IBM Getting Mono?

For a couple of years now, I’ve been discussing the subject of Mono within major software vendors in an attempt to get them to actively consider it – here‘s one mention of just such an instance. But with just a few exceptions, these conversations went nowhere – and a couple got downright ugly.

Thus it was with interest that I learned of the news via Erik that IBM (looks like STG rather than SWG) is partnering with Mainsoft to port .NET applications to JEE land using in part…you guessed it, Mono. I don’t think I can take any credit for that move, but it’s interesting to see nonetheless.

As an aside, I’ve also found it interesting that the last two IBM demos of products running on desktop Linux I’ve seen were on OSs (SuSE, presumably) using KDE rather than GNOME. Not reading too much into that, but it’s interesting, given that much of the alternative corporate desktop support – Novell(partially), Red Hat, Sun, etc – is in GNOME.

But anyway, I’ll have to follow up with these folks to see what prompted the about face on Mono, because last time I checked that was a non-starter with the folks from Big Blue. Of course, that was true of PHP at one point as well, so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.

For those that are curious, yes, I’m still convinced that Microsoft should officially ok – not support, just ok – the Mono project. Here’s why.