4 ms·
In an ideal world, yes. But from a strategic point of view monotouch/monodroid (or whatever their new equivalents will be called) don't really help MS, it just
by josephcooney 15y ago
In an ideal world, yes. But from a strategic point of view monotouch/monodroid (or whatever their new equivalents will be called) don't really help MS, it just helps developers from the MS stack port their skills to other platforms. If developer division didn't have the 'strategy tax' of being part of MS they'd probably be trying to do this themselves (re-targeting their tools to support development on alternate platforms). So in a way MONO helps MS by helping MS customers that MS can't help directly themselves. If there was a corporate equivalent of the relationship status "it's complicated" that's what I'd be using to describe the relationship between MS and the MONO project, but the rub is I don't think MS will be funding Monotouch/monodroid stuff any time soon.
- cwbrandsma 15y agoI thought Microsoft did help fund the project when it was part of Novel. In the end, having a healthy .net community is in Microsoft's best interest, even if there is not a direct set of sales involved.
- josephcooney 15y agoI know they (MS) had an engineering agreement with the MONO folks while they were at Novell re:Silverlight, but I don't know of any instances where they've donated money. If you've got any links please share them. From the Moonlight FAQ: http://www.novell.com/products/desktop/moonlight_faq.html#j http://www.novell.com/products/desktop/moonlight_faq.html#j This collaboration between Microsoft and Novell is a formal engineering development program. Novell is bringing the .NET-based Silverlight framework to Mono, an open source framework for running .NET applications on multiple platforms including Linux. Microsoft is providing a version of the necessary codecs for Linux.