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

[Ian Kelling]

Jason Self <jself@gnu.org> writes:

> [[PGP Signed Part:Undecided]]
> To my understanding the patent situation hasn't changed.
> https://www.fsf.org/news/dont-depend-on-mono
> Which is a little complicated that while it's useful to have free
> implementations of C#, we should arrange to depend on them as little
> as possible.
>
> [[End of PGP Signed Part]]

Some more thoughts. It has been 13 years or so and patents on C# have
not been used against free software in any way that has been revealed
publicly. So, I think the risk is likely less than what we thought back
then, but one of C#'s main goals is to promote windows and other
proprietary programs from microsoft, which is another reason to avoid
it. At FSF, we saw an application we want to deploy,
https://btcpayserver.org/, but it was written in c# and depends on a
.net package. I looked around and didn't see Debian distributing .net,
so I doubt a free distro should bother trying to. I evaluated a .net
GNU/Linux package distributed by microsoft and I was able to build it
from source, so we are planning to deploy it at some point. It was
rather complicated to build which is probably why it isn't in Debian
yet. At FSF, we know we can easily switch back to not using it fairly
easily.