Very much the first point here. Microsoft needs to stop trying to lock me in to their stack at every point and turn. Currently, if I want to use some Microsoft

Very much the first point here. Microsoft needs to stop trying to lock me in to their stack at every point and turn. Currently, if I want to use some Microsoft technology i'm forced in to the rest of the ecosystem and that's a hurdle that i'll likely never jump unless there is simply no other option. In some respects, Microsoft is already at a disadvantage over Free and Open Source technology when starting new projects without legacy issues, just from the simplification of licensing and the supplier diversification. To add extra barriers, such as having to take on larger and larger parts of the Microsoft ecosystem to get the best out of one component just makes things worse. Positive first step would be once and for all unequivocally clear up any IP issues surrounding both Mono and their library reimplementations to silence any critics. Second would be bringing Mono in to the .NET ecosystem as a first class citizen. I like C# and .NET but i'm highly unlikely to use it unless I have some real choices for deploying it. From what i've seen from Mono, it's an impressive project but not yet on par with Hotspot and the CLR. On a site note, there have been some positive steps. The move to Apache 2.0 licensing on several recent contributions is a positive step and helps prevent more license proliferation. Essentially, I want Microsoft to compete for my business with technology that I can deploy without the worry that i'm perennially locked in to one ecosystem and one vendor.