[Mono-list] Ximian and Microsoft.

[Miguel de Icaza]

I woke up really late today as I was hacking until 4am last night.
And I found out that everybody was going crazy over some news about
Microsoft helping out Ximian.

The full details of this cooperation are in the FAQ:

http://www.go-mono.com/faq.html#ximian-and-microsoft

For your convenience, here it is:

Q: I read that Microsoft is helping out Ximian, is this true?

A: Initial contact between David Stutz and Miguel de Icaza happened.
   It was a friendly conversation.  Microsoft is interested in other
   implementing .NET and are willing to help make the ECMA spec more
   accurate for this purpose.

   We were initially contacted by Sam Ruby at the ECMA TG3 committee
   to discuss the same issue.  And we are glad to have good contacts
   to ask questions about the specs. 

Q: Do you fear that Microsoft will change the spec and render Mono useless?

A: No.  Microsoft proved with the CLI and the C# language that it was
   possible to create a powerful foundation for many languages to
   interoperate.  We will always have that.  

   Even if changes happened in the platform which were undocumented
   (which is very unlikely), the existing platform has a value on its
   own.

   Miguel once explained its motivation for working on Mono to Dave
   Winer, and his mail got posted <a
   href="http://scriptingnews.userland.com/stories/storyReader$1275">here</a>

Miguel.