[Mono-list] Suitability of Mono

[Mike Christensen]

Sorry, I wasn't clear.  I meant Novell "donating" the ownership of the
code base to Xamarin so they could continue developing the for-profit
product.  Or like selling them the rights for a dollar or something.

On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 2:36 AM, Stifu <stifu at free.fr> wrote:
> 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 &lt;malcolm.justin at gmail.com&gt;
>> 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
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>
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