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I am confused by this. If attachmate let go of Mono developers clearly it felt the product has not been profitable and won't be any time soon. What investor wi

by bfrog 15y ago

I am confused by this. If attachmate let go of Mono developers clearly it felt the product has not been profitable and won't be any time soon. What investor with a sound mind would feel otherwise? Novell had already dumped millions in to it and look where they ended up.

bad_user 15y ago
Novell had already dumped millions in to it How do you know that?
- bfrog 15y ago
  In terms of developer salary alone I have no doubt Novell has put millions of dollars in to Mono with no real obvious profitable products.
  - zbowling 15y ago
    Besides the contracts with Unity, several game developers on the PS3 and Wii, EA, and others. Besides the MonoTouch and MonoDroid projects. Besides the support to other products like iFolder and Linux desktop apps they released. Besides the various support contracts Novell received for Mono from various companies. Besides the embedded licenses Novell scored to license Mono for things that were incompatible with the GPL runtime.... Nope... no real profits.
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jeffreymcmanus 15y ago
The profile of a successful product is very different at a startup than it is at a large or medium-sized company. This is an important reason why startups exist.
joeshaw 15y ago
I'm not sure you can make this assumption. Attachmate seems most interested in cutting Novell down to the bone and extracting whatever value it can from what is left. I don't see a whole lot of future growth opportunity from that company in the long term. Just because Mono is not necessarily profitable now doesn't mean that it couldn't be cultivated into a profitable company later. Mono seemed to be recently finding its niche with its Unity (games) licensing and its MonoTouch and Mono for Android products. (Disclaimer: I used to work at Ximian and Novell with Miguel & others, and contributed some to Mono in the early days.)
- mambodog 15y ago
  What do you mean about Unity? Unity Technologies is a separate company. Do they pay (a significant amount) to licence the tech?
  - joeshaw 15y ago
    Unity uses Mono for scripting in their engine. As it runs on a variety of platforms where replacing the runtime (which is normally LGPL licensed) isn't possible, I believe they have a commercial licensing agreement in place with Novell. I don't know what the terms are of that agreement.

by bfrog 15y ago

bad_user 15y ago

Novell had already dumped millions in to it How do you know that?

bfrog 15y ago
In terms of developer salary alone I have no doubt Novell has put millions of dollars in to Mono with no real obvious profitable products.
- zbowling 15y ago
  Besides the contracts with Unity, several game developers on the PS3 and Wii, EA, and others. Besides the MonoTouch and MonoDroid projects. Besides the support to other products like iFolder and Linux desktop apps they released. Besides the various support contracts Novell received for Mono from various companies. Besides the embedded licenses Novell scored to license Mono for things that were incompatible with the GPL runtime.... Nope... no real profits.
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jeffreymcmanus 15y ago

The profile of a successful product is very different at a startup than it is at a large or medium-sized company. This is an important reason why startups exist.

joeshaw 15y ago

I'm not sure you can make this assumption. Attachmate seems most interested in cutting Novell down to the bone and extracting whatever value it can from what is left. I don't see a whole lot of future growth opportunity from that company in the long term. Just because Mono is not necessarily profitable now doesn't mean that it couldn't be cultivated into a profitable company later. Mono seemed to be recently finding its niche with its Unity (games) licensing and its MonoTouch and Mono for Android products. (Disclaimer: I used to work at Ximian and Novell with Miguel & others, and contributed some to Mono in the early days.)

mambodog 15y ago
What do you mean about Unity? Unity Technologies is a separate company. Do they pay (a significant amount) to licence the tech?
- joeshaw 15y ago
  Unity uses Mono for scripting in their engine. As it runs on a variety of platforms where replacing the runtime (which is normally LGPL licensed) isn't possible, I believe they have a commercial licensing agreement in place with Novell. I don't know what the terms are of that agreement.