Microsoft donates the Mono Project to the Wine team
Well, this is surprising isn't it? Microsoft are handing over the Mono Project to the Wine developers with a thank you note.
Donates or "donates"? As "all yours" or as in "it's ours but you do the work"?
As in
“We’ve finished taking all we need from the Mono project and implemented it into our proprietary .NET implementation for Linux, Android and iOS. Instead of getting flack for killing off Mono (which is open source and would’ve been forked anyways) we graciously give this old husk to the Wine project. We recommend that active Mono users and maintainers of Mono-based app frameworks migrate to .NET. kthnxbye!”
Good thing that it went to Wine I guess, as they do lots of work to get old Windows programs up and running in Linux and that often involves Mono.
It's MIT and actually a fork of Mono. Reading the article helps.
Good thing that it went to Wine I guess, as they do lots of work to get old Windows programs up and running in Linux and that often involves Mono.
I see this as the main purpose of this transfer of ownership. When it comes to developing new software, MS has their modern tech stack for creating cross-compatible code, and the recommendation is to use that. But that is not helpful when trying to get old legacy software running on a modern system. So MS is giving this "outdated" technology to the WINE team. A team whose primary goal is getting incompatible software to run in the "wrong" environment. This should allow WINE to continue to properly handle older Mono software for the foreseeable future.
You are completely correct. The good news is that the “official” .NET is Open Source now and far better than the “Mono Project” ever was.
as in “your fork is official now, we have our own compatability in .net and there’s no need to maintain it”
The recognition is nice, but there hadn’t been a major release in over 5 years. I’d guess the outcome is mostly paperwork
And that’s how you know it’s worthless
Technical debt is transferred to Wine team.
They were already maintaining a fork of it though?
The “fork” is the real version of Mono and Microsoft is not giving it up.
The repository managed by “The Mono Project” still targets .NET Framework. Microsoft does not care about the official version of that. Why would they want to manage an Open Source replica of it.
In some ways though, this is good. Nobody should be seeing the Mono Project as a viable cross-platform development framework at this point. It is nothing more than a support layer for running legacy software that was originally Windows only. That makes it a good fit for Wine.
If you want what Mono used to be, a cross-platform application framework, you can just use the actual .NET from Microsoft. It includes the Mono runtime for targeting mobile platforms and Microsoft continues to actively develop it. They are not passing control of that to anybody.
Okay, a suspicious thanks to you, Microsoft...
...So when can we get this treatment for WMR so all our VR headsets don't become useless bricks kthaaaanks!
"""donates"""
What are the implications of this?
Not much. There used to be this fear of Microsoft copyrighting Mono for reimplementing their stuff on Linux. For that reason, Mono was avoided by linux app developers. But since MS had acquired the company that made and developed Mono and they have also open-sourced .NET and everything, this does not mean much.
For that reason, Mono was avoided by linux app developers. But since MS had acquired the company that made and developed Mono
"You don't like it? Fine then, we buy it and force it on you!"
Classic Microshit.
Does Mono have any purpose any longer? What is the point now that dotnet core is so well-established?
Yes, Mono is used by Wine to support Windows .NET applications since it's a) open source and b) contains support for Windows Forms and other Windows-only APIs.
They can't ship the regular .NET framework by default for licensing reasons but it can be installed with winetricks to replace Mono, which is sometimes necessary for compatibility reasons.
Thanks!
Well that was unexpected
Ew.
Repost of https://programming.dev/post/18652552
