
Microsoft Acquires Xamarin - legomaster
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/welcoming-the-xamarin-team-to-microsoft
======
solutionyogi
As someone who works in .NET ecosystem, this is HUGE.

I think there is huge synergy [1] to be exploited by combining Xamarin's team
with language/compiler design/visual studio team. I think MS is extremely well
positioned to be a leading development platform across desktop/web/mobile in
the __enterprise space __with this acquisition.

[1] Never thought I would ever use that word in a comment.

~~~
Avalaxy
Yes indeed, right now Xamarin is very very buggy and also pretty slow. I think
the software will get MUCH better if the teams at Microsoft will start working
on it.

~~~
niels_olson
or its embrace extend extinguish?

~~~
shanselman
Nonsense. The last 5 years show it's a whole new Microsoft.

Disclaimer: I have been one of the ones pushing the last 5 years to make that
statement true. ;)

~~~
hh2222
It worries me more that Microsoft has a track record of abandoning developer
tools for the next shiny thing.

~~~
jongalloway2
Well, .NET has been around for 14 years now. There have been all kinds of
worried predictions about Microsoft abandoning or doing evil things with .NET,
but after 14 years they're starting to sound a bit less worrying.

~~~
mateuszf
Remind me what happened to Silverlight.

~~~
jongalloway2
Silverlight was essentially a polyfill for back when browsers weren't very
capable. I did a ton of work with Silverlight - streaming video, vector
graphics, cross-platform front-end apps with back-end integration... all stuff
that was pretty hard to do back then, but is now widely available in all
modern browsers.

Also, both the JavaScript language and runtime were pretty hard to build
reliable, performant apps in back when Silverlight was introduced. The
JavaScript language and runtimes have matured considerably since then.

If it had been my say, I'd have kept it for a little longer than they did, but
by now I'd say it's no longer necessary.

There were always two camps in the Silverlight world, both inside and outside
of Microsoft: those that saw it as a way to make browser-based applications
more awesome, and those that saw Silverlight as a way to get away from that
yucky HTML/CSS/JS dev. I was always firmly in the first camp, and from that
side of things I wouldn't take back a minute I spent on Silverlight dev - I
got a jump on video, vector graphics, browser-based apps, etc., long before it
was practical to do that in the browser. When those technologies hit
mainstream browsers, great!

Note: Microsoft employee but definitely only speaking for myself here.

------
davidw
Miguel finally gets his job at Microsoft:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Icaza#Early_software...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Icaza#Early_software_career)

Congrats!

~~~
EvanPlaice
Kinda funny how things work out.

Back when MS broadcasted OSX/ _nix compatibility for Visual Studio I felt it
necessary to comment that .NET development has been supported in OSX /_nix for
over a decade.

In short, Miguel De Icaza should be awarded a medal from MS for his heroic
effort in developing the Mono platform and tooling; in spite of the constant
threat of legal action from Microsoft for 'patent infringement' of their
supposedly 'open' (ie ECMA) standard languages and VM.

Hopefully, he finally receives public recognition and reward for all his hard
work.

~~~
bunderbunder
He'd been pretty buddy-buddy with Microsoft for a while. Microsoft has owned
patents on the underlying technology, but as far as I'm aware they never did
anything to indicate that they might sue Ximian or Xamarin. As far as I can
tell, the bulk of the concern about Mono stems from FUD-spreading by RMS.

~~~
mda
I think Stallman's concerns regarding the subject were / are perfectly valid.

~~~
bunderbunder
They aren't entirely invalid, though interestingly the only times something
like this has ever happened were around that Java platform, not .NET. And yet,
even though they're the ones who are notable for actually trying to do so,
nobody worries too much about trusting Oracle not to try and torpedo any open
source ecosystems for profit.

Which is why I'm inclined to think of it as FUD-spreading. It's not about a
balanced assessment of the strategic risks involved in using a particular open
source product so much as it's about how one company in particular has been
mythologized into something approaching a Lovecraftian horror in the minds of
many members of a particular subculture.

------
bad_user
Given that Xamarin bought RoboVM last year and that the project went closed
source and raised prices just after that, it's fair to assume that RoboVM is
dead.

Also, I'm personally not happy about this. I think people on HN should know
better. Besides a couple of black swans being the exceptions that confirm the
rule, acquisitions is how projects die. This is because acquisitions are
either defensive or acquihires. And even when done out of a genuine desire for
progress, big companies end up choking these acquisitions to death, after all
they weren't capable of such progress in-house, with the project members
moving on after one or two years when their contract expires.

But hey, people were excited about Nokia as well.

