[Mono-list] Xamarin 2.0 concern

Sun Feb 24 09:47:31 UTC 2013

Well, in Xamarin team's defense, I have to say "MonoTouch" and "Mono for
Android" were not very clear or consistent names.

Dropping the Mono name is a bit sad, but I hope it'll succeed.

Doug wrote
> I don't really see it as a big issue; companies rebrand all the time.
> 
> The mono 'brand' is encumbered by a bunch of negative associations,
> largely
> to do with it being abandoned by novell, discarded by linux, a second
> class
> citizen to the 'official' windows C# runtime.
> 
> Abandoning the name to try to build a new brand isn't a new idea; building
> a sustainable company when your core product has these associations
> attached to it must be painful.
> 
> Did you read the hacker news responses to the new products?
> 
> Generally positive, but full of 'cross platform UI's don't work' comments.
> Ouch. Yes, moonlight (and silverlight) were a waste of time and no one
> liked or used them. ...but that's history now. That's why the new product
> suite is all about creating native user interfaces for different platforms
> and binding them to a common backend logic.
> 
> This seems to be a much more successful approach, but because of the
> legacy
> of moonlight, people don't immediately appreciate that, and stay away.
> 
> There's a lot of really great work going on here, (never mind the
> increasingly popular MonoGame drawing developers in). I think your
> comments
> are a little unjustified.
> 
> It's just a brand name change.
> 
> All the code is up on github; it's not going anywhere.
> 
> ~
> Doug.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Sat, Feb 23, 2013 at 10:54 PM, Dimitar Dobrev <

> dpldobrev@

> >wrote:
> 
>> 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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