05.25.11
Funding Behind Xamarin is Microsoft MVP Miguel de Icaza; Fresh Concerns About Attachmate
Summary: Why the Microsoft Gold Certified Partner that bought Novell and let Microsoft have Novell’s patents is not giving up on Mono entirely
SO there is this company we call Trojarin, which despite apparent issues with trademarks and other monopolies, is hoping to keep Mono alive [1, 2, 3]. It recently turned out that part of the capital was from Miguel. No surprise there. Simon Phipps (OSI) writes: “I’d heard Miguel was looking for funding to do this…”
Well, it is interesting to note that AttachMSFT, despite its close relationship with Microsoft, decided to axe Mono and maybe to oust Miguel (unless he decided to leave of his own accord). Timothy Prickett Morgan explains that not many managers from Novell have remained, as we recently showed:
On the Novell front, Attachmate has moved the company’s headquarters from Boston, where it was relocated a decade ago after Novell acquired Cambridge Technology Partners, back to its stomping grounds of Provo, Utah. Bob Flynn, another long-time Attachmate exec who joined the company back in 1998 and who did 17 years before that managing large accounts at IBM, has been named president and general manager of the Novell unit. David Wilkes, who has been with Novell since 1991 and who spearheaded the development of the later releases of NetWare and the Open Enterprise Server hybrid, which runs NetWare services atop a SUSE Linux kernel, has been named vice president of engineering at Novell.
We previously wrote about the role of Brauckmann in SUSE. We quoted an article where he says that “Mono is part of the SUSE Linux business [...] So what you saw happening in the last few weeks is we were starting to adjust our investments in Mono to be better aligned with our business [...] Unfortunately that resulted in some layoffs.”
Groklaw quotes this and asks: “Does that even make sense?” It has also found this new article which shows AttachMSFT playing hardball: “Software vendor Attachmate has accused the Department of Defence of using its software outside agreed license terms by uploading it onto a shared network.”
Why should anyone trust AttachMSFT, whose CEO was arrested for slaying animals with firearms? As we explained yesterday, the future for OpenSUSE under AttachMSFT does not seem bright. Recently, OpenSUSE decided to add Unity as well. Enough said. █
Report about the CEO of AttachMSFT. This has shades of Microsoft’s Joachim Kempin, who shot dead animals and got charged (the Microsoft-influenced MSNBC tried to cover that up)
Needs Sunlight said,
May 25, 2011 at 5:19 am
Re: funding:
ROTFLMAO
twitter said,
May 25, 2011 at 6:01 pm
If any money is raised for Trojamin we can be sure it came from Microsoft. Who else would lend money to a project like Mono? My bet is that Trojamin’s business will be agitation but that it won’t just go away. Perhaps they think they can better resemble a community project if it’s not owned by a giant like Novell or AttachMSFT. Perhaps there will be a slew of name changes.
Let’s watch the business to see if anyone bothers to port existing .NET software to gnu/linux using mono. The sensible thing to do is to use existing free software that fits the task rather than port.
Dr. Roy Schestowitz Reply:
May 25th, 2011 at 6:14 pm
People who make proprietary software with .NET can have it run on GNU/Linux with Wine. Mono does not really solve a real-life problem; it’s a solution in search of a problem. It merely encourages people to embrace Microsoft APIs.
NotZed Reply:
May 25th, 2011 at 11:35 pm
I was trying to think of what it’s business case for mono is – there’s nothing it does that can’t be done with java.
The only thing I can think of is that it is for people who don’t want license java for embedded or mobile systems and/or have some irrational dislike of it. This only affects embedded/mobile systems since the free desktop is well served by zero-cost implementations with proprietary-friendly licenses, and the m$ desktop by their own implementation.
There’s probably a bit of money there, but it’s a fairly niche market.
Moonlight on the other hand seems even more limited, if only because silverlight is so limited.