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Miguel De Icaza Forms New Mono Company: Xamarin
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."
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.
A. Miguel.
"Xamarin" - because "Ximian" was already taken.
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
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
Doesn't Apple have a prohibition of using a framework other than Objective C for their iOS apps? I know some tools get around this by making Objective C source code.
...that the submitter should just state his opinion rather than hiding behind weasel words.
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
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Surely thats a matter of opinion?
Java isn't native to Linux. But I get what you were trying to say.
From TFM:
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
Most companies won't touch it...if they're running on Linux, they're going to go with a language that's native to the platform, like Java.
What maks JAVA any more "natively" Linux than .NET or Mono?
and in many ways immune to patent litigation (although possibly not DMCA reverse engineering litigation -- I've heard that folks thought that was a possibility at one time)
Reverse engineering for the express purpose of interoperability is not grounds for a DMCA suit according to 17 USC 1201(f). Say what you want about Universal v. Reimerdes, but I'd bet it would have gone down much differently if DVD Jon had waited until Linux had stable UDF support before releasing DeCSS.
It is not a "good thing" to have Mono or .NET interoperability taken out of reach of Linux users. Interoperability layers such as Mono allow Linux systems to participate in networks that are dominated by Windows and other commercial systems. If it weren't for software like this, Linux systems may not be invited into some corporate networks, and would not get a seat at the table.
The idea of a "pure" linux or no linux is going to continue having linux sitting out in the cold all by itself. Interoperability is crucial.
If anything, we need more software like Mono, not less.
Seriously, isn't it a little juvenile to rally against a software platform just because it's based on something created by a company you don't like? And isn't it hypocritical to bolster Java when it's supported by Oracle, which has a reputation for destroying everything it touches?
That company would be best advised to bite the bullet and implement it 3 times...using the correct and supported languages for the targeted platform
Then what method do you recommend for ensuring that a program written in Objective-C, a program written in Java, and a program written in C# do exactly the same thing in all circumstances? Which N-version programming tools do you recommend?
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/ ). 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?
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Since Attachmate didn't sell Mono to this Xamerin group are there not two versions of Mono? That would then be a Duo. Because two Mono's don't make it right.
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
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
The bits that make sense in cross platform systems have been done: http://www.mono-project.com/Compatibility
Those that are missing currently (almost entirely limited to entity framework and workflow) have open source alternatives already available (EG NHibernate for EF).
In terms of release cycles it varies fairly wildly. Mono actually was at release for several parts of Framework 4 before Microsoft had their version out of the door, Microsoft tend to be fairly verbose with the roadmap and also put out a great deal of CTP’s targeting small sections of functionality which allows downstream projects to stay on top of what’s coming,
And like you noted, .NET apps or games can be written in many different languages. He seems to like Python
I was under the impression that IronPython and other DLR languages required System.Reflection.Emit, which was not present in the subset of the .NET Framework supported by Xbox 360 and Windows Phone 7 last time I checked.
All the languages can also use the huge library of code and API's.
The libraries also have to be written in pure .NET code, unlike in Python where it's common to package a C++ library as a module.
Otherwise, there is no way I'm going to use a second class dev environment on my first choice platform. Here is a list of the top grossing games on Android
Does an Android-powered device capable of running apps come in a set-top form factor? I haven't seen one. If not, then Xbox 360 is pretty much the only platform for indie console games, and any such game needs to be written in .NET so that it can run in the XNA environment.
Can someone tell me who uses Mono "commercially"?
If it's under the GPL and LGPL, it's going to be a rough case Attachmate would be making, considering that it's open licensed and they just kicked the team to the curb.
The FOSS code is not a concern here.
The issue is the proprietary code that Miguel et al worked on in Novell, the Android and iPhone runtimes. That is owned by Attachmate now, and this new startup contains exactly the same coders, who are intentionally going to write the exact same product from scratch - they will be 100% "source compatible" with the old runtimes.
So legalities are a reasonable concern. Even if no code is copied, the same people writing the same product - immediately after writing it the first time - may lead to basically the same code being written. It might be hard to prove no code was copied even if none was. Lawsuits are filed for much less.
Of course, this only matters if Xamarin is a big success - no one sues a failure. Time will tell.