Success Quote by Nat Friedman

That sentence is corporate diplomacy with a defensive edge: a promise of technical independence framed as customer reassurance. Nat Friedman isn’t arguing about runtimes in the abstract; he’s calming developers who feel trapped by a shifting vendor landscape. “We’re not going to make” signals agency and restraint, an attempt to project stewardship rather than opportunism. “Depend on Mono” is the red flag he’s waving away: lock-in, platform uncertainty, and the fear that a core tool (Evolution, the GNOME groupware client) could be yanked into a compatibility gamble.

The subtext is all about trust. Mono, as an open-source implementation of Microsoft’s .NET, carried baggage in the mid-2000s: worries about patents, about Microsoft changing terms, about the Linux desktop inheriting someone else’s strategic leverage. Friedman’s phrasing does two things at once. It validates the community’s anxiety without fully endorsing it, and it keeps the door open. The hedge words - “anytime in the near future” - are doing real work. They imply a present commitment, not a moral stance. This isn’t “we won’t”; it’s “we won’t yet.”

Contextually, it’s also a subtle pitch for credibility from a Linux business leader trying to balance innovation with pragmatism. By naming Mono explicitly, he signals he understands the political weather of open source: technical choices aren’t just engineering decisions, they’re governance decisions. The quote works because it speaks fluent developer: compatibility matters, but sovereignty matters more.