you can’t just be abiding by the terms of a license, you have to abide by the terms of a license in a way that is approved by the community!

I mean, say for example, you got together with some proprietary software house and figured out some legal trickery to get around the intent of a popular Open Source license. A crazy scenario, sure, but if it did happen I know everyone would condem that; especially if  they tried it when Gnote stay perfectly within the bounds of Tomboy’s licensing.

So, will we be seeing those apologies and corrections for the reaction to Gnote yet? How about a round of good old-fashioned personal attacks and assigning malicious motives for the author of csharp-sqlite? I’ll be right here holding my breath. Good thing I quit smoking, no?

In which the truth shall set you free

I wrote Gnote to answer two questions:

• How can I have Tomboy functionality on my custom openSUSE image I made for my EEE PC, that will fit the 2GB? I don’t have room for Mono on this. For what is worth, back when I tried to put a distro on it, the only distro that would fit out of the box on this EEE PC was Eeedora, a Fedora based image for the EEE PC, but that only did provide XFCE. Since I wanted GNOME, it ended up not being that useful as I didn’t have a the Fedora tools to actually regenerated a custom one. None of the other did fit on 2GB, including the Mandriva Flash I had from GUADEC, Ubuntu’s own, etc.
• Is it easy to port a C# application to C++?

This is perfectly harmonious with his original announcement:

In my attempts to fight my own boredom, as an unemployed hacker^[1], I took on myself to do something: porting Tomboy to C++. It is actually not that hard, just a lot of work to do manually because there is over a dozen of thousands of lines of code. This show me that the door is open to reimplementing Gtk# software (or parts) in C++ with not too many problems, making it easy to have them available for C applications.

He also explicity states he is not “anti-Mono”, and refutes that Gnote is some sort of anti-Mono statement (while acknowledging some have taken it that way):

For the rest, you all know what happened: the anti-Mono crowd took it as their victory, started FUDing, etc. Barely nobody asked me why I had written that code, compared to the many that actually thought I was supporting their cause. But that’s how the internet work.

[...]

And if you still think I hate Mono think again. I worked for the company that pushes Mono (and still wish I was), and I was using Tomboy on all the Linux machines I had[...]

In which the horse is led, but he does not drink

I wonder which will come first:

1. Apologies and retractions of the vicious slander against Mr. CrazyFrench
2. Attempts to pretend I ever portrayed Gnote an “anti-Mono statement”.

Let me save you time: you won’t find the latter – because I never took that position -  and I doubt you’ll find the former, either, because those attacks never came from an honest position orginally.

In truth, I do not ever recall any Mono critic asserting the motivations behind Gnote were ideological, only illustrating that the rejection and attacks most certainly were. There may be someone who did this, but it doesn’t spring to mind, and I certainly never did.

I realize the distinction may be difficult for poop-flingers to grasp. Please be sure you do before arming yourselves, I just got the place cleaned up after all.

In which Your Humble Host channels The Great Karnak

I always chuckle at little bit at just how closely my words are parsed and attacked, with excruciating demands for corrections, updates, research, giving the benefit of the doubt, and so on; while pure vileness and lies from the other side is either tolerated or, even more often, enthusiastically joined and agreed upon.

That is why I fully expect to see all those old libelous posts about Gnote’s motivations quickly corrected, retracted and apologized for.

Heh. No no. I don’t expect that all. It’s nice to pretend, though, isn’t it? Here’s what I do expect:

1. Someone (or ones) will come along to try to parse out a sentence with some sort of ambiguity that when interpretated in some strained fashion, might possibly contridict something I said here.
2. Someone (or ones) will refuse to accept Mr. CrazyFrench’s explanation, and continue to assert Gnote is some nefarious anti-Mono project.
3. No one (or ones) will go back in time and update / correct / ammend anything they wrote negative or attacking about Gnote. This will not stop them from demanding others should do the same for things they disagree with, of course.