~~~
shrewduser
android youtube and maps were all acquisitions.

i think it's confirmation bias you don't really think of all the many
successful acquisitions only the bad ones stand out.

~~~
hngiszmo
those were aquisitions by Google. Now a list of Microsoft:

~~~
slg
There are some success stories even just limiting it to enterprise software.
PowerPoint, Visio, and many products in the Dynamics family started out as
acquisitions.

~~~
TheLogothete
Not to mention SQL Server.

------
JBReefer
This is giant news for the .NET ecosystem. It means that MS is serious about
their push into Mobile and Linux, and that .NET developers aren't going to
have to work with Xamarin's ever-so-slightly-behind libraries anymore. It also
means that MS now produces an IDE on Linux, which is a crazy change from 10
years ago.

~~~
nacs
> It means that MS is serious about their push into Mobile and Linux

Mobile OK but Linux? Currently on the HN frontpage theres an article about how
Skype for Linux hasn't been updated for years and "is unable to join calls":
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11165568](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11165568)

~~~
alkonaut
They want devs to write for Linux because they are a services company who make
money from Azure VMs including those that run Linux.

They don't want end users to run Linux desktop.

So devtools/languages/cloud divisions inside Microsoft like Linux.

Those in ms who deal with end user applications (home users in this case, as
ms push Lync to business) probably see little point in investing in
development in Skype for Linux.

~~~
junto
This. MS want .Net to run on all platforms. Give developers awesome tooling
for free. Let them build. When they deploy, pay for Azure. It has an ongoing
usage cost. Xamarin is just part of their tooling.

------
janvdberg
Wow! Congratulations Nat Friedman and Miguel de Icaza (of Ximian fame). I
remember reading this blogpost like it was yesterday:
[http://nat.org/blog/2011/05/xamarin/](http://nat.org/blog/2011/05/xamarin/)

------
jonsmit
How much? I know it's undisclosed but it would be very interesting. Hopefully
someone leaks it.

The rumor was Miguel told MS to "F*#K Off" when MS presented him with an offer
many years ago. This lead to CoreCLR being open sourced and Visual Studio Code
being built.

I'd like to know if by undermining parts of Xamarins business they were able
to get them at substantial discount - especially with the tech industry
downturn. Or if failure in the Windows Phone market has made MS desperate and
forced their hand. Given it's undisclosed I'm guessing it's the former. I'd
like to know if telling MS to "F#&K Off" was a good strategy :)

~~~
nelp
Rumor is just south of $300 Million. A nice chunk of change...but Xamarin had
the gas and customers to head much higher valuations. Congrats to all
involved.

~~~
junto
You'd think that most of those customers are most likely to already be MS
customers though at a guess.

~~~
rbanffy
Having the relevant clients for your acquirer is a classic strategy for this
kind of exit.

------
msoad
3 years ago this would be a sad news for Xamarin, today with the new Microsoft
I'm glad to see this. Microsoft will not destroy Xamarin (I hope)

~~~
giancarlostoro
Microsoft is only a threat to JetBrains from where I'm standing and looking, I
have a feeling they will fix up Xamarin the way we all hope they will. I
really hope there will be a completely free option of Xamarin for Students and
maybe even on BizSpark.

~~~
livus
There is already a free option of Xamarin for students.[1] Earlier there used
to be a separate application process but now it is rolled into DreamSpark

[1][https://xamarin.com/student](https://xamarin.com/student)

~~~
Someone1234
There's also the "Starter Edition" for everyone else:

[https://xamarin.com/starter](https://xamarin.com/starter)

~~~
nissehulth
Starter edition is pretty much useless. You may use it to "get a taste" of
Xamarin, but you can't really make any useful apps with it.

------
vyrotek
I imagine .NET devs around the world are rejoicing (myself included). I hope
this means access to Xamarin through existing MSDN and BizSpark subscriptions.

~~~
cm2187
Rather integrate it in visual studio.

~~~
snoman
VS integration was recently re-written and re-released. I still use XS, but I
hear the VS integration is now pretty solid.

~~~
cm2187
I meant as part of the main distribution

~~~
yareally
It's a very prominent installation option in Visual Studio 2015 that you can't
miss. If you mean something else, please clarify.

~~~
cm2187
I meant as a standard feature in visual studio, not a paid addon

------
ultramancool
Hopefully this means the .NET for Android and iOS solutions will become better
supported and (maybe, I hope) free and open source like the rest of .NET is
now. Maybe not, I doubt there's any profit in it for them (or maybe there is
since they'd likely make it part of VS), but I'd really like to be able to
take .NET for mobile development more seriously.

