09.12.07
Corrections: Setting the Record Straight
There are a few things stated in this site which turn out to be false. We have always insisted that we would correct mistakes, which are never made deliberately. Having exchanged some E-mails with Jeff Waugh, there are three main clarifications which need to be made:
- Mono was not part of the goals of GNOME since inception (I misread an article)
- Miguel de Icaza does not intend rebuild GNOME using Mono (a case of poor reporting by some journalists)
- GNOME does not have Mono dependencies at its core (a test made by a Fedora maintainer is contradicted by Jeff)
We would like to apologise for these mistakes. If you do spot anything which you know is false, please do let us know.
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.
Slated said,
November 5, 2007 at 4:00 pm
Actually the “test” I did was to establish the level of Mono infestation in the Fedora distro, not a test to establish the dependence of Gnome on Mono.
And the results do conclusively show that Fedora is indeed deeply infested with Mono components, to the tune of around 48 packages, at the last count:
http://slated.org/mono_infestation_in_fedora
The results are incontestable. Anyone attempting to deny that there is any such infestation is lying.
I’ve also recently discovered a dependency on libbeagle in Yelp (Gnome’s help system). Novell’s Beagle is yet more Mono “Poisonware”.
This threat is real. The poison may be slow-acting, but it’s still poison, and it is working its way through the Free Software tree as we speak (something that I’m sure makes Ballmer and his cronies absolutely delighted).