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I can't blame Microsoft much, when they've open-sourced Xamarin and are doing good things with .NET Core, plus they aren't the ones to blame. The writing was o
by bad_user 11y ago
I can't blame Microsoft much, when they've open-sourced Xamarin and are doing good things with .NET Core, plus they aren't the ones to blame.
The writing was on the wall ever since RoboVM was closed sourced, right before Xamarin bought them. I was one of the pessimists here. Basically any project that goes from open-source to close source is as good as dead, unless forked. And whenever you see such projects, you should run. Because the most interesting aspect of any open source project is its open source nature. And a bait and switch doesn't work so well.
That said, RoboVM was open-source before October 2015 and the most interesting aspect of open source is the ability to fork the project. A fork of RoboVM can still happen, the code from before October 2015 should still be there somewhere, I just hope the license is permissive enough. And if a fork doesn't happen, it only means that the project doesn't have enough interest and so it probably should wither away.
- st3v3r 11y agoYou're gonna have to explain how they're not the ones to blame when they're the ones that own the project. As in, they're literally the ones who make the decision to do this.
- cwyers 11y agoIf RoboVM isn't revenue-positive, what's Microsoft to do? Xamarin bought RoboVM, presumably hoping that there were synergies there. Then Microsoft bought Xamarin, and Xamarin's business-model changed, and those synergies may not be there anymore. At that point, you can make a case for RoboVM to operate independently if RoboVM pays for itself. But the decision to take RoboVM closed-source and increase what they charge indicates that maybe RoboVM couldn't and can't self-sustain.