Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Makes Xamarin Free In Visual Studio, Will Open Source Core Xamarin Tech (venturebeat.com)
An anonymous reader cites a report on VentureBeat: Microsoft today announced that Xamarin is now available for free for every Visual Studio user. This includes all editions of Visual Studio, including the free Visual Studio Community Edition, Visual Studio Professional, and Visual Studio Enterprise. Furthermore, Xamarin Studio for OS X is being made available for free as a community edition and Visual Studio Enterprise subscribers will get access to Xamarin's enterprise capabilities at no additional cost. The company also promised to open source Xamarin's SDK, including its runtime, libraries, and command line tools, as part of the .NET Foundation 'in the coming months.' Plenty of developers will find this announcement exciting. Xamarin being free is a big deal.
What is Xamarin? Why should I care about it?
meanwhile a long list of genuinely interesting stories submitted by well-meaning members fall by the wayside.
Such as?
Believe it or not, many here do work in the Microsoft "ecosystem" and so are interested in these things. Also, the non-Microsoft stories far out number the Microsoft stories.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
There are loads of MS stories on the web, but this suddenly massive quantity of MS stories here on Slashdot is getting in the way of some really interesting geek stories that are not being allowed through for whatever reason. If you love MS stories, there are sites that cater directly to that, but if you want an all-around great geekish-story site you might hopefully continue to get that here at Slashdot if some adjustments can be made by the editors. Further, if there is any sort of policy or agenda to greenlight each and every MS story I hope that honesty will prevail and the truth will be clearly spelled out. If there is no such thing, I hope it will be equally clarified.
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
Drink from the Firehose on a regular basis. It is good for seeing some otherwise-buried material. In the last 2 days of this MS PR onslaught there are quite a few interesting stories that got dumped. Too bad.
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
There's already a beta out for it. Do you know what "vaporware" actually is?
Xamarin being free is a big deal.
What was it licensed under before? People paid money for it?
Before, the free tier was limited to pure-CLR, with no calls to Java (on Android) or native code (on any mobile platform). This prevented me from making use of it. Now, I can't find any explanation of exactly how the license and right-to-use has changed. Anyone got any details?
It is almost like they have their developer conference going on or something. This site is fucking stupid. Bitch about MS for almost two decades - then they about fave and start open sourcing massive quantities of products and getting software to run on Linux, bitch more.
I think so, as a long time C# dev, I was stuck to use Xamarin to port my code to other os. Now have it for free, built-in my dev environment it just get better.
Actually, there's a production version. It's currently not free, hence the news.
WTF is a Xamarin?
I am bitching about the ratio of MS PR stories to Firehose submissions having been massively skewed in the last couple of days. I identified that the dev conference is the basic cause, so we agree on that point. THAT's my issue. It is annoying to me, so I bitch about it. I get modded down, I get up again.
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
Microsoft's web page for it doesn't tell either.
There must be a reason Microsoft refuses to admit what it is.
It's interesting that they are afraid to describe this product. They must be ashamed of it.
Fr M looking at Microsoft's webpage, I don't think they know either.
I am bitching about the ratio of MS PR stories to Firehose submissions having been massively skewed in the last couple of days
Kindly actually calculate this obscene ration you are talking about? I'll be it's not anywhere near what you perceive, you are just overly sensitive to MS stories because of your bias. I'll bet that the facts will show an amazing small number of MS stories given their market share in the tech world.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Because their marketing department is completely clueless.
Is there anything they make that they shouldn't be ashamed of?
Microsoft is a 800 lb gorilla still. When they make a large, sweeping move that affects the world of developers, it will be covered. If Oracle was to offer a free version of their SQL database that was fairly full featured but limited in memory like SQL express, it would be all over the news. But aside from Apple, Google and Amazon, very few companies can make changes that affect as many people as they do, and you certainly don't see successful tools become free or get ported to other operating systems that were always (and still are) in the competing column.
