[Mono-list] Xamarin 2.0 concern

Sat Feb 23 19:36:28 UTC 2013

I really do hope that x studio is just really the new name of the 3.1 monodevelop. I hear all of what you say in that the mono community seems quite separate from much that you see on the go-mono.com pages, I wonder if we should start a 'mono planet' sort of thing to join things up and to keep alive these sorts of questions.

Dimitar Dobrev <dpldobrev at yahoo.com> 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
>
>
>
>--
>View this message in context:
>http://mono.1490590.n4.nabble.com/Xamarin-2-0-concern-tp4658722.html
>Sent from the Mono - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
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-- 
Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
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