Firstly and most importantly Mono 2.4.2 release is now available. Major highlights include:
In addition to bug fixes, this release includes the following major changes from 2.4.0:
- We now ship Microsoft’s ASP.NET MVC (http://www.asp.net/mvc) stack and ASP.NET MVC applications can run with Mono.
- xbuild has been updated
- Removed non-free amqp0-8.xml documentation.
More detailed information can be found “http://www.mono-project.com/Release_Notes_Mono_2.4.2“. I have to say the MVC part is really exciting for me, again for cloud and cross OS capabilities this seems a winner!
Now on to the other side of the news – I almost blogged about this earlier, but it seems good prudence as we now can have the good news of the new release with the less good of people saying don’t use it!
Richard Stallman is recommending against using C# as a platform for free software in his “Why free software shouldn’t depend on Mono or C#“. This obviously got a big slashdot following at http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/06/27/1759255/Richard-Stallman-Says-No-To-Mono. While I understand his sentiments I dont believe that his thoughts on Microsoft pulling C# support using patents is any more of a threat than any other language (aka everything has patent exposure – its not language specific). Actually I’ve been very impressed with Microsoft recently on their move towards interoperability and their more open support of open systems. Adding fanning the flames was this Here we go again – why Mono doesn’t suck. Ah I had forgotten about the joys of how much can be written about a emotive topic in such a short period of time 
Gareth