4 ms·

Looks like there is no free version and the single developer license costs about 400$. That is going to be a big hurdle to get the casual indie developers inter

Looks like there is no free version and the single developer license costs about 400$. That is going to be a big hurdle to get the casual indie developers interested.

danieldk 16y ago
True, it would be nice if there was a non-commercial license. On the other hand, if you want to make a serious income with applications, spending $400 on a good development tool is not a huge investment (in the West).
- benologist 16y ago
  There's still AIR / Flash on Android with some great tools like http://flashdevelop.org/ http://flashdevelop.org/ available you can build with, and of course JavaScript which is pretty ubiquitous amongst devs these days.
jimmyjazz14 16y ago
Yeah I gotta say the pricing is pretty disappointing especially since I was kinda expecting it might be free and open source.
markkanof 16y ago
I'm not sure the casual indie developer is their target market. Microsoft has always been strong in the enterprise market, thus a tool (Mono) that allows developers to write for Android while staying in the Microsoft ecosystem will probably have huge appeal for large enterprise development groups. Those kind of users usually don't have an issue with a tool priced under say $1000. I'm certainly not saying that no indie developers use Microsoft tool, because they do. And sure, it would be great if there was a free open source version of this tool available. But I suspect there is a nice market for these tools that has deep enough pockets to pay the licensing fees.
- hanifvirani 16y ago
  I certainly agree with you, and I didn't imply that their target market is casual indie developers. Surely they are targeting enterprise here. But I am guessing that indie developers itself is a huge market and say if they went with a single developer license costing somewhere like 30$, they would surely be boosting sales.
joe_the_user 16y ago
Indeed... I spent a five minutes looking for any small-text link to the source code - doesn't mean they aren't there. But... Uh can someone "explain" how, exactly, there's no free version of this hypothetically free software? ??? Mono's had a dubious reputation
- pmjordan 16y ago
  Mono is available under the MIT license, which permits proprietary forks. Their versions for game consoles are also proprietary, and have been so for years.

Looks like there is no free version and the single developer license costs about 400$. That is going to be a big hurdle to get the casual indie developers interested.

danieldk 16y ago

True, it would be nice if there was a non-commercial license. On the other hand, if you want to make a serious income with applications, spending $400 on a good development tool is not a huge investment (in the West).

benologist 16y ago
There's still AIR / Flash on Android with some great tools like http://flashdevelop.org/ http://flashdevelop.org/ available you can build with, and of course JavaScript which is pretty ubiquitous amongst devs these days.

jimmyjazz14 16y ago

Yeah I gotta say the pricing is pretty disappointing especially since I was kinda expecting it might be free and open source.

markkanof 16y ago

I'm not sure the casual indie developer is their target market. Microsoft has always been strong in the enterprise market, thus a tool (Mono) that allows developers to write for Android while staying in the Microsoft ecosystem will probably have huge appeal for large enterprise development groups. Those kind of users usually don't have an issue with a tool priced under say $1000. I'm certainly not saying that no indie developers use Microsoft tool, because they do. And sure, it would be great if there was a free open source version of this tool available. But I suspect there is a nice market for these tools that has deep enough pockets to pay the licensing fees.

hanifvirani 16y ago
I certainly agree with you, and I didn't imply that their target market is casual indie developers. Surely they are targeting enterprise here. But I am guessing that indie developers itself is a huge market and say if they went with a single developer license costing somewhere like 30$, they would surely be boosting sales.

joe_the_user 16y ago

Indeed... I spent a five minutes looking for any small-text link to the source code - doesn't mean they aren't there. But... Uh can someone "explain" how, exactly, there's no free version of this hypothetically free software? ??? Mono's had a dubious reputation

pmjordan 16y ago
Mono is available under the MIT license, which permits proprietary forks. Their versions for game consoles are also proprietary, and have been so for years.