[Mono-list] Xamarin 2.0 concern

[Dimitar Dobrev]

Hello, all,

I guess most of you see the announcement of Xamarin 2.0 as good news.
However, I cannot help but feel the opposite. Let me tell you why:

1. At the  Xamarin 2.0 FAQ <http://xamarin.com/xamarin-2.0-faq>   it says:
   Our new product brands are:

    Xamarin.iOS (replaces MonoTouch)
    Xamarin.Android (replaces Mono for Android)
    Xamarin Studio, our new IDE (replaces MonoDevelop)
   
   That is, the name "Mono" is now completely phased out of the Xamarin
product line. At  the Xamarin Studio page <http://xamarin.com/studio>  ,
MonoDevelop, upon which the Studio is based, is not mentioned once! Are you
ashamed of MonoDevelop after you've been offering it to customers for years?
At the  Xamarin main page <http://xamarin.com/>   Mono is mentioned only
once at the very bottom, under the "Community" section - is Mono no longer
part of Xamarin itself?
   I think this is not the beginning but rather the end of a process that
started with the renaming of MonoMac to Xamarin.Mac (and please don't tell
me "MonoMac is our community-supported version" because I haven't heard
about it since). Then was the renaming of YOUR MonoSpace conference to
MonkeySpace and the explanation was really ridiculous - "bigger scope...
open source .NET development in general" (Miguel de Icaza at that very same
"Monkey"Space conference). What bigger scope? .NET runs only on Windows, be
it desktop or phone, while Mono runs on tens of platforms, including
Windows. Yes, I do understand it's about "the scope of the community" but
how broader is that community since the only significant piece of .NET
missing in Mono is WPF?
   Mono is the core of your company, both historically and at present, since
all of your products are based on it. And you are removing its name from
anywhere it's mentioned. I don't see this as justified even for marketing
reasons because if people know about you, it's because of Mono. That is,
"Mono" is your marketing message. If you do reply to this mail, I'd really
like to hear something a little deeper that "The change of our product names
does not mean we are abandoning Mono, we are going to support it just as
before". We all know how this works out: the name is abandoned, time passes,
many current users forget about it, new users do not learn it at all, and
after a little more time the project itself is abandoned. This kind of
tactics reminds me of a very specific company which leads me to:
2.  "Microsoft Joins Xamarin Evolve 2013 as Sole Platinum Sponsor"
<http://blog.xamarin.com/microsoft-joins-xamarin-evolve-2013-as-sole-platinum-sponsor/>  
- I believe Microsoft have proven time and time again that they are enemies
of Mono in particular and of open source in general. I do not want to quote
a large part of the web on that but let me say a few words just about Mono.
   Miguel, you may remember you said "Microsoft as a company are not
open-source-friendly" yourself at FOSDEM at the beginning of 2011. You may
also remember how you at the same conference you told the story how you
showed your C# REPL to Microsoft just before PDC 2008 and once they saw
that, they changed their program and rushed their C# REPL with the only
intent of showing it before you did. The proof that they didn't have a
working product back then (while you did) lies in the simple fact that now,
5 (five!) years later Microsoft still do not have a working version (Roslyn
is still a CTP and nobody knows when it's going to be released). While at
the same time your C# REPL has been constantly evolving up to the point that
NRefactory is based upon it. You may also remember that just a few months
later that same 2011 the whole Mono team was ousted when Novell was bought
my Attachmate - and its patents sold to a consortium of technology companies
led by Microsoft (CPTN Holdings). For last I'd like to return to MonoSpace
and the fact that a little before the renaming in the organization were
involved a number of Microsoft employees, such as Scott Hanselman, and I
don't believe they have nothing to do with the erasure of "Mono".

   I've been a Mono user for years and I'd really like for it to continue to
flourish. It's just that I don't see this happening if everything goes on
like that. I hope there will be positive change, it's not nearly late for
it.

   Regards,
   Dimitar Dobrev



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