The reason why I (and I suspect others) took such a keen interest in Gnote was specifically because it was not an anti-Mono project. By all informed accounts, it was simply a hacker scratching an itch – why all the haterade? Why the violent rejection? Gnote has (or had) the potential to be smaller, faster, lighter and less controversial – why would it not be embraced by those who pretend they are arguing from non-ideological or pragmatic grounds?

That’s what is called a “rhetorical question”, by the way. It means everyone already knows the answer.

A final gnote of comparison

Not for nothing, but calling Free and Open Software projects “harmful to the community” or suggesting they have “hurt, rather than helped, the free software community” might get one in right hot water by The Most High and (Self-)Righteous Community Gatekeepers.

In fact, you might not believe this, but I hear tell of a gentleman who thinks Mono is “harmful to the community”, and might possibly “hurt, rather than help, the free software community” and – surprise, surprise – he has come under a considerable amount of fire for such a radical opinion. Some even say the attacks have gotten personal!

Scandalous! Why, a Lesser Mind might call such double-standards hypocritical.

Most of the Q&A are purely factual or based on technical issues, and there is really not much to be much to be said  about them. The problem is when crap like this pops out:

Q: Why not ship GNote instead by default?
A: GNote was written for bad reasons, without even respecting the GPL copyright requirements. But more importantly, its maintenance model is going to make it only follow behind the Tomboy lead, as any code changes in Tomboy will need to be translated to C++. It also supports less languages and less features. Furthermore, it was introduced in Debian for political reasons, by a maintainer who doesn’t use it and isn’t involved in GNOME maintenance.

I told you all that mono FUD on Gnote was still working. The author is questioned on this in the comments:

skx 2009-07-06 11:43 am UTC
“GNote was written for bad reasons, without even respecting the GPL copyright requirements.”
Please be more specific.
“Bad reasons” I can infer means that it was written purely to duplicate an existing program in a different implementation language. That’s either bad, or necessary, depending on what you think of Mono.

But you suggest GNote doesn’t respect the GPL, and so I wonder in what sense you mean that? Certainly the code is available and open. I do hope you’re not conflating the reimplementation in some fashion..

np237 2009-07-06 11:57 am UTC
The GNote author did not even keep the copyright notices from Tomboy. I don’t know whether this has been fixed in the meantime, but that tells a lot.

skx 2009-07-06 11:59 am UTC
Perhaps I’m missing something obvious, and if so you could point it out to me.

But :
Tomboy = Note application written in Mono.
GNote = Near-Identical clone written in not-Mono

Given that the implementation languages are different I’m struggling to see how there could be any applicable copyright issues.

(Unless you’re refering to things such as icons, media files, etc. Clearly the code is in a different language and even if the end result is look-and-feel identical there can’t be any actual infringement.)

np237 2009-07-06 12:02 pm UTC (link)
It’s not a clone. It’s a line-by-line ripoff of the C# code, in C++.

mono apologists have long been trying to tar Gnote with “copyright violation”, you can see Jo Shields waft it around a little bit here:

If Debian’s FTP Master determines that Gnote is permissible for inclusion in Debian (I hear FTP Master has been particularly stringent these days in checking copyright) then great.

And here. And here. And here. And here. And here.

Well, now that the FTP Master has determined that Gnote is permissible for inclusion in Debian, I’m sure we can count on you to support Gnote and stop insinuating there are bad-faith copyright issues? It looks to me the worst you can say about the man is he tried something and didn’t get away with it – and that’s the most malicious interpretation. It seems much more likely he either didn’t care or didn’t get around to all the boring-ass copyright notice updating while he was excited about writing code.

I mean, I know the first thing I do when I start coding is all the licensing and copyright parts, but maybe not everyone starts there.

Of course, now that copyright issues can no longer stand up, np237 falls back to “it’s a ripoff”. It seems clear to be that Gnote copyright FUD has not FAILEN here. This comes across as a very unfair assessment of Gnote.

Q: Isn’t GNote much smaller?
A: Not really. C++ bindings are larger than CLI bindings, so the only real differences are the size of the Mono interpreter, and the size of translations. In the end, Tomboy with all its dependencies is only 10 MiB larger; that includes 3 times as many translations, and some important functionality.

