[bunderbunder]

As a certain lawsuit is illustrating, C#/.NET is much less coupled to MS than Java is to Oracle. Oracle is suing Google for creating an implementation of Java without their blessing, a clear indication that they believe they own and control the platform. By contrast, Microsoft has issued a legally-binding pledge not to sue people for creating their own implementations, and published the platform's spec as an open standard.

Mono admittedly lags a bit behind Microsoft's implementation of the platform, but that's mostly a question of resources. If Mono had been embraced by the open source community the way Java has been (as it should - see previous paragraph), then that wouldn't quite be the case.

Though not by much, and not in all respects. That crew is doing some really great stuff.