------
big_paps
This probably also means Unity3d will soon be able to use an updated version
of Mono, because Microsoft wants to back them and doesn't force them to pay
the full licence price.

~~~
hokkos
Seriously unity could already do it without the old mono runtime with what MS
offer : the Roslyn compiler for C# and the LLILC a MSIL bitcode to LLVM
compiler for iOS, and the netCore runtime for android. Their C# to c++
compiler seem now a misguided way.

------
nodamage
I wonder when/if they will announce pricing changes. I would love to use
Xamarin but the current licensing fees (2 developers across iOS/Mac/Android)
of $6k/year are a total non-starter. If it gets rolled into MSDN or BizSpark I
would pretty much jump on it immediately. The current alternative of writing
C++ that runs across iOS/Mac/Android/Windows is a massive headache.

~~~
martin-adams
I think if Microsoft want to attract developers to building for Windows
(including phones and tablets), then adding first class support in Xamarin and
reducing the licensing fees would be a huge win.

~~~
bananaboy
But you can build for Windows and Windows Phone right now for free in a better
toolset than Xamarin. Visual Studio is much better.

~~~
martin-adams
I understood that one benefit of Xamarin is to build once and target many
platforms. If you're faced with iOS and Android as the top platforms,
including Windows for minimal cost without a complete rewrite is quite
appealing.

------
untog
I'm honestly amazed that it took this long. I've tried Xamarin before to make
iOS apps but couldn't justify paying an ongoing subscription for what is
basically a hobby project. I'd love it if MS expanded the "Starter Edition" to
allow more fully fledged apps - they could be seriously competitive with
Xcode.

~~~
Analemma_
I truly believe that it would've happened sooner, but Microsoft needed to wait
until it had built up some degree of confidence among developers that the
whole "new Microsoft" thing is for real. If they'd done it three years ago,
everyone would've panicked, assumed that things like e.g. .NET on Linux were
dead, and just written off Xamarin's offerings immediately. Now I think a lot
of people are at least cautiously optimistic that Microsoft's cross-platform
and OSS intentions are genuine.

You can see it right here in this thread: as another commenter said, not that
long ago this news would've prompted universal predictions of doom, whereas
now people seem thrilled. Timing is everything.

~~~
Nullabillity
We're still talking about the Microsoft that's less than a year away from
releasing Windows 10 and DX12. "New Microsoft" indeed.

------
pritambarhate
It will be interesting to see what happens to RoboVM which allows you to
develop iOS and Android application using Java with shared code base. (Similar
to what Xamarin does with C#) With third party JavaFX implementation even
shared GUI code is possible with RoboVM.

RoboVM was acquired by Xamarin in Oct. 2015 ([https://xamarin.com/pr/xamarin-
acquires-robovm](https://xamarin.com/pr/xamarin-acquires-robovm))

------
rjsamson
Congrats to Nat and Miguel! This seems to make a ton of sense, and unlike
other acquisitions by big corps this seems like a great move for both Xamarin
and their customers.

------
codeulike
What now for RoboVm I wonder. Given that its Java based and probably overlaps
with the main Xamarin product.

~~~
knocte
My next bet: Oracle will buy it from MS.

------
look_lookatme
A core group of these people (in the orbit of Miguel/Nat) have been plugging
away for like two decades on solving programs through building software. From
mc, to GNOME, to Ximian, to Mono, to Xamarian.

It was a lot of hard work and dedication and, above all, constant shipping.
Good for them.

------
RUG3Y
I really love the C# language and I'll be really excited if this means that C#
is a better choice for non-Windows platforms down the road.

------
JonD23
Today, a pure coincidence to the announcement that Microsoft acquired Xamarin,
my brother and I launched a preview into a project that we've been working on
for some time now. This is a Xamarin.Forms UI Inspector called XenForms:

[http://www.xenforms.com/](http://www.xenforms.com/)

Also, in the spirit of giving. I have released an open source version of a
game in Xamarin.Forms and CocosSharp. It's a These Crazy Walls Clone.

[https://github.com/jonedavis/Xamarin.Forms-With-
Cocosharp](https://github.com/jonedavis/Xamarin.Forms-With-Cocosharp)

Hope someone finds it useful!

------
marpstar
My coworkers and I have been predicting (and hoping for) this for a long time.
It'll be interesting to see how this affects licensing costs, particularly for
smaller teams. The per-year-per-platform license really turns me off as a solo
dev.

------
azurelogic
I'm shocked that they have waited this long. They really seemed to ramp up
support for Xamarin. Seemed like this was a no brainer.