This is a fair enough point – and I’m sure np237 knows the space Debian has to work with far better than I, I just think it is funny that 10MiB here is no big deal, where 6MiB was the entire basis for Jo Shields to start off his “out with Rhythmbox, in with Banshee” drive. And those 6MiB weren’t even accurate! Ha, such is the internets.

Q: What is the agenda of Roy Schestowitz, Sam Varghese, Robert Millan and their friends?
A: What they are doing is giving credit to the Microsoft FUD in order to also scare consumers and developers away from Mono. They want to scare them away to other free software environments, but what they achieve is scaring people away to buy Microsoft products instead. It is tempting to conclude, because of the result, that they are employed by Microsoft underhand, but applying Hanlon’s razor, I think they are just incredibly incompetent, to the point where they are dangerous. These people are toxic to the community, and we really need them to shut up. If they ever reach their goal and destroy a great piece of free software like Mono, they will go on and find something else to destroy. Remember, their goal is to SDD: scare, disrupt and destroy. You cannot build anything useful or interesting with such goals.

Q: But Richard Stallman says they are right!
A: RMS is also the guy who wants us to ship non-free documentation. I don’t think RMS has enough connection left to the real world for his opinion to be con

Come on – is this really necessary? The vast majority of the Q&A are solid, factual responses to questions people are likely to have. To end on an a bullshit ass personal attack just makes the whole list look questionable. If you have 20 facts and 2 pieces of obvious bullshit, the 20 facts don’t make the bullshit look good. The bullshit makes all the facts look bad.

Right, but what do YOU think about it?

Brace yourself … if Debian wants to install mono in a gnome package, they should. That’s right, I said they should. Mono is a part of GNOME via Tomboy right now. I think that is a horrible situation, and I think Gnote should replace Tomboy in GNOME immediately if not sooner, but to beat up Debian for installing what the user asks for is misplacing the blame.

As I understand it, Debian is focused on the “Free-ness” of the package. I don’t think a credible argument can be made that Tomboy is non-Free software, because the patent and political issues don’t affect that aspect of Tomboy or mono. Now, that’s not saying that there aren’t a host of problems with mono, but I’m not going to try to pretend like it doesn’t meet the guidlines for Free and Open Source software.

Tolimar first posted a correction to rms’ understanding about the tomboy/gnote change in Debian packaging.

Now, about a week later, he has a correction to that correction, and attempts to explain what the change means a little better!

Heh.

It looks like the current situation is flexible and mono may or may not come it yet, depending on exactly how the developers decide to use CD space and package recommends.Boy, I bet that process is going to be nice an focused on nothing but technical issues! Where can I watch from?

And yes, yes I know the actual problem is the fault of the Gnome project. I lurve you, Debian!

Visitor commenting: “Also, how can you talk about the absence of any suitable replacement for Tomboy without even mentioning Gnote?”

A very good point indeed! And one I made in my rebuttal to this claptrap, Here we go again – why Mono apologetics suck.

directhex response: “I’ve already talked about Gnote in a prior post – and feel pretty vindicated about my “it’s still too young for primetime” sentiment given http://bugs.debian.org/534969”

So I guess we are going to the bug reports? Then. Oh, what’s that? That bug was already fixed and closed … 4 days earlier?

Well, it is true that gnote does have 3 bugs on that tracker. 1 is a wishlist. All 3 are resolved, by the way.

I guess we could take a look at tomboy, as it has the directhex stamp of approval, and bugs are good reason to keep software out of a distribution.

Objectivity: a mono watchword.

Tomboy has 295 bugs. 7 critical, 4 major.

Now I know how unfair it is to point to a single bug or bug tracker and pretend like it makes the project unsuitable for public consumption. I know this is unfair. My question is, shouldn’t Mr. Shields know that too?

The context

Tomboy is a note-taking program, a sort of desktop wiki if you will. It is very important strategically because it is the only official part of the GNOME desktop that requires mono. It is this requirement that led Debian to add mono as a dependency to the gnome package. It is also why you will hear mono apologists talking up a note-taking app like it is curing cancer in Africa – because it provides them a crucial toe-hold into the the GNOME desktop environment and, by extension, most major and popular GNU/Linux distributions. It is this application that allows mono apologists to make the argument that the mono libraries are already being included, so why not put on a few more mono apps?

