Called Xamarin, the company will continue efforts to put .Net technologies on non-Windows platforms
The Mono project, which provides open source versions of Microsoft software development technologies for use on non-Windows platforms such as Linux, has found a new home.
Dispatched by Attachmate after its recent merger with Novell, Mono technologies will now be the domain of a new company, Xamarin, project leader Miguel de Icaza said in a blog post on Monday. Xamarin will build commercial .Net offerings for Apple's iOS and Google's Android platforms as well as continue to develop Mono and Moonlight, which is an open source version of Microsoft's Silverlight rich Internet platform. Xamarin also will explore Moonlight opportunities in the mobile space and the Mac application store.
[ Layoffs had left an uncertain future for open source .Net, InfoWorld columnist Neil McAllister wrote earlier this month. Also, Attachmate CEO Jeff Hawn in an interview with InfoWorld late last month was not yet ready to comment on plans for Mono. | Keep up with the latest developer news with InfoWorld's Developer World newsletter. | Follow Paul Krill on Twitter. ]
"We have been trying to spin Mono off from Novell for more than a year now. Everyone agreed that Mono would have a brighter future as an independent company, so a plan was prepared last year," de Icaza said.
"To make a long story short, the plan to spin off was not executed. Instead on Monday, May 2, the Canadian and American teams were laid off; Europe, Brazil and Japan followed a few days later. These layoffs included all the MonoTouch and MonoDroid engineers and other key Mono developers. Although Attachmate allowed us to go home that day, we opted to provide technical support to our users until our last day at Novell, which was Friday last week," de Icaza stated.
"We were clearly bummed out by this development and had no desire to quit, especially with all the great progress in this last year. So, with a heavy dose of motivation from my music teacher, we hatched a plan," said de Icaza.
New versions of .Net for Android and iPhone will be source-compatible with the MonoTouch and Mono for Android development tools launched by the Mono team when at Novell. Also, the company is seeking more funding for several projects, including plans to release tutorials for various developer stacks, as well as API documentation for Mono-specific APIs, dedicated customer support, and an upgrade to the project's bug system.
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This story, "Mono project moves to new company" was originally published by InfoWorld.