[GNU-linux-libre] Should the use of C#, Mono, and .NET still be discouraged?

[Jacob K]

A couple weeks ago I was investigating the program osu! [1] for 
inclusion in the Free Software Directory. Building osu! requires the 
.NET SDK, which appears to have source code on GitHib [2]. Someone 
noticed the PATENTS.TXT file [3] which seemed like it might not cover 
enough to make .NET free software, but then most projects don't even 
mention patents. Someone linked a page on End Software Patents [4], 
which also suggested the patent promise is not sufficient. Thus it 
seemed like .NET was nonfree, but .NET is notable enough that I would 
have expected it to be on the List of software that does not respect the 
FSDG [5], and it was not mentioned there, so I considered asking here as 
that page suggests, but I decided it wasn't important enough and so osu! 
and .NET were left off of the FSD.

Today, I was looking for a program to get the source code and licenses 
of all the dependencies of an npm project, and I found a tool called 
OSSGadget [6] by Microsoft, that seems like it could be very useful for 
what I was trying to do, but it requires .NET. I revisited the End 
Software Patents wiki page and followed a chain of links to "Microsoft's 
Empty Promise" [7], which explains that the reason to worry about 
Microsoft's patents more than other patents is because Microsoft 
"declared itself the enemy of GNU/Linux and stated its intention to 
attack our community with patents". Since 2009, have things changed? 
Microsoft does not claim to be an enemy anymore. Additionally, "Why free 
software shouldn't depend on Mono or C#" [8] makes it clear that the 
patent threat in this case does not make the software nonfree. We also 
found .NET in Parabola [9], further confirming this.

So, I was originally going to ask if .NET should be added to the List of 
software that does not respect the FSDG. It seems now that .NET does 
respect the FSDG. But, the follow-up question to that is: Is using 
OSSGadget (based on .NET) to help the Free Software Directory a good 
idea? Regardless of the FSDG, should using C# implementations still be 
discouraged?

[1] https://github.com/ppy/osu

[2] https://github.com/dotnet/runtime

[3] https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/blob/main/PATENTS.TXT

[4] https://wiki.endsoftwarepatents.org/wiki/.NET,_C-sharp,_and_Mono

[5] 
https://libreplanet.org/wiki/List_of_software_that_does_not_respect_the_Free_System_Distribution_Guidelines

[6] https://github.com/Microsoft/OSSGadget

[7] https://www.fsf.org/news/2009-07-mscp-mono

[8] https://www.fsf.org/news/dont-depend-on-mono

[9] https://www.parabola.nu/packages/community/x86_64/dotnet-sdk/

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