...but they also matter quite a bit to us some of us..
Microsoft's announcements are not normal announcements. There's a few other big companies that could do things that generate this much press but quite honestly very few of them have as much impact as what Microsoft does. The motto of this website is "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters". It certainly fits the first bill, and for a vast majority of us who deal with the microsoft ecosystem on a daily basis (and sometimes even enjoy certain products) the moves that they have made are not only news...
However these same people do not usually complain about the release of yet another point patch for Ubuntu, or the release of a new flavor of tool. Those that do operate under the microsoft umbrella increasingly embrace other tools as well, and while we might not click and read all of the stories we don't begrudge the fact that they are here.
Funny how when someone sees a news story that they disagree with it suddenly becomes "PR" or "An Ad."
"Science is the power of man"
Ars Technica has a really great article about Amazon expanding their Dash buttons to cover Red Bull, Starbucks, Trojan condoms and your mom.
Frankly, I'm surprised /. hasn't got that story up as well.
It's a bloated and slow text editor.
This. They can't even explain what this damn thing does.
Visual Studio was pretty good at version 6, after that it went downhill.
So ... the front page is the wayside?
"Old man yells at systemd"
WTF is a Xamarin?
www.xamarin.com
Though the 'actors' or whatever, they show in the photo look like typical douches of what marketing-types think developers look like now.
What are you smoking? VS wasn't even usable until .NET.
What the hell is Xamarin?
Hmm, that's a good question, too bad the article doesn't give any indication...
What, what's this text on the top of the second image in the article?
Build C# apps on Android, iOS, Windows, and Mac with Xamarin.
Geeze, it's like no one has any reading comprehension any more...
My sig can beat up your sig.
Amidst all these complaints by Freshly Exhumed is the single, underlying one: Freshly Exhumed is afraid of Microsoft and hates that some developers find their offerings compelling.
If you have to ask, you should first look it up, then ask an informed question
One of the reasons why I come here is to be exposed to tech that I haven't seen before. See something that you're not familiar with? Look it up!
Especially for this topic - "Xamarin", just by itself, is an extremely unique search term thus enabling you to self-educate with almost no effort. And today the whole Xamarin+VS is at the top of any search results for either.
Slashdot is "news for nerds", not "news for people who kinda like plunking around on their computers in between their online first-person shooter games but don't really want to have to, y'know, think about this stuff"
Microsoft has a developer conference whose announcements are more directly related to the primary purpose of this site than 90% of the other posts. It happens once a year.
Don't worry, we will get back to your typical unrelated crap posts soon enough, and you'll be happy for the next 362 days.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Believe it or not, many here do work in the Microsoft "ecosystem" and so are interested in these things. Also, the non-Microsoft stories far out number the Microsoft stories.
Dude VS 2015 is the most multiplatform version ever. No I am not paid by MS.
After Gates and Balmer, MS has made Android SDK and emulators, ported Clang to Windows, added GIT and git hub, adding Mac OSX and Linux to VS online, added support for making Xaramin and mono apps, made CentOS and Ubuntu virtual machines for Azure, open sourced and ported Powershell to Linux, made MS code editor and ported it to Linux and MacOSX, open sourced their .NET compiler and frameworks, made VS 2015 for free aka community edition which is not crippled!
Oh and ubuntu is going to run with bash on Windows 10 with apt-get. Oh and SQL Server is on Linux now too!
No folks you did not misread what I wrote.
Linux FOSS is not an OS but a religion for many on here. If you have strong blinders on how is anyone different from a creationist denying evolution?
I am not paid or a troll but if I had to choose between Oracle and MS, I would pick MS in 2015. Something unthinkable in 2001 when I too believed in the theology of free software liberation and wanted MS to die. But, like IBM things changed with competition and I grew up too.
MS may not have historically made the best operating systems. But, their business software is very strong. I see Visual Studio as being more open and better in recent releases
http://saveie6.com/
What's with all these Apple stories during WWDC?