The problem

So, you can begin to see then, that a C++ port of Tomboy just won’t do. If there were a C++ port of Tomboy, then people would wonder why distributions needed mono at all. Say I wanted to install tomboy on my mainly KDE system (I have rhythmbox installed too because it is the best audio player around right now, despite what some people would have you believe):

jason@mono-free:~$ sudo apt-get install tomboy
[sudo] password for jason:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
 binfmt-support cli-common libart2.24-cil libgconf2.24-cil libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime-2.0-2a libgmime2.2a-cil
 libgnome-vfs2.24-cil libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgtk2.0-cil libgtkspell0 libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil libmono-addins0.2-cil
 libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil libmono-i18n2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
 libmono-system2.0-cil libmono0 libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libpanel-applet2-0 mono-2.0-gac mono-2.0-runtime mono-common
 mono-gac mono-jit mono-runtime
Suggested packages:
 monodoc-gtk2.0-manual libgdiplus libmono-winforms2.0-cil evolution tasque
The following NEW packages will be installed:
 binfmt-support cli-common libart2.24-cil libgconf2.24-cil libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime-2.0-2a libgmime2.2a-cil
 libgnome-vfs2.24-cil libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgtk2.0-cil libgtkspell0 libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil libmono-addins0.2-cil
 libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil libmono-i18n2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
 libmono-system2.0-cil libmono0 libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libpanel-applet2-0 mono-2.0-gac mono-2.0-runtime mono-common
 mono-gac mono-jit mono-runtime tomboy
0 upgraded, 33 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 11.7MB of archives.
After this operation, 38.7MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? HELL NO

So that is 38.7MB for a note-taking program. Also, I love the fact that it actually recommends winforms, which is 100% most definitely not covered in the ECMA standards. Now, say I wanted to install gnote:

jason@mono-free:~$ sudo apt-get install gnote
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
 libboost-filesystem1.34.1 libcairomm-1.0-1 libgconfmm-2.6-1c2 libgnomemm-2.6-1c2 libgtkmm-2.4-1c2a libgtkspell0 libpanel-applet2-0
 libpanelappletmm-2.6-1c2 libpangomm-1.4-1
The following NEW packages will be installed:
 gnote libboost-filesystem1.34.1 libcairomm-1.0-1 libgconfmm-2.6-1c2 libgnomemm-2.6-1c2 libgtkmm-2.4-1c2a libgtkspell0 libpanel-applet2-0
 libpanelappletmm-2.6-1c2 libpangomm-1.4-1
0 upgraded, 10 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 3039kB of archives.
After this operation, 11.9MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? WELL I JUST MIGHT

So that is 11.9MB. Nice.

Now, let’s keep in mind that entire recent push Rhythmbox with Banshee sprang from the assertion that Banshee would save an entire 6.1MB (See Banshee in Ubuntu if you need details.) So surely this ~27MB savings would bring overwhelming support!

The spin

Well, first off you have to try to get that size difference taken care of:

The numbers may astonish C die-hards, but they’re true – similarly, Gnote’s binary is twice the size of Tomboy’s binaries, even though it has no plugins (it only appears smaller thanks to having no documentation).

Jo Shields, “Fitting the kitchen sink onto a CD“

See, you can obscure the size by ignoring the size of all the required libraries! Clever little trick there. Also, some of that – hell, most of it really, is documentation. And large graphic files too. And some demo sounds. Don’t look behind the curtain! Another things to do could be to spread a little of that old creamy FUD around:

Our stance on Gnote is that it is counterproductive to maintain identical software in two languages. It will be harmful to the community, especially as these two apps inevitably diverge.

- Sandy Armstrong, Tomboy author, “Tomboy 0.14.1, the future, and a word about Gnote“

Wow. A mono supporter spreading FUD against a competing Free and Open Source project calling it “harmful to the community”. Roll that nutbar of irony around your mouth a bit and taste the flavor!

