n the following video, Miguel de Icaza explains Mono. The video is from 2004. He mentions nothing about software patents and he sure praises the technology and assumes that being an ECMA standard is somewhat an indication of being 'safe'. It's not.
Fact #1: over time slop gets worse (training set is like some blurry JPEG). Fact #2: People's "smell" for slop improves over time, as they 'train' on slop and can detect it based on prior encounters. Put 1 and 2 together.
Richard Stallman's seminal manifesto and foundational (practical) work on GNU gave us a very solid system that facilitates productive work without concerns over spyware