What's with all these Google stories during I/O?
Too bad micros~1 is entirely suit-centric, not nerd-centric, and except for being the biggest bully on the block, they never really mattered, and they still don't.
So your assertions ([citation needed]) say that slashdot has been infested with suit-wearing crud and therefore should cater to code grinders and other bottom feeders. Well, I tentatively agree with the irrelevancy, yes. Whether it should continue down that path, well, maybe not.
Just want to point out that I called Xamarin going free a little while ago: Post Here.
This is great, great news, something I've been really looking forward to. I've known people to make apps in Unity3D because it was cheaper than Xamarin, even though Xamarin is a better product.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
No but drinking from the annual MS BUILD conference is a press worthy IT event and yes they do PR. Get over it as it ends tomorrow anyway.
During LinuxWorld or a Redhat conference you will see ... shock Linux and FOSS stuff.
If the other tech sites like Neowin.net and arstechnica.com get the scope 1st subscribers will go there instead so yes.
FYI if you really hate MS and want to hear no news of it go into your login profile and edit the stories out. VIOLA no MS or Windows news. Slashcode is customizable for the user.
http://saveie6.com/
It's a cross-platform wrapper for Mono (an open-source version of C#/F#/.Net) that compiles to iOS and Android applications. There's a big push in Xamarin to try to make the UI (a) sane for the developer regarding versions and (b) proper native UI interfaces (not HTML5) that conform to the expectations on each device type.
It also exposes the sensors/other phone things. If you like C#/F#/etc. (although not VB.net, cause that's a bad language and only bad people like it) this is a product that used to be in the $1,000+ going free.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Microsoft actually did something good for once. I'm really looking forward to experimenting with this as it used to cost a ridiculous price of thousands of dollars! This may actually open up the windows store and visual studio to more opportunities. Visual Studio is the best environment to program in, by far... JAVA is OK but lacks features and frankly has security issues. C# is by far easier to work with and this may bring it into the mobile revolution. Oh and Microsoft... Please fix the privacy issues with windows 10.... NOW!
WTF is a Xamarin?
www.xamarin.com
Though the 'actors' or whatever, they show in the photo look like typical douches of what marketing-types think developers look like now.
I now know less than I did before.
Cross development mobile development platform. Use C# on Android/IOS.
https://www.lynda.com/Developm...
Except for when Apple has its conference and it's all Apple news (although mostly for consumers, not devs.), and when Google has its conference...
OMG, it's almost like a conspiracy to allocate news stories by what's going on in the world as opposed to ensuring an even ticket punch of issues/topics every day regardless of what's happening.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Oh, bullshit. The ENTIRE SUMMARY is:
I'm not reading TFA to find out WTF TFS is about, the entire purpose of TFS is to know what the hell TFA is about so I can decide if I fucking care.
So, something I've never heard of is now free ... do I give a shit or not? I'm afraid if the poster refuses to tell me what the hell it is, I don't give a damn enough to RTFA.
TFS is there to tell me what TFA is about. The problem is, it utterly fails in that basic task.
Hey, why not just post URLs with no summary, and we'll cut out the middle man entirely?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
So, something I've never heard of is now free ... do I give a shit or not?
If you've never heard of it, and can't be bothered to click a link placed directly in fron of you, then no, you obviously don't give a shit.
Hey, why not just post URLs with no summary, and we'll cut out the middle man entirely?
Counter-point: if you can't be bothered to click a link, why not just repost the full article, then?
The people who are interested in this piece of news already know what Xamarin is, seeing as it's pretty popular amongst cross-platform mobile developers, so it's no more unreasonable to not include a description than it would be to not describe what Android or iOS is. Anyone curious who doesn't already know what it is just has to click the link to find out, and if they can't be bothered to do that, then they just don't want to know.
My sig can beat up your sig.
