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Miguel De Icaza Forms New Mono Company: Xamarin

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the if-at-first-you-don't-succeed dept.

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."

5 of 286 comments (clear)

  1. Who didn't see this coming? by Barbara,+not+Barbie · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Q. Who didn't see this coming?
    A. Miguel.

    "Xamarin" - because "Ximian" was already taken.

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    Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
  2. Good news? by nicholas22 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This brings on the specter of legal action by Attachmate. While there has always been the thought that Mono could be sued by Microsoft, such as lawsuit would require Microsoft convincing a court that it was “just kidding” and the CLR/C# patent covenants are non-binding. Between their obligations to the ECMA standards body and the legal principal of equitable estoppel, the chance of this happening is slim to none. Attachmate is a completely different story. Even if they aren’t supporting it, they do own a product that is in direct competition with Xamarin’s future offerings. Without some sort of legal arrangement between Attachmate and Xamarin, the latter would face the daunting prospect of proving that their new development doesn’t use any the technology that the old one did. As a result of this, as well as the general uncertainty of any new product, some developers on the mono-android mailing list are stating that they are moving back to Java development for now. Source: http://www.infoq.com/news/2011/05/Mono-II

  3. Re:I don't get it by nicholas22 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Java isn't native to Linux. But I get what you were trying to say.

  4. It's open core- not free software, not open source by ciaran_o_riordan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    From TFM:

    The new versions of .NET for the iPhone and Android will be source compatible with MonoTouch and Mono for Android. Like those versions, they will be commercial products, built on top of the open core Mono.

    "open core" is not free software, and it's not open source.

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  5. Re:I wonder if Apple would allow it... by kervin · · Score: 4, Interesting

    More likely because DOJ was beginning to probe on the behalf of Adobe.