~~~
shadyrudy
I thought they would have done this 2 years ago. It seems that every Build,
Xamarin was there in a big, big way.

------
kpao
So happy for Miguel and Nat. We worked with Xamarin when we ported Infinite
flight from Windows Phone to iOS and Android. We wouldn't be there if it
wasn't for them.

One thing I'm really looking forward to is efforts on the QA front. I'm scared
to update every time as things are frequently broken, especially on the iOS
side.

------
moonchrome
.NET now needs a solid compile-to-browser story - which is presumably coming
with some future version of web assembly (initial version doesn't support GC
or threads)

I'm looking forward to the day where I can ditch C++ for portability - .NET
really is an ideal replacement for most apps - you can write apps that don't
stress the GC by using value types and can control memory layouts relatively
well (unlike Java) and at the same time you can use reflection, GC and all the
niceties of modern programming platforms - unlike C++.

~~~
ZenoArrow
> ".NET now needs a solid compile-to-browser story"

You can compile .NET code to JavaScript using JSIL:

[http://jsil.org/](http://jsil.org/)

~~~
moonchrome
I've seen that but the showcase doesn't look very convincing compared to say
emscripten.

Do you know about any bigger projects using JSIL ?

~~~
ZenoArrow
I've not used JSIL myself, but the performance of the demos seems fairly
decent. Do you have any bigger .NET projects of your own you could try out?

If you're looking for asm.js/wasm support in particular, you may be interested
in LLILC, which appears to be a .NET Core to LLVM IR compiler, meaning you
could make use of Emscripten to convert the code to asm.js:

[https://github.com/dotnet/llilc](https://github.com/dotnet/llilc)

~~~
moonchrome
I don't, I've written a prototype for my lib a year ago in C# and probably
have that lying around somewhere but since then we've ported it to C++ and
done heavy refactoring/development - I could probably spend some time and try
to get that prototype working on JSIL but I need to see how the xamarin story
plays out before I invest significant time into this.

IIRC LLILC is ways off from actually being usable as a static compiler and
you'll still have to figure out how to ship a runtime and do GC in asm.js
(realistically can't) and not to mention it's single threaded so it's a
question if you can even get CoreCLR to run in such enviroment without heavy
modifications.

It would be huge if we could just write everything in C# (frontend/lib and
backend) but I don't see this realistically being possible for at least two
years given the development pace of webasm.

------
CosmicShadow
I hope this means I can get Xamarin through BizSpark now!

------
insulanian
What this means for MonoDevelop? Will it stagnate and die, or florish with
fresh water from Microsoft's wells? What will be THE tool to develop for/on
Linux?

~~~
fapjacks
C

~~~
insulanian
> What will be THE tool to develop for/on Linux?

I meant it in .NET context.

~~~
fapjacks
I know, I'm sorry, I couldn't resist. :)

------
chris_wot
For once, I see an acquisition that might actually work! There must have been
a blue moon.

Satya Nadella is a breath of fresh air. I don't say that very often about top-
level management (not that my opinion is all that important), I suspect if I
was employed by Microsoft I'd feel proud of working there.

~~~
fapjacks
Also part of the deal with him running the place was to have Bill Gates return
and spend a third of his time at Microsoft. Bill Gates has changed a lot over
the years. I'm really curious how much of this change he (Gates) has played a
part in.

------
fredliu
Definitely Xamarin is geared towards the .NET ecosystem, at least for now. But
.NET aside, as a cross-platform "platform", how does Xamarin compare with
React Native? Anybody has experience in both of them?

------
coderguy123
MS wanted to buy Xamarin way back. Xamarin held back. I remember some comment
to this effect from Miguel. Now that .Net Core looks awesome and will work
with LLVM backend. Wouldn't it just another step for MS to create what
Xamarin's core product is. I think Xamarin realized this and gave in. their
IPO dream shattered.

