Mono to be renamed as Duo

By Sam Varghese
Monday, 31 March 2008 19:51

Opinion and Analysis

The well-known open-source Microsoft imitation Mono has been renamed Duo to better reflect the project's intentions and purposes.
This was announced today by Mono founder and chief architect Miguel de Icaza at a sparsely attended media conference held in the Madagascar capital, Antananarivo. The sparse attendance was not surprising given that only journalists friendly to the project were invited and reports from the Madagascar news agency (Moona) say that there were just three and a half.

Mr de Icaza told those assembled that he had always had a dual purpose in starting the project - to provide an implementation of Microsoft's .NET development framework so that Linux developers could enjoy the wonderful programming tools built in Redmond and also to ensure that in future Linux became so integrated with Microsoft that it would not be possible to pull the two apart.

"We have always had a dual purpose and hence naming the project Mono seems a bit disingenuous now, even to me," he said. "Calling it Duo will get lots of critics off my back as well, people who are always gnawing at me and asking what my hidden agenda is.

"The word Mono means monkey in Spanish and we initially thought it was an excellent name because what we are up to could aptly be described as monkey business.

"But then, no developers are actually going ape over the project. So the name seems a bit out of place. Hence after some consideration, Nat (Friedman) and I have decided that we want a change of name. The nomenclature will change from today and anyone using the old name will be sued by SCO which has bought it from us."

Asked what price SCO had paid for the Mono name, Mr de Icaza chuckled as he said, in an aside, "haven't they paid a high price already for questioning something which they could legitimately question?"

He then thought the better of that statement and quickly said, "our lawyers are in discussion with those legal people still left in the SCO ranks and we will make an announcement soon, provided that these details are not deemed to be commercial in-confidence."

The media conference concluded with the ritual drinking of coconut water, after which those assembled generally went nuts and hurled their glasses at Mr de Icaza's chair. But he had already disappeared and was busy answering penetrating questions put to him by Microsoft's Channel 9.