Hear, hear.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I thought it was a build system. Boy, Microsoft is confused.
As much as I hate Microsoft, this is absolutely fantastic news.
I really wanted to learn Xamarin, but their pricing started at ouchy, and then went batshit ludicrous. (Their 'free' offering was such a joke that I pretend it doesn't even exist).
All the major cross-platform game engines have gone the 'pay us when you make some money' route, but the major application toolkits like Xamarin and QT refused to let go of their expensive subscription models. That means you couldn't just dabble and see what happens, cause if you so much as entertained the notion of putting your application up on an app store (even if it was free), you were required to pay out hefty sums on a monthly basis.
This is a move I've been really hoping someone would make, because now I have a no-risk way to do fully cross-platform development (ie: mobile *and* desktop, not just multiple mobile platforms). WXWidgets appears to have stalled. ObjectPascal/Lazarus looks amazing, but very rough. Phonegap is slick, but it doesn't even try to target desktop.
Meanwhile, writing in good old-fashioned C++ would still require me to learn the boilerplate code for every platform I would want to target.
And now, for the first time ever I have a very compelling reason to learn C#.
Well played, Microsoft. Well played.
and you'll be happy for the next 362 days.
361. You fail to take into account one very special day tomorrow.
Slashdot is a basically sort of a news gathering service. It should tell us what the linked articles are about, otherwise as gstoddart said they might as well just post huge lists of URLs.
Your comment is more informative than both TFS and the Wikipedia page combined.
Thank you.
Okay. Lots of stuff. Now, can I really target all those platforms from a single code base, or is this all just TMI that makes me think I might be able to?
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
What's that, am I supposed to know already? Or is that part of the ploy, to get me to look up the stuff.
> if I had to choose between Oracle and MS, I would pick
It's uncanny how similar that is to the false choice of "if I had to choose between Trump and Cruz, I would pick ..." in both smell and analogy.
You say that like it's a bad thing...
meanwhile a long list of genuinely interesting stories submitted by well-meaning members fall by the wayside.
Where? On the firehose? It's all garbage that nobody even wants to mod up. What story did you submit that you're so butthurt about nobody being interested in?
So because it's Microsoft it's "PR" but if it were Apple or Amazon or any number of other stories in the firehose it would be a genuine story? Your bias is obvious, presently there are 15 stories on the front page, 2 of them are related to Microsoft...get over it. When Apple's conferences are on there are more Apple stories, when Google's conferences are on there are more Google stories. If you don't like them don't read them, if you think you're missing out then go to slashdot.org/firehose.pl
6 was lightyears better than .NET
Of course they are fucking skewed for the last few days. There Dev conference is on and as usual they make a ton of announcements at that conference, many of which are most definitely, news and technology that matters or affects people that work with computers.
like Oracle 11g Express Edition? It is free; however, it is limited.
Moron
Now, can I really target all those platforms from a single code base
Yes.
Ars Technica has a really great article about Amazon expanding their Dash buttons to cover Red Bull, Starbucks, Trojan condoms and your mom.
As far as I can tell with a quick scan, nobody has submitted that as a story to Slashdot. You can see the submissions (and vote for them yourself) at the Firehose, and if you feel that they have missed something then you can submit a story.
It is not some massive conspiracy that they are only accepting Microsoft-related posts. They simply cannot reject a story that you find interesting that hasn't been submitted for consideration by anyone.
> ported Powershell to Linux
What? That's news to me. There's Pash, but that's not from Microsoft, and it's very, very alpha.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
There sure is
http://saveie6.com/
No, but you must be seeing as you missed the quote that provided context for the question.
That's not really what most would consider "Powershell", though, is it?
Karma: Poor (Mostly affected by lame karma-joke sigs)
That's not PowerShell for Linux. It's PowerShell for managing Linux machines from Windows machines. Not the same thing.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
Thanks! It's always nice to feel appreciated!
Your ad here. Ask me how!