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I do like C# and I wanted to like Xamarin. But as someone who write mobile apps for fun, $600 per year for a dual-platform "indie" license is just too much. A

I do like C# and I wanted to like Xamarin. But as someone who write mobile apps for fun, $600 per year for a dual-platform "indie" license is just too much. And I believe the pricing is also the reason the open source community around Xamarin is small. There are a few projects on github, but not much activity. I doubt any of this will improve with a Oracle partnership.

BinaryIdiot 11y ago
> I doubt any of this will improve with a Oracle partnership. Considering the partnership is around Oracle's cloud offering yeah the partnership isn't going to do anything for their licensing prices. Honestly I was hoping Microsoft would buy them and improve upon it. They already have some integration but it would be cool if they bundled in the licenses too. Then I'd imagine indie dev would be free.
- nissehulth 11y ago
  Agree, Microsoft would be a much better option, at least from my point of view. I understand that Xamarin mostly target enterprise devs, but I believe their ecosystem would benefit from a more active community. I'm also sure Microsoft's mobile app store would benefit from it.
pjmlp 11y ago
On the other end you can choose to pay $350.00 per month for Qt, as they dropped their Indie license and still have to code lots of platform specific code, given how they are playing catchup on mobile OS. Me, I have decided to focus just on Android, as it is only for hobby coding and although I find WP great, its future is uncertain.
- chc 11y ago
  Out of curiosity, what is wrong with Qt's open-source version?
  - ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
    Its C++ and not C#?
  - pjmlp 11y ago
    It cannot be used for commercial purposes. Which I think is faire anyway, given the amount of work they put into it. Not a problem if you never will sell your apps.
    - dottrap 11y ago
      That's not true. The open source version of Qt is under the LGPL. So if you dynamically link, then you can probably do your usual proprietary stuff. (Albeit dynamically linking C++ exposes you to a whole bunch of ABI fragility depending on your platform and compiler chain.) If you statically link, they you have to make your source code available, which still could be acceptable for some commercial companies.
      - pjmlp 11y ago
        Many of the mobile components are under commercial license, like payments, QML native compiler (you really need it), charts,... Personally, I wouldn't be doing those from scratch just to avoid paying.
mb_72 11y ago
Comments like this have been made on the Xamarin forums a number of time - that it's too expensive for 'hobby' developers. I'll make the same comment here as I made there, that as a Xamarin Mac (Indie) developer I'm happy they are NOT aiming their product at hobby / fun developers. A hobby is something you do optionally, if you have the funds or time. If you can't afford it, or can't monetise it - which I think is still an option for 'hobby' developers - then you can't do it. It's the same if the hobby is skydiving, parachuting etc. As regards lack of open source material, it's not important to me however as Xamarin is C# based then any OS project that utilises C# potentially can be used within the Xamarin ecosystem. There is a significant 'use-case' outside of the Hacker News / open source community that Xamarin addresses. Just because it doesn't fall within the parameters set down by (I am guessing) the majority of posters here, it doesn't mean that it isn't a good or useful product.
- ghuntley 11y ago
  Application for Open Source Project Subscription - http://resources.xamarin.com/open-source-contributor.html http://resources.xamarin.com/open-source-contributor.html
  - hhandoko 11y ago
    Nice! I didn't know this.
- Akkuma 11y ago
  One thing to take into account is that the more people who use your product, the more likely they'll push it where someone else can foot the bill. If someone learns Java or ObjC/Swift, because they can't afford to use Xamarin that means that individual will be less likely to recommend it at companies they work at. If it followed more of a Unity model it could cause a cycle where people start pushing out more things to support Xamarin, which causes more people to pick it up, which causes more people to recommend its use. It is why so many startups focus on user acquisition to create this gigantic tipping point.
DavidNielsen 11y ago
Xamarin offers a free starter edition[1] and you can request free full licenses for use with Open Source projects[2]. Getting started on your own project or doing an Open Source project that relies on Xamarin's tools is perfectly possible. In fact we use such free licenses to produce OS X and iOS versions of the Tomboy note taking app[3]. [1] https://store.xamarin.com https://store.xamarin.com [2] http://resources.xamarin.com/open-source-contributor.html http://resources.xamarin.com/open-source-contributor.html [3] https://github.com/tomboy-notes https://github.com/tomboy-notes