[https://twitter.com/migueldeicaza/status/400665313119055872](https://twitter.com/migueldeicaza/status/400665313119055872)

------
beyti
I hope this means visual studio integration comes for free. As a paid indie
developer for xamarin, being vs integration not included in indie license, was
the worst thing about xamarin for me.

for the issue in uservoice 2700votes
ATM:[https://xamarin.uservoice.com/forums/234640-xamarin-
suggesti...](https://xamarin.uservoice.com/forums/234640-xamarin-
suggestions/suggestions/3682605-visual-studio-support-at-the-indie-level)

------
devdenver
As a Xamarin subscriber, I'm guessing the future success of the merger (and
product future) depends on:

1) addressing the price-point, 2) core clr integration, 3) retaining the top
engineering talent at Xamarin, 4) addressing the iOS designer-specific issues

A couple notes:

For most LOB apps, I'm not convinced the code re-use is significant. The bulk
of work is in the interface and navigation which is, necessarily, handled by
coding android / ios specifics. Despite noble effort, the iOS design
essentially needs to be done in xcode (point 4 above).

The build/release process is and (presumably) always will be locked behind the
gates of technology's North Korea (Apple). They can throw a switch and
restrict 3rd party runtimes if and when they choose.

For businesses in the 5-100 million range, writing an expense app in 2017,
MSDN Xamarin should be a logical choice - but it has to be a platform with the
reliability of .NET and a simple cross-platform designer. For app-centric
startups, games, POS systems, etc. - it's probably a bad move.

For msft devs (and we are aging) it's win-win. The lure of C# gets you into
mobile dev, and you _will_ learn iOS and Android in the process.

------
bkovacic
Hope this means lower prices. Or even some free edition? :)

~~~
solutionyogi
I strongly feel that they will provide a free edition which works with Visual
Studio Code.

~~~
bkovacic
I hope they do. I'm pretty sure that pricing is the key factor that is
stopping xamarin from being way more popular

~~~
martin1b
Would be smart to release windows phone support for free, but IOS and android
support costs. More windows phone apps for app store for no cost to developer.

------
mrpippy
My reaction: what took them so long? This has seemed obvious for years now.

------
JupiterMoon
Embrace, extend... I will be interested in seeing what happens next.

No sarcasm intended. This is not an attack or a warning. This is curiosity.

------
sremani
Congrats Miguel, you have done a fantastic job since 2003 for alt.net world. I
hope bigger things are on your plate now at MSFT.

------
nshung
Do apps written in C# with Xamarin perform better than those written in React
Native? What are the differences?

~~~
iLoch
React Native applications will be faster to develop thanks to React being
inherently fast to develop. I would expect a React Native app to perform the
same or better than Xamarin, due to React Native's asynchronous bridge
approach. I don't have data to back this up, though.

~~~
moonchrome
JS apps being faster to develop than C# ? Maybe prototype, but .NET/C# are
superior dev platforms in every way.

~~~
kristianp
I think the reasoning behind this is that react allows you to almost instantly
see the result of code changes in your app. With c# you have to wait minutes
for each build and deployment cycle, which is painful.

In terms of runtime performance, I guess in theory c# should be faster than
javascript, but it depends on a lot of things, like the program being run, the
speed of the mono runtime on the android or IOS platform being used, etc.

~~~
ghuntley
Xamarin has continuous/live coding. If you're doing the code -> compile ->
deploy -> watch dance then you're doing it wrong.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lH90fVkXQx8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lH90fVkXQx8)

~~~
kristianp
Cool, thanks.

------
systems
what does this mean for monodevelop .. i hope they maintain the linux version

~~~
legomaster
I wonder if it means a transition to Visual Studio Code at some point. I doubt
it would happen soon, but I feel like there's a lot more support behind that
IDE than MonoDevelop.

~~~
Yuioup
Visual Studio Code is an entirely different animal, built with JavaScript on
top of node.js (like Atom).

MonoDevelop is a clone of Visual Studio written in C# which isn't even
remotely compatible with the mis-named Visual Studio Code.

If they want to port MonoDevelop to Visual Studio Code, they would have to re-
write all the features from scratch.

At this point they might as well re-write Visual Studio to node.js and not
waste time on porting MonoDevelop.

I hope it doesn't happen. I certainly don't want to develop on an IDE written
on top of a God-awful language with a ridiculously slow run-time.

~~~
kayoone
Despite that, Visual Studio Code is pretty awesome though.

~~~
Yuioup
I agree, but I wish they had chosen another platform to build it on.

