[Mono-list] Suitability of Mono

[Stifu]

Guys, it's "Xamarin", not "Xamian". :p
You are mixing Xamarin with Ximian (company founded by Miguel and bought by
Novell). Although the Xamarin name was probably chosen because it sounded
similar.

"2) Attachmate open-sources the whole thing (if they're nice)"

About this, it may be nice to users, but if given away for free, would
prevent Xamarin from making money from these products (which might prevent
the company from being profitable?). It just doesn't sound likely at all,
anyway. Attachmate would have nothing to gain in doing that, and possibly
the opposite: customers bitching about how they paid for a product that
turned free a little while later.


Mike Christensen-2 wrote:
> 
> On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 5:25 PM, jmalcolm <malcolm.justin at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Mike Christensen-2 wrote:
>>>
>>> Are the iOS and Android Mono Frameworks that Xamarin is creating a
>>> totally different code-base from MonoTouch and MonoDroid?  What has
>>> become of the formerly Novell owned MonoTouch/Droid products?  Are
>>> those just being scrapped completely?
>>>
>>> If these are going to be totally new products, will they be designed
>>> similar to the Novell products (eg, will it be easy to port from the
>>> Novell platform)..
>>>
>>
>> Attachmate owns MonoTouch and Mono for Android. We do not know what they
>> plan to do with them (but they have no Mono team now). I doubt they will
>> just hand them over to Xamarin. Time will tell.
>>
>> Xamarin has said that they will create new versions of these products
>> with
>> something appearing in 3-4 months. So, I would expect perhaps six months
>> for
>> a real product. According to Miguel, the Xamarin products will be API
>> compatible which just makes sense.
>>
>> Basically, you can use the Attachmate stuff today with the intent to
>> replace
>> it with Xamarin products when they are ready.
>>
>> It is a little unclear to me what Xamarin needs to re-write and what they
>> do
>> not. For example, a good chunk of MonoTouch was common with MonoMac
>> (which
>> is open source). All this common code is available on GitHub as the
>> MacCore
>> project under the MIT/X11 license. I see no reason why Xamarin could not
>> use
>> it.
>>
>> I think a big part of the engineering effort for MonoTouch was the full
>> AOT
>> (Ahead of Time) compilation and the selective linker. Most of that is in
>> Mono proper I imagine and so should also be available to Xamarin. The
>> LLVM
>> integration to optimize the native code on iOS is also out in the open.
>>
>> A lot of the changes would be in MonoDevelop as well, which is also Open
>> Source. I would think much of the work to support XCode4 integration
>> would
>> be in the IDE for example. Work to support intellisense for MonoTouch and
>> Mono for Android would largely be in the IDE as well. Code to integrate
>> the
>> device simulators would be too. Basically, every time I think about it, I
>> think of more stuff they could use. There is also all the Sliverlight on
>> Android stuff they were doing...
>>
>> Anyway, the point is that Xamarin cannot just use MonoTouch or Mono for
>> Android but, despite this, they probably do not really need to write
>> those
>> products fully from scratch either. It must sure help to have all the
>> knowledge required and the ability to just use the fully designed API on
>> each platform.
> 
> Great info!  Thanks..
> 
> As far as what becomes of MonoTouch (though it seems like most of the
> /real/ work is part of the open source dependencies) is up to
> Attachmate..  However, I could see three possible scenarios:
> 
> 1) Attachmate just abandons the MonoTouch code (if they're mean)
> 2) Attachmate open-sources the whole thing (if they're nice)
> 3) Attachmate sells the IP to Xamian for cheap (if such a deal could
> be worked out)..
> 
> I'm very glad to see the Mono guys are still all together - starting a
> new company was an awesome idea, I'm definitely a bit jealous..  If I
> had some money I'd want to help fund this effort..
> 
> Mike
> _______________________________________________
> Mono-list maillist  -  Mono-list at lists.ximian.com
> http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/mono-list
> 


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