Well Microsoft really does develop some really interesting technology.

With .NET once an API is published it's available to all programming languages at the same time.

The software patent problem is not limited to Mono. Software patents affect everyone writing software today.

I was interested in Java the beginning, but the problem with Java is you do have to switch your platform.

Our strategy in dealing with patents in Mono is the same strategy that any other software developer would take. In the event of a patent claim, we will try to find prior art to the claim of the patent.

When it comes to .NET they've done a really outstanding job.

We've been using C and C++ way too much - they're nice, but they're very close to the machine and what we wanted was to empower regular users to build applications for Linux.