Maybe when we finally have a universal bytecode for the web and ECMAScript 6
then developing on it will be less painful. Let us hope.

~~~
carussell
The vscode source is very well "layered". It's not totally inconceivable that
the vscode folks or some other team take it and allow you to choose at build
time whether to target it's current DOM-backed UI or one backed by more
"native" drawing routines and widgets.

------
smanuel
What's interesting about Xamarin is that they are very local about OSS
(Miguel) but what they did was not very "open sourcey" \- obtaining a
perpetual license for Mono and this way making sure that no one else can put
Mono on Android / iOS. Ever.

And then charging 1000$ annually per developer, per platform.

On the other hand they've made something that developers love (from what I've
heard, I've never used Xamarin's stuff personally) so they deserve the
credits.

Congrats to the team.

------
Animats
Scary. Xamarin sells tools to support multi-platform app development.
Microsoft would want that only to the extent that it assisted migration to
Microsoft platforms. Not away from them.

~~~
swalsh
You're thinking of old Microsoft. New Microsoft is all about Azure, the walled
gardens of windows is slowly being left behind. Take a look at .NET Core.

~~~
Nullabillity
Take a look at DX12, WPF, etc. The walled garden is still there and getting
worse, they're just sacrificing their other markets.

~~~
dguaraglia
You are talking about destkop technologies that are necessarily tied with
their desktop offering. When it comes to the backend/server side of things,
Microsoft has making huge pushes to open source/extend their tools so that
they can be used in other operating systems (mainly Linux.) My belief is they
realize that the war for the server OS is kind of lost already, so they might
as well offer tools that everyone can use on any of the many cloud platforms
out there, while providing good tooling for their own PaaS solutions and make
their money that way.

------
simonebrunozzi
TL;DR here: [https://github.com/simonebrunozzi/MNMN/blob/master/Weekly-
Su...](https://github.com/simonebrunozzi/MNMN/blob/master/Weekly-
Summaries/2016-10.md#3-microsoft-acquires-xamarin)

------
ridruejo
I have been following Nat and Miguel's progress since the Ximian days. This
has been more than a decade in the making and I am incredibly happy for their
hard-earned success

------
chx
Xamarin bought by Microsoft two days after Skype for Linux can't join calls by
new clients. Oh yeah. The future is bright. Just not for the Linux desktop
pieces of Mono.

~~~
coldtea
Desktop Linux was, is, and will probably always be a niche thing. And if the
open source community is so great, as some of its proponents argue, let them
build their own Skype.

The non desktop pieces of Mono should be getting lots of improvements, though.

~~~
systems
"if the open source community is so great" if.. i dont see how they can be an
if .. it is 100% absolutely great .. with all the great FOSS projects around,
how much more evidence do you need

~~~
coldtea
It's because I've been around for a while.

The idea, and failed promise, of FOSS wasn't that there will be many "great
FOSS projects around", it was that it will win the desktop (and not just as
some FOSS released by some corporate behemoth, but by community -bazaar- FOSS
projects).

That, it never did.

And in fact, in all those years, they've failed to even better Photoshop (Gimp
is still far behind), MS Office (Open/Libre Office and co), etc and other such
basics. Heck, compare GTK/Gnome's latest APIs to something like Cocoa (and
even more so with Swift) and weep.

And then SaaS used server-side FOSS to kill the free part behind the service
providers server farms. They can use all the FOSS goodies they like, and
nobody gets to see their code or change it.

~~~
sangnoir
>And in fact, in all those years, they've failed to even better Photoshop
(Gimp is still far behind), MS Office

Your memory is selective: they did however, manage to make a better IIS
(Apache, Nginx), a better IE (Firefox, Chromium) - even a better System X
kernel (BSD as adopted by Apple).

