LXer: Mono a mano - Many of us are wrestling with this, I suspect
 

Published at LXer:

I've stayed fairly quiet on the controversy over Mono, the open-source implementation of Microsoft's .NET protocol and C# programming language that's been grabbing a greater share of the desktop in various Linux distributions in recent years and months. ... Although I'm not a developer, this is a very real issue for me, and it should be for all who use Linux/Unix — and especially GNOME — on the desktop. Two of the biggest Linux distributions — Debian and the Debian-derived Ubuntu — are based on the GNOME desktop environment and seemingly have Mono apps taking a bigger chunk of the system with every release.

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Allison has a good point about why Miguel chose Mono/.net. I believe that idea of control of the project and the thrill of the challenge is what drove him. I believe this to be true with many of the mono apps written. Why write Banshee when Rhythmbox already exists? To have an app with more features? Then why not just help the Rhythmbox developers add those features. No, it was for the challenge, and done with mono so that they wouldn't have to do too much work. I suspect that this is the core reason for many mono apps that duplicate efforts by pre-existing non-mono apps. Just alot of ego.