Anyone thinking about distributing Gnote should consider the impact on users and their data.

- Sandy Armstrong, Tomboy author, “Tomboy 0.14.1, the future, and a word about Gnote“

Ah yeah! Give me some of that good old Novell-Microsoft “interoperability”! Good for a thousand and one uses! You can get a feel for the mono brigades absolute commitment to making sure things like “best-of-breed” and “value to user” are decision criteria, and not things like “zealotry” or “politics” by reading comments to the above blog:

It almost makes me wish software patents were actually real and that Tomboy had one to stab Gnote in teh face with.

GNOTE is a troll and you should not feed trolls, GNOTE doesn’t care about you, it just wants to kill Tomboy and unlike Tomboy it doesn’t have motives to provide you best experience, I don’t even think it will stay on active development once it kills Tomboy

I have no problem with Gnote as an experiment for porting Mono code to C++. But as a released, supported product, it undermines our efforts in the community.

That last tasty one there from the Tomboy developer, graciously granting his blessing on a private, un-released, non-supported port. Truly, the spirit of Free and Open Source flows from the mono project like honey from the Promised Land. Here’s a thought: your efforts need to be undermined.

Moving on, another comment of brilliant insight and due weighty contemplation from our every classy friend, Jo Shields:

Being granted the freedom to do something doesn’t mean you need to be a dick about it.

The whole reason for gnote is fanboism and pettiness.

Gnote has hurt, rather than helped, the free software community.

The Drama

Of course, there’s a FUD to be spread to potential users of Gnote, as well. I mean, they might get to wondering why they can’t use a faster, lighter version of (what is from their perspective) the same program. Never fear, our hero Jo Shields is on the case:

Ignoring the legal issues that surround it, GNote is nowhere near as functional as Tomboy yet – it doesn’t support WikiWords, has no documentation, no syncing to anywhere, and no integration with any other apps. Its RAM consumption IS better (9.8M versus 23.4M out of the box), as long as you don’t mind the lack of functionality.

Legal issues? Oh my. Are we really seeing a mono apologist start hand-waving some “legal issue” FUD against a FLOSS project!?  In a different thread, there is this inflammatory anti-mono screed on the Ubuntu Forums clearly announcing an attack on mono and calling for support:

Gnote is my experimental port of Tomboy to C++

It is the same note taking application, minus things not done yet, boatload of addins and synchronization. Be patient they’ll come.

This will not stand! Jo Shields springs into action:

Re: Ubuntu PPA for Gnote (C++ port of Tomboy)
Still missing most of Tomboy’s features, and involving wholesale license & copyright violation
But remember, kids – stealing code is fine as long as it’s “one in the eye” for Free Software developers like the Tomboy authors!

The usual gang of mono apologists on the Ubuntu Forums prepare thoughtful commentary, always careful to keep within the Code of Conduct, which mono critics are well known for violating:

Wow just the other day I was thinking “Tomboy’s great but I wish they had used crappy, painful tools to write it in”. Now with gnote, the developers will be able to really focus on the nitty-gritty programming details of it rather than adding annoying features and stability. Awesome!!

i always laugh when people do such counter-productive things because they are afraid. Looks like FUD is in full swing. Way to go Vadi [PPA maintainer]!

so in future reference, if this does happen (legal action) don’t think for a second that it’s because the “author” of Gnote is getting slammed for porting tomboy to c++. he is going to get slammed because he’s using the code from the project against the wishes of it’s creators as defined in the tomoboy’s code license.

If Hub [author of Gnote] was after anything other than exposure and brownie points from the mental subnormals on FUD blogs like BN, then he wouldn’t have done the things he did. If he wanted to work *positively* with others, then he could easily do so.

Team Mono goes on (and on) at length in this thread on how Gnote is a violation of the licensing, how Gnote is an “aggressive fork”, calls the man a “dick” a few more times, plainly states that the issues are malicious and not a misunderstanding, insinuates that the anti-Mono crowd are hypocrites until of course someone who actually knows something about the LGPL license has a suggestion:

Wait. *You're* the SME?

