Miguel De Icaza Forms New Mono Company: Xamarin 286
rubycodez writes "After being thrown out on the streets by Attachmate, the purchasers of Novell, Miguel De Icaza has formed a new company Xamarin to make .NET development tools for Android and iOS. The company will also provide commercial international Mono support. There are those who would say Mono poses a risk of drawing Microsoft patent or other IP litigation for its inclusion in some major Linux distributions, and that these recent events might be the beginning of the demise of widespread use of Mono and other .NETiness in open source software, a good thing."
The cross-platform .NET? (Score:5, Insightful)
They failed in their first attempt at making Mono a ubiquitous development platform by keeping their mobile ports behind a paywall. Now they lost access to those proprietary parts and decided to start again, in exactly the same fashion... brilliant.
There are those who would say... (Score:5, Insightful)
...that the submitter should just state his opinion rather than hiding behind weasel words.
Re:I wonder if Apple would allow it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't Apple have a prohibition of using a framework other than Objective C for their iOS apps?
Apple has since rescinded this provision, apparently because it was causing Apple to lose money as games and other popular iOS apps that use internal scripting engines were getting kicked off the App Store.
from the point of view of getting things done (Score:4, Insightful)
it's not a good thing that Mono should go away
it is a good thing from the point of view of ideology, however
but as a working programmer, i like getting things done. to hell with the ideologues
Surely... (Score:5, Insightful)
Surely thats a matter of opinion?
I don't get it (Score:2, Insightful)
Obsession (Score:2, Insightful)
Miguel's obsession with creating an open source version of .NET borders on mono-mania [wikipedia.org].
Re:Surely... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not a "Good Thing" (Score:5, Insightful)
it's just a platform (Score:4, Insightful)
Ok, everybody. Two things: (Score:4, Insightful)
1st of all:
Quit picking on Miguel. You may not share the same opinion as he on bigger issues, as do I, but treating him the way the majority here does is primitive. He deserves all respect and professional merit you can give. Unless you are Linus Torwalds, RMS or someone other of the rare few on which who's work his work is based on, you are not entitled to picking a fight with him or destructively ragging about his decisions and/or motives. The others actually aren't either, but at least they have a track record to back up their ego.
He's done considerable contributions to the cause of FOSS, more than most of humanity anyway and way more than anybody of the wannabees here on slashdot could ever dream of accomplishing, so suck up any stupid and/or ignorant and/or snide remarks you may have ready and just STFU. Thanks.
2nd: Mono may be a controversy in broader issues, but that's not to say it's not a good project. As for the product itself and products based of it: I know at least one that is a game changer and a major leap forward in its industry, that is based entirely on Mono and wouldn't be possible without it ( http://www.unity3d.com/ [unity3d.com] ). Cudos to Miguel and the Mono team for making it possible. I know for sure that the other large x-plattform around, Java, would have been beyond pointless as a foundation for realising this and would have failed miserably. Mono and Monodevelop are cool cross-plattform toolkits, and as far as I can tell they get the job done.
Who can say that about their pet FOSS project?
Re:The cross-platform .NET? (Score:4, Insightful)
shouldn't it be called Duo (Score:4, Insightful)
That reminds me, Miguel already has a dual personality with his proclaimed love of open source yet his constant admiration for everything made by Microsoft.
LoB
Re:The cross-platform .NET? (Score:4, Insightful)
Some of it's probably personal preference -- I'd personally rather use almost anything than Eclipse, though I know a lot of people love it. (For me, at its best, it's a pair of left-handed scissors and I'm right handed, and I don't get a lot of 'best' days.)
Some of it might be the versatility of the .NET framework with respect to language -- for example, if you prefer writing Python to Java, in theory in the .NET world you could just switch over to writing in IronPython instead of C# and call it a day, and either way it becomes .NET bytecode.
Some of it might just be a desire for competition. For several years Java was the de facto standard for solving a lot of kinds of problems -- for example, writing custom apps for businesses. That having happened, Java as a language really stagnated in a bad way. It wasn't until C# surpassed Java (in terms of features) that Java really got going and was driven to improve again. In that sense, even if you prefer Java or something else to .NET, having .NET around will probably spur it to be better.
Re:Surely... (Score:4, Insightful)
First of all, it's not a "vague" connection between .NET and Microsoft, they created and own the platform FFS. The connection is as explicit as can be.
Second, Microsoft has proven time and time again that given half a chance will fuck over anything and anybody that stands in their way. And has never stopped trying to take out FOSS, GPL, Linux, open standards and, again, pretty much anything they see as threatening their cosy monopolies. As we speak they're mounting another covert attack on Linux using software patents.
Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. Trust Microsoft? Sorry, never again.
Re:Who didn't see this coming? (Score:4, Insightful)
Ximian was a company founded by Miguel in 1999.
And also, what has this got to do with Miguel "not seeing this coming"? The thing people were beating him over the head with was the theory that Microsoft would step in and sue people left, right and centre. This isn't that, this is Mono's supporting company failing of its own accord, it has nothing to do with the viability of Mono.
Re:Surely... (Score:3, Insightful)
People's lack of trust in Microsoft's behaviour is not some paranoid delusion but the result of years of experience of watching them misbehave. How do you know that Microsoft won't try to say that Mono violates their patents? They've already said that Linux does, but in the case of Mono they may well be able to prove it. I work in C# .NET and I really enjoy my job but I wouldn't trust Microsoft not to shit on a competitor. Even a brief look at their long and chequered legal history would show that.