The main goal of Mono is not to create a duplicate of the Widnwos .NET development environment on Linux to allow cross-platform dev. That is, and has has only ever been, a bonus extra.

The main reson for Mono is to provide a modern, easy development environment for Linux/Unix desktop and web applications. Everything else is secondary. This is why MonoDevelop is based on GTK# and not Windows Forms. This dev stack is based on the ECMA spec for .NET and C# and is therefore a public standard that is free of Microsoft license fees.

Miguel has stated this over and over. It's as though most of the commentators on .NET has a huge blind spot when it comes to this. As soon as Miguel says "This is what Mono is realy for..." they go deaf all of a sudden.

Simon Hibbs