Our strategy in dealing with patents in Mono is the same strategy that any other software developer would take. In the event of a patent claim, we will try to find prior art to the claim of the patent.

The software patent problem is not limited to Mono. Software patents affect everyone writing software today.

After releasing Mono 1.0, we started work on a new edition of Mono that will be released later in the year.

In addition to that, Mono has produced a very large set of extra libraries.

With the rise of software patents, engineers coding new stuff - whether within a large software company or as kids writing smartphone apps - are exposed to a claim that somewhere a prior patent is being infringed.

Fighting patents one by one will never eliminate the danger of software patents, any more than swatting mosquitoes will eliminate malaria.