People often wonder why so many Linux purists are against any use of Mono and Novell for promoting it as an open source answer to Microsoft’s .NET. If you read through this article very closely, you will instantly understand just how insidious Mono “could” be.
Some people fear that including or embracing Mono within the Linux community may lead to Microsoft controlling aspects of Linux application development, through Novell’s efforts.
Speaking for myself, I refused to give either party that much credit. I think that it is true, that there are aspects of Mono used with desktop Linux that is a concern. But at the same time, so long as it is a choice to include or not include it with specific distros, I do not think it will lead to anything too terrible. Besides, applications built with GTK and Mono such as Banshee are not bad to use whatsoever. Actually, I rather enjoy it myself.