I heard the kids call this “getting owned”. Naturally Mr. Shields’ supporters, mono-men all, those paragons of fair-dealing and unbiased judgement immediately change their tune to welcome Gnote with open arms:

Even if the license thing is a non-issue (I don’t really know), gnote is still a spiteful, useless failure.

If you bother to read the entire thread and can stand the internet dramas, you’ll see Mr. Shields and crew soon begin to attack Rhythmbox (it hinders Banshee acceptance, don’tcha know), sling around personal insults and misinformation, and to be brutally frank, just shit all over the thread until it is locked by a moderator because a mono critic wants to ask a question! That’s right, though the mono brigade carried on for about 17 pages of ignorance, attacks, and outright lies it was the questioning of mono that caused the thread to be locked. (“Please quit trying to push forward your own agenda” is how the moderator put it. Staggering.)

…AAAnyway, a month or so passes, and someone posts about a review including nice pictures showing how similar Tomboy and Gnote are:

Tomboy and Gnote side-by-side

Jo Shields posts twice, once to say an old version wouldn’t install and days later to warn of a bug in Gnote. This is totally coincidental I am sure, a quick check of any thread concerning a mono-based application would find him posting bugs, too. Another mono-supporter posts to suggest Tomboy has a plug-in that Gnote doesn’t have yet. Most helpful and germane, these mono chaps.

I also find it amusing that our friend, the man who had the courage to stand up and say “Fuck you, Richard Stallman“, when no one else would had a taste for this flavor of FUD:

GNote represents the limit of FUD to me. Tomboy is awesome and Sandy Armstrong doubly so.

Yes, indeed. Awesome people and community.

This noble behavior is not limited to this single Tomboy/Gnote incident; it is SOP for most mono apologists. If you can stomach the invective and have the time, you can find enough examples to fill a blog. And then call that blog mono-nono.

The other side
To be fair and present both sides of the issue, I guess I should point out the screaming madness, the vile invective that the Gnote developer used to notify the world of his mono attack project, the destructive, illegal and poopie-filled Gnote:

In my attempts to fight my own boredom, as an unemployed hacker^[1], I took on myself to do something: porting Tomboy to C++. It is actually not that hard, just a lot of work to do manually because there is over a dozen of thousands of lines of code. This show me that the door is open to reimplementing Gtk# software (or parts) in C++ with not too many problems, making it easy to have them available for C applications.

Shocking, I know! He even goes a step beyond all rational behavior, though, when applauded for his “idealism” and another mono port project is suggested:

@keshek: this is no idealism. This was just solving a specific problem and satisfying my curiosity. There is nothing coming next.

Madness! Has he no decency? No humanity?

Kidding on the square
Yeah, I try to take a light tone, especially on this because this behavior is so disgusting that if I don’t I’ll wind up actually getting angry. Here we have an unemployed developer, who decides to take up what sees as an interesting little project and is very publicly attacked from all sides. The Gnote FUD will likely never die, at least on the Ubuntu Forums.

Mono critics are the ones that generally face the charges of zealotry, or spreading FUD, or whatever other negative label gets slapped on them – and some are guily of that, sure. But, one of the key themes I hope I am able to establish with this blog is that some mono critics understand the issues, have reasonable and rational concerns, and aren’t all wearing tin-foil and peeking out from the blinds at the van across the street. Another thing I’s like to establish is that mono apologists not only do not have sound arguments or answers, but are quite guilty of the negative behavior they try to assign to critics. Finally, I would also like to establish that I am devastatingly witty and dangerously handsome as well.

AND! Let me be clear here: I don’t think most mono developers engage in this behavior. I want to draw a line between the mono apologists and the mono developers. It is the apologists, the promoters that are out there engaging in this sort of behavior. I think most of the mono developers are simply trying to develop applications. I may strongly dislike the platform they have chosen, but I don’t think most developers consider such things when choosing a platform, and I do not ascribe political or philosophical motives to those who do not express them.