Win some, lose some.

~~~
coldtea
It's not selective: it's specifically about the desktop space. I've mentioned
that they did fine on the server.

So, IIS and xBSD etc is out of scope regarding what I've said. I also
mentioned explicity community/bazaar projects, in the original FOSS spirit of
the late nineties that was said to conquer the world.

As for Firefox and Chrome, both are based from code by big (at least at the
time) corporations (Netscape, and Apple, and later Google).

If the latter didn't get involved with Webkit, I don't see us using KHTML 2016
today. As for the former, Mozilla (which begat Firefox) also started with big
commercial backing with full time employees from Netscape for several years
(until the company burned to the ground), and until today works with mostly
paid Mozilla staff, not random community people. It was able to do that based
on inheriting some of the momentum of Netscape (which at one point was the
number 1 browser), and, based on that, to ask for millions from Google etc to
have it as the default search engine. Without Netscape's legacy code, 2+ years
of refactoring/engineering work, and initial user base (at the time of the
transition) it wouldn't have gone far.

In other words, yeah, open source can do a great job on the desktop too, if it
starts as a proprietary code donation and has huge funding. But that "open
source" is just a licensing model, so of course it won't be any different in
any characteristic to proprietary projects, apart from the licensing -- the
CLR released by Microsoft is also "open source" under this metrics.

My comment was about the FOSS bazaar model of volunteers from all over the
world, the one touted by the Gnome, etc teams, -- which didn't fare as well on
the desktop space.

------
gravypod
I'm very excited to see how JetBrains acts. They are one of the last
competitors in this market that are planning on making a C# IDE.

I would love to see how this turns out.

------
jensvdh
Microsoft is killing it lately. First Swiftkey, now this.

------
perseusprime11
I actually think this is not going to do much for Microsoft besides bringing
some great talent. In general web software development is slowly moving away
from .Net to Node. if this is a play for mobile, then it will be more
enterprise focused as I don't see the regular App Store developers using
Xamarin.

------
cm3
Congrats. Since Nat and Miguel met while applying to work at Microsoft and
then went on to build GNOME (GNU Network Object Model Environment) with major
help from Federico, which was inspired by Microsoft COM, hence the name, it's
nice they finally managed to join Microsoft.

------
captainmuon
Huh, didn't that happen a few months ago? Or what am I confusing this with?

I thought this was announced end of last year already, with Xamarin moving
there products to Roslyn and Microsoft offering Xamarin's products for non-
Windows platforms... or did my mind just make that up?

~~~
T-A
You may be thinking of
[http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2014/Apr-09.html](http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2014/Apr-09.html)

and [http://www.pcworld.com/article/2847032/xamarin-integrates-
wi...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/2847032/xamarin-integrates-with-free-
visual-studio-community-to-let-developers-build-android-ios-apps.html)

------
rubicon33
"Anything you can do in Objective-C, Swift, or Java you can do in C# with
Xamarin"

What about the things that you can do in Objective-C but cant do in Java, or
visa versa? iOS has some iOS specific features that I'm not sure how Xamarin
could possibly map to Java.

~~~
ntaylor
Xamarin offers common APIs for platform-specific behaviors when using
Xamarin.Forms, otherwise, when targeting Xamarin.iOS or Xamarin.Android,
you're developing with pure-native APIs. You will need to use the native
provider for whatever action you're executing. If you'd like to be able to
reuse common concepts cross-platform, then you need to write your own
interface and provider model.

Xamarin is the equivalent of a thin wrapper/intercace over the platform-
implementations. Xamarin doesn't really "do" much, it just calls the
underlying API which maps to the specific behavior. The type and method
signatures for Objective-C and Java are very near synonymous in Xamarin/C#.

------
avasylev
Does anyone know if most of Xamarin team located in Boston? The web sites has
San Francisco as headquarters, but for some reason I always thought company is
mostly in Boston. Curios how much this acquisition increases Microsoft's dev
center in Boston.

~~~
pianoben
I remember browsing through their job listings a year or two ago, which gave
me the same impression. All of product engineering was in Boston - SF just has
sales-type roles.

------
anonbanker
Miguel got the buyout he's been hoping for all this time. Congrats to him for
this. it's been a long road making Microsoft open, but nobody more than de
Icaza should be given the credit for this.

------
martijn_himself
I hope Microsoft focus will be on driving adoption of Xamarin (and therefore
C#, .NET, and Visual Studio) rather than generating revenue. Current pricing
is prohibitive for small shops and individuals.

EDIT: a new era for Developers, Developers, Developers?

------
xenadu02
This has been so obviously coming for several years. I'm surprised it took
them this long.

------
ed_blackburn
This has been coming for a long while. Lots of synergy. I'm not so interested
in the client aspect, which is where I suspect Microsoft will gain most, but
more in the synergy / potential convergence of Mono / CoreCLR.

Good luck and well done to Miguel et al.

------
Yhippa
I thought this was a forgone conclusion but I guess it never actually happened
yet. Congrats to the team!

Wouldn't it be cool if they gave this same treatment to ReactOS down the road?
I think Microsoft has woken up to the power of open source technologies.

------
hokkos
Great news, hopefully they will listen to the number one request and have
cheaper prices.

------
king_magic
This is awesome, fantastic news. Congrats to the Xamarin team, they are
awesome people.

------
kenshaw
I wouldn't be surprised if they followed this up with a purchase of Unity3d
...

~~~
martijn_himself
This would make a lot of sense. If Microsoft acquired Unity3d and updated C#
language support to a recent version it would mean there would virtually no
reason to use anything but C# for application and game development.

------
cm2187
How long before Apple kicks them out of the apple store? I thought Apple
always had a policy of limited tolerance toward xamarin (after having banned
them once). Isn't them becoming MSFT a _casus belli_?

