Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft-Connected Xamarin Demolishes the Freedom of Android

Microsoft's war on Android surely a benefactor here

Tamarin



Summary: An essential Android tool, RoboVM, turns into proprietary software just shortly after Xamarin, which is financially assisted by Microsoft veterans, takes over it; time to fork?

LAST WEEK we wrote about Xamarin's disturbing takeover of RoboVM [1, 2], which was a threat to Microsoft's monopoly and domination of APIs (especially on the desktop). Xamarin, for the uninitiated, creates proprietary software that strives to spread Microsoft's .NET to mobile (including Android) devices.

“Following RoboVM’s acquisition by Xamarin, the company has raised the price of their offering and has closed the source code.”
      --Abel Avram
It has only been less than a week and now we learn from Abel Avram that "RoboVM Is No Longer Open Source".

"Following RoboVM’s acquisition by Xamarin," explains Avram, "the company has raised the price of their offering and has closed the source code."

"The community has wondered what would happen to RoboVM now that they have been acquired by Xamarin," Avram noted. Well, now we know. Bye bye, community.

To quote further: "RoboVM is no longer providing the source code except to enterprise customers. [...] Several RoboVM components used to be made available under the Apache 2.0 license while the compiler was open sourced under the GPL license."

It has gotten so bad that RoboVM might be forked. To quote Avram, "some developers consider that closing down the source code has to do with Xamarin’s acquisition. And some are discussing forking the project, perhaps starting with the sources v. 1.8 which will be pushed to GitHub this week, according to Zechner. It remains to see how successful they are in their endeavor considering that RoboVM is not a trivial piece of software."

Xamarin and Mono were never about Free software and GNU/Linux; they were just a parasite trying to exploit Free software and GNU/Linux to spread .NET and now they serve to convert Free software into proprietary. Microsoft must love what Miguel de Icaza has been up to recently.

“At Microsoft I learned the truth about ActiveX and COM and I got very interested in it inmediately [sic].”

--Miguel de Icaza

Recent Techrights' Posts

The Ultimate and Inevitable Fall of OpenAI (Even Brave is 'Bigger' Now)
"When you advertise at the Super Bowl, you’ve reached just about every consumer in America. It’s the last stop. If you’re not profitable yet, you never will be."
GNU/Linux Rises to All-Time High in Chile
sharp rise for GNU/Linux in Chile
 
Links 10/02/2025: Facebook Mass Layoffs, "Meta" Did What Aaron Swartz Had Done But to the Tune of 81.7 Terabytes
Links for the day
Microsoft Tarnishing the Brand of Arch
Of course Arch can do whatever it wants, but being associated with Microsoft is a badge of shame
Adding Slop to Your Blog Only Makes One Assume All the Text is LLM Slop
Simon Coter from Oracle has turned to slop
Macao is Leaving Microsoft Behind
Windows is falling to new all-time lows
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, February 09, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, February 09, 2025
Microsoft's WSL (LSW) Shows That It Can Never Love Linux, Only Windows
that's just how Microsoft rolls
Activism in Times of War and a Coup
'Linux' Foundation works for fascism
What the Silencing of Neatnik Tells Us About Linus Torvalds Inside a Microsoft-Dominated 'Linux' Foundation
Is Linus Torvalds free to express his mind as he wishes about every topic, even just any technical topic?
Windows Down to 11.35% in Senegal, as Measured by statCounter
Another all-time low (Windows was at 99% in 2009)
"Latest Technology News" in BetaNews is LLM Slop Promoting OOXML and Proprietary Software at the Expense of LibreOffice and OpenDocument Format (ODF)
Remember that "open-source" and Open Source aren't the same; the former is fake
Links 09/02/2025: Coffee, Toxic Productivity, and Programming
Links for the day
Debian's Human Rights violations & Swiss women Nazi symbolism
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 09/02/2025: Software Patents on MP3 and Another Scam Dressed Up as "Crypto"
Links for the day
Links 09/02/2025: Russian Energy Cut Off, LLM Pushers Show Signs of Desperation
Links for the day
Richard Stallman (RMS) Does Not Have Media Companies and Lobbyists on His Side, But His Message Spreads Regardless
The message of RMS is spreading in spite of all the smears
Links 09/02/2025: Hottest January on Record, Panama Blackmailed
Links for the day
Why We Still Love Gemini Protocol
Gemini Protocol may seem like something "old" (it's actually very new) and something "nobody would use", but many people use it
Gemini Links 09/02/2025: "Died as a Mineral" and Game Interface for a Non-Game
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, February 08, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, February 08, 2025
Links 08/02/2025: UK Back Doors and Religious Fundamentalists in Positions of Higher Power
Links for the day
Today's IBM (Red Hat) Isn't the Company That Fought a Microsoft-Sponsored SCO in Court
IBM is nowadays in a state of rapid disintegration
When You Simply Rebrand Almost Everything as "Hey Hi" ("AI"), "Hey Hi Workloads", "Hey Hi Datacentres" and Whatnot
The "growth" has been a growing lie for years if not decades
Microsoft Windows Falls to 12% in Myanmar
Remember that Microsoft is virtually 0% in mobile
This is the Man Who's Attacking Linus Torvalds et al in "a Disease" (Social Control Media)
One thing that Richard M. Stallman and Torvalds can agree on is that Social Control Media should be avoided
Gemini Links 08/02/2025: "Thought Leaders" and Returns to Gemini Protocol
Links for the day
Links 08/02/2025: MElon Coup, Mass Layoffs at Facebook, and PlayStation Network Down
Links for the day
Unlike GAFAM, Free Software Serves You, It Does Not Serve Governments and MElons (Overlapping Forces)
Tired of oligarchy controlling your life through gadgets and "apps"?
On Wars Against Founders
We need to insist that founders remain
When It Comes to Social Control Media, Linus Torvalds is Channeling Techrights
GAFAM workers know exactly who to aim at
New EPO Paper: Promoting (Rewarding) People Who Grant Many Illegal European Patents to Make More Money (at Europeans' Expense) While Patent Courts in the EU Are Themselves Illegal
now the coup is sort of complete and even the "courts" are part of the corruption
Slopwatch: Carnival of LLM Slop and FUD Spewed by Bots, Pasted in by MaKenna Hensley and Day
Welcome to the Web in 2025. Articles about "Linux", "Security", and the Web (e.g. "Firefox") are fake.
Links 08/02/2025: News Corp Admits Traffic Declines, Wildlife Trafficking Tackled
Links for the day
Gemini Links 08/02/2025: Lamp and Notions
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, February 07, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, February 07, 2025