BinaryIdiot 11y ago

> I doubt any of this will improve with a Oracle partnership. Considering the partnership is around Oracle's cloud offering yeah the partnership isn't going to do anything for their licensing prices. Honestly I was hoping Microsoft would buy them and improve upon it. They already have some integration but it would be cool if they bundled in the licenses too. Then I'd imagine indie dev would be free.

nissehulth 11y ago
Agree, Microsoft would be a much better option, at least from my point of view. I understand that Xamarin mostly target enterprise devs, but I believe their ecosystem would benefit from a more active community. I'm also sure Microsoft's mobile app store would benefit from it.

pjmlp 11y ago

On the other end you can choose to pay $350.00 per month for Qt, as they dropped their Indie license and still have to code lots of platform specific code, given how they are playing catchup on mobile OS. Me, I have decided to focus just on Android, as it is only for hobby coding and although I find WP great, its future is uncertain.

chc 11y ago
Out of curiosity, what is wrong with Qt's open-source version?
- ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
  Its C++ and not C#?
- pjmlp 11y ago
  It cannot be used for commercial purposes. Which I think is faire anyway, given the amount of work they put into it. Not a problem if you never will sell your apps.
  - dottrap 11y ago
    That's not true. The open source version of Qt is under the LGPL. So if you dynamically link, then you can probably do your usual proprietary stuff. (Albeit dynamically linking C++ exposes you to a whole bunch of ABI fragility depending on your platform and compiler chain.) If you statically link, they you have to make your source code available, which still could be acceptable for some commercial companies.
    - pjmlp 11y ago
      Many of the mobile components are under commercial license, like payments, QML native compiler (you really need it), charts,... Personally, I wouldn't be doing those from scratch just to avoid paying.

mb_72 11y ago

Comments like this have been made on the Xamarin forums a number of time - that it's too expensive for 'hobby' developers. I'll make the same comment here as I made there, that as a Xamarin Mac (Indie) developer I'm happy they are NOT aiming their product at hobby / fun developers. A hobby is something you do optionally, if you have the funds or time. If you can't afford it, or can't monetise it - which I think is still an option for 'hobby' developers - then you can't do it. It's the same if the hobby is skydiving, parachuting etc. As regards lack of open source material, it's not important to me however as Xamarin is C# based then any OS project that utilises C# potentially can be used within the Xamarin ecosystem. There is a significant 'use-case' outside of the Hacker News / open source community that Xamarin addresses. Just because it doesn't fall within the parameters set down by (I am guessing) the majority of posters here, it doesn't mean that it isn't a good or useful product.

ghuntley 11y ago
Application for Open Source Project Subscription - http://resources.xamarin.com/open-source-contributor.html http://resources.xamarin.com/open-source-contributor.html
- hhandoko 11y ago
  Nice! I didn't know this.
Akkuma 11y ago
One thing to take into account is that the more people who use your product, the more likely they'll push it where someone else can foot the bill. If someone learns Java or ObjC/Swift, because they can't afford to use Xamarin that means that individual will be less likely to recommend it at companies they work at. If it followed more of a Unity model it could cause a cycle where people start pushing out more things to support Xamarin, which causes more people to pick it up, which causes more people to recommend its use. It is why so many startups focus on user acquisition to create this gigantic tipping point.

DavidNielsen 11y ago

Xamarin offers a free starter edition[1] and you can request free full licenses for use with Open Source projects[2]. Getting started on your own project or doing an Open Source project that relies on Xamarin's tools is perfectly possible. In fact we use such free licenses to produce OS X and iOS versions of the Tomboy note taking app[3]. [1] https://store.xamarin.com https://store.xamarin.com [2] http://resources.xamarin.com/open-source-contributor.html http://resources.xamarin.com/open-source-contributor.html [3] https://github.com/tomboy-notes https://github.com/tomboy-notes