>> " I'd argue Mono is intrinsically evil"

> Could you explain why this is? I use Mono and I'm genuinely interested.

From the op's profile: "I really don't like Microsoft much."

Apparently not liking MS much is reason enough to dislike an open source project implementing an interesting runtime and languages, which provides options to use aforementioned runtime and languages without being married to MS.

I suspect the reason he dislikes it, as many seem to, is that it's potentially legally unstable as Microsoft own IP related to C# and .net. I don't know the specifics (I don't use Mono myself), but I have heard people talking about possible problems in future if Microsoft changes their mind about encouraging Mono.

> I suspect the reason he dislikes it, as many seem to, is that it's potentially legally unstable as Microsoft own IP related to C# and .net.

This has been on the horizon ever since Mono's inception. This is what wikipedia has to say:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_(software)#Mono_and_Micros...

On July 6, 2009, Microsoft announced that it was placing their ECMA 334 and ECMA 335 specifications under their Community Promise pledging that they would not assert their patents against anyone implementing, distributing, or using alternative implementations of .NET.[79] However, their position regarding the non-ECMA components like ASP.NET, ADO.NET, and Windows Forms (which are the bone of contention) remains unclarified.

There are concerns regarding MS community promise, and of course about the components which remain unclarified. If it ever goes to court, it will be a battle similar to Google vs Oracle over Java. MS might create trouble, but when that happens, that isn't going to be easy.

Even considering that, how is Mono intrinsically evil? When MS sues, hindsight will say Mono team was misguided and naive to trust MS, but that still doesn't make mono evil.

There's plenty of possible problems, but I think Microsoft regards it as a nice way to keep developers developing using their tools, similar to how Adobe takes a pretty hands off approach on piracy of Photoshop.

Exactly.

The more people use Mono, the more valuable the .NET runtime, and Windows itself, becomes.

Pretty much, always a bit puzzled when people assume that Microsoft will throw the toys out of the pram at some stage. It's a net benefit for them if more people are using the language, rather than shifting to C or C++ and sticking with that instead.

My concern is that by using Mono you make the .NET runtime more popular and Windows more valuable. Since Microsoft has a long history of hostility towards software freedom (despite several open-source software they publish themselves), I don't think it's wise to further empower them.