~~~
sremani
Its Google which logger heads with Microsoft. Microsoft and Apple generally
get along. Heck, for IPad Pro announcement Microsoft Office was featured on
the stage.

~~~
tomjen3
Apple is the market leader, which means they have the most to lose with
Xamarin commoditizing the different mobile devices. MS, as the clear loser,
has by far the most to gain.

Which is why I expect MS to make Xamarin available for free, and push it quite
heavily.

~~~
V-2
Market leader in what sense?

------
milge
Hopefully MS keeps expanding the Xamarin platform instead of mothballing it.

~~~
Zekio
Hopefully they will make it available through dreamspark and bizspark

~~~
Avalaxy
Oh yes, free licenses through Bizspark would be awesome.

------
hawski
Xamarin is employing for remote positions. How Microsoft will deal with remote
workers or international offices? Will they all just become Microsoft
employees/contractors?

------
Ryuuke
Awesome news for .NET devs, I hope they'll lower the price !

------
massemphasis
A friend of mine became extremely good at build systems and hacking them by
making Xamarin's stuff build. They put so many tricky roadblocks in to prevent
easy builds.

------
ratfacemcgee
I always thought Xamarin was a MS product anyways. Which reminds me, i need a
new shirt...

EDIT: ahh, they don't do the free shirt promotion anymore :(

------
D_Guidi
from a 'top' comment ([http://goo.gl/t3WvOL](http://goo.gl/t3WvOL)): "This
will double the number of people at Microsoft who love .NET and don't think
.NET developers are dinosaurs for not wanting to switch to a scripting
language invented in the '90s."

~~~
scriptproof
You should avoid to repeat stupid comments. JS was invented in 1995 (and the
last version in 2015), C# was made in 2000, so 5 years after.

------
shanselman
Woot!

~~~
torgoguys
Indeed! One might add "finally!" to that as well.

From the outside, it seemed like such a natural fit that it was inevitable.
From the inside, I'm sure a lots of things had to happen at MS. New Microsoft
or not, it's still a big company with lots of people they have to support, so
I doubt they take on such stuff lightly.

------
ff7c11
It had been on the cards for quite some time. Like everyone, I'm hoping for a
massive change in pricing structure.

------
dotdo
Microsoft made some perfect move. I am wondering why Apple did nothing, it
always claim it has the biggest cash flow

------
joeyspn
With the new MS backing I hope Xamarin adds other languages like TypeScript to
their product... This would be awesome.

------
skc
This was always on the cards but still nice to see. Congrats to all involved.
Should be some fun times ahead.

------
nelp
Wonder what this means for Xamarin University? Shouldn't that be made
available for free on Channel9?

~~~
TheLogothete
You can get a few months free to dev esssentials right now.

------
stevehiehn
If they make it free I'll use it.

------
iolothebard
SWEEEEEEET! Sorry, I wanted to use it but when it runs me more than a full
MSDN subscription, I decline.

------
user8341116
>there are people out there that think VS is a good IDE >they don't just use
vim or emacs >there are people out there that think Xamarin is a good
technology >there are people out there that want to build mobile apps in a
dead Microsoft design pattern (MVVM) I want off this wild ride.

------
neximo4
Well its about time. I wonder if they waited for the prices of startups to
turn down.

------
eddie_31003
As my man jeff spicoli would've said, "Awesome, totally awesome"

------
nelp
The Windows Phone guys must just be hating this news. #WindowsPhone is Dead.

~~~
UK-AL
Not really. People will develop on this platform in order to share code
between iOS and android.

However it also makes it easy to add windows phone.

------
Happpy
A few days ago I though G would buy Jetbrains in the coming months. Now...

------
srameshc
With this, I am hoping MS will put a lot more of effort into NativeScript.

~~~
kayoone
Why Nativescript ? Feels like it is a completely different direction to this.

------
dowrow
Hold on, are you telling me Xamarin was not a Microsoft product?

------
miguelrochefort
I wonder what that means for Xamarin.Forms.

~~~
wvenable
Given the existence of the .Net core, I think Microsoft has little plans to
look backwards. I wouldn't hold out much hope for Xamarin.Forms.

~~~
UK-AL
Whats .net core got to do with xamarin.forms

Xamarin.forms has nothing to do with winforms.

It's a cross platform mobile UI library.

------
shadowmint
Is it just me, or does it ring of the shrill sighs of relief from C#
developers who