(and I'm not being narky. This is the point I'm making; it's only superficially free. Then you have to say, ship a game, and woa~ wait, it has to be GPL now if you bundle the runtime, or you have to pay a licensing fee?)
"When do I need to obtain a license from Xamarin to the Mono Runtime?
We only require licensing for uses of Mono and Moonlight on embedded systems, or systems where you are unable to fulfill the obligations of the GNU LGPL.
For example, if you manufacture a device where the end user is not able to do an upgrade of the Mono virtual machine or the Moonlight runtime from the source code, you will need a commercial license of Mono and Moonlight.
Or if you ship an application that requires to statically link the Mono runtime and you are not able to provide the object code to relink Mono, you must obtain a commercial license from Xamarin."
You can bundle as much as you want, as long as you adhere to the rules.
Yeah, on a locked down mobile platform this is all true, but on the desktop the quote I pasted suggests you actually can use Mono for free.
To most users of Unreal Engine, mobile games aren't really a priority, though I understand Unreal wants to change this.
The problem in the mobile case is not that Mono isn't free; it's that the licence isn't permissive enough.
That mobile platforms and GPL-style licenses don't play well together is nothing new, and I think it's misleading to call Mono "not free" just because the restriction of the Apple App Store and iOS don't allow you to use it there.
The fact is the runtime and libraries are MIT and LGPL. Your statement that your game has to be GPL if you use them is totally wrong. Least of all, because the GPL is neither of those two licenses, but most importantly, those licenses allow you to release a game under a license that's not even MIT or the LGPL, because that's the nature of those two licenses.
Unity is required to pay a custom license because they didn't want to accept the terms that are available to everyone. (I almost wrote "everyone else" there, but that would have been wrong because the terms were available even to Unity.)
Doesn't look free to me.
(and I'm not being narky. This is the point I'm making; it's only superficially free. Then you have to say, ship a game, and woa~ wait, it has to be GPL now if you bundle the runtime, or you have to pay a licensing fee?)