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Attachmate Does the Right Thing For Mono

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the being-good-is-good dept.

mikejuk writes "Attachmate, who recently decided to dump the Mono development team, has done the right thing in allowing Miguel de Icaza's new company, Xamarin, a perpetual license to all the intellectual property of Mono, MonoTouch, Mono for Android and Mono for Visual Studio. This allows them to continue to develop and sell the products. Of course this income might just give them the time needed to support the software, which is a good thing, as Attachmate has also handed over the support for all existing customers to Xamarin."

4 of 100 comments (clear)

  1. Yes, it WAS the right thing. by mswhippingboy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Whether or not you think Mono has value, granting a perpetual license to it to someone who will do something with it was the right thing to do. Allowing a particular technology to be continued rather than just sitting on it because they have no use for it should be applauded. I only wish IBM had done this with OS/2 many years ago. Who knows what would have become of it.

    --
    Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
    1. Re:Yes, it WAS the right thing. by mswhippingboy · · Score: 4, Informative

      When Microsoft released Windows 95 at nearly the same time, they did what apple does now. Show the product, show them how to use it, make it seem so much easier then before and what the other guys do. So when people got windows 95 they knew what it was and what it was going to do.

      No, OS/2 was superior to Win95 in nearly every way at the time. The reason for OS/2 demise had little to nothing to do with technology, but a combination of the "somewhat questionable" tactics MS used to force PC vendors to pre-install Win95 on every box shipped, and the ineptness of IBM's marketing.

      --
      Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
  2. You know what would have been cool? by MikeRT · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If Palm did this with BeOS back about 5-6 years ago. BeOS didn't really compete with them. It did, however, compete with their biggest contemporary competitor and one of their future competitors that they should have seen would soon be a major rival. Had Palm given Haiku developers the same deal with BeOS, it would have been as disruptive for Microsoft and Apple as if a little enemy state were to hit the US with a high altitude EMP on a weekday.

  3. Good Will by DeeEff · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Not something you see often nowadays, what with patents and copyrights being thrown back and forth in endless litigation and cutthroat corporate espionage.

    That said, these guys are pretty awesome for doing that. In a way it lets us know they actually care about the improvement of the industry, even if they couldn't support Mono themselves. Round of applause ol' gents.