4 ms·

This looks like a good suggestion, but I'm planning to make parts of this free software and it looks like the Xamarin platform is not.

brudgers 12y ago
The Xamarin tooling isn't all free, but Miguel de Icaza [1] is a major figure in open source. I'd be surprised if any Xamarin product necessitates closed source. Even if it did, helping to put food on his table would benefit the open source community. There aren't many people about whom that can be said with less doubt. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Icaza https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Icaza
- cottonseed 12y ago
  The free version of the Xamarin tools seem to have limited app size and doesn't include their UI integration (Xamarin.Forms): https://store.xamarin.com/ https://store.xamarin.com/
  - ghuntley 12y ago
    $25 for Indie which includes Xamarin.Forms
  - brudgers 12y ago
    I misunderstood. I thought your objective was to produce free as in speech and beer software. One reason cross platform tools often require payment is that Apple's terms for the iOS app store require the use of Apple products for development. Part of the cost goes to maintaining remote services on Macs to comply with those terms. The alternative for iOS development is to purchase, rent, or borrow a Mac and develop in Objective-C, Swift, or JavaScript. That's probably less optimized for type safety, cost, and cross platform deployment. If you drop iOS, the JVM and Java is an alternative.
ghuntley 12y ago
Microsoft .NET is MIT: https://github.com/Microsoft/dotnet/blob/master/LICENSE https://github.com/Microsoft/dotnet/blob/master/LICENSE Xamarin/Mono is LGPLv2: http://xamarin.com/licensing http://xamarin.com/licensing Purchasing a Xamarin license removes the LGPLv2 restrictions. If you have a established open source project then you can apply for free Xamarin licenses @ http://resources.xamarin.com/open-source-contributor.html http://resources.xamarin.com/open-source-contributor.html

brudgers 12y ago

The Xamarin tooling isn't all free, but Miguel de Icaza [1] is a major figure in open source. I'd be surprised if any Xamarin product necessitates closed source. Even if it did, helping to put food on his table would benefit the open source community. There aren't many people about whom that can be said with less doubt. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Icaza https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Icaza

cottonseed 12y ago
The free version of the Xamarin tools seem to have limited app size and doesn't include their UI integration (Xamarin.Forms): https://store.xamarin.com/ https://store.xamarin.com/
- ghuntley 12y ago
  $25 for Indie which includes Xamarin.Forms
- brudgers 12y ago
  I misunderstood. I thought your objective was to produce free as in speech and beer software. One reason cross platform tools often require payment is that Apple's terms for the iOS app store require the use of Apple products for development. Part of the cost goes to maintaining remote services on Macs to comply with those terms. The alternative for iOS development is to purchase, rent, or borrow a Mac and develop in Objective-C, Swift, or JavaScript. That's probably less optimized for type safety, cost, and cross platform deployment. If you drop iOS, the JVM and Java is an alternative.

ghuntley 12y ago

Microsoft .NET is MIT: https://github.com/Microsoft/dotnet/blob/master/LICENSE https://github.com/Microsoft/dotnet/blob/master/LICENSE Xamarin/Mono is LGPLv2: http://xamarin.com/licensing http://xamarin.com/licensing Purchasing a Xamarin license removes the LGPLv2 restrictions. If you have a established open source project then you can apply for free Xamarin licenses @ http://resources.xamarin.com/open-source-contributor.html http://resources.xamarin.com/open-source-contributor.html