With Richard M Stallman coming out openly against Mono, it would be difficult to include mono on the default installation of Debian. Tomboy which is written in C# needs Mono to run.

 Mono is an open source project led by Novell (formerly by Ximian) to create an Ecma standard compliant, .NET-compatible set of tools, including among others a C# compiler and a Common Language Runtime. Mono can be run on Linux, BSD, UNIX, Mac OS X, Solaris and Windows operating systems.

Stallmans Reaction to Mono

"Mono is a free implementation of Microsoft's language C#. Microsoft has declared itself our enemy and we know that Microsoft is getting patents on some features of C#. So I think it's dangerous to use C#, and it may be dangerous to use Mono. There's nothing wrong with Mono. Mono is a free implementation of a language that users use. It's good to provide free implementations. We should have free implementations of every language. But, depending on it is dangerous, and we better not do that.  "

More about Mono

The Mono/Linux/GNOME development stack provide tools for application development while leveraging existing GNOME and Free and Open Source libraries. These include: Gtk# for GUI development, Mozilla libraries for working with the Gecko rendering engine, Unix integration libraries, database connectivity libraries, a security stack, and the XML schema language RelaxNG. Gtk# allows Mono applications to integrate into the Gnome desktop as native applications. The database libraries provide connectivity to MySQL, SQLite, PostgreSQL, Firebird, Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) among others.

MonoDevelop is a free GNOME integrated development environment primarily designed for C# and other .NET languages such as Nemerle, Boo, and Java (via IKVM.NET). MonoDevelop was originally a port of SharpDevelop to Gtk#, but it has since evolved to meet the needs of Mono developers. The IDE includes class management, built-in help, code completion, Stetic (a GUI designer), project support, and an integrated debugger.

Mono License

Mono is dual licensed by Novell, similar to other products such as Qt and the Mozilla Application Suite. Mono's C# compiler and tools are released under the GNU General Public License (GPLv2 only) (starting with version 2.0 of Mono, the Mono C# compiler source code will also be available under the MIT X11 license), the runtime libraries under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPLv2 only) and the class libraries under the MIT License. These are all free software and open-source licenses and hence Mono is free and open-source software.

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