[Mono-dev] Mono for Symbian

[Miguel de Icaza]

Hey,

> > Yes, but that is a proprietary platform that people cant get.
> 
> Point taken, but it is (a variant of) Mono on Symbian. If proof was ever
> needed that it can work, this would be an exemplar. 

I agree, yes.   So basically it is possible to do so.

We have some experience from a few people that have done experimental
ports of Mono to some proprietary embedded operating systems in the
past, so we figured it was not impossible to do.

> > Yes, but unlike Mainsoft who is an active contributor to the community
> > and share their bug fixes with us and are an integral part of the Mono
> > community the Red Five folks have not participated or contributed back
> > to Mono.
> 
> That's their choice (or maybe their VC's choice...), but I share your
> view on feeding back to the community. FWIW, I think it would love to
> help out on a Mono port for resource-constrained devices, be that on
> embedded Linux, Symbian or Windows CE (the world I'm most familiar
> with). 

Yes, it is one of the downsides of an X11-licensed codebase.   That
people do not have a compelling reason to contribute back any fixes or
improvements.   It takes community work to ensure that everyone is on
the same page and continues to contribute (in the way and spirit that
Mainsoft has done).

It is possible that their code could not be incorporated, or their
changes could not be brought over, but I suspect that they have run into
bugs and those fixes never made them back.

As for embedded devices, we are working on a linker tool right now that
would reduce assemblies to the minimal set required or to match a
predefined profile (this is what we are going to use for our Silverlight
implementation).

We will also be buliding a "baker" tool, so those users using
Silverlight (or Compact Framework) could pull code from Mono for use on
their applications (something that we might be able to work together
with OpenNetCF, although I believe you guys have a non open source
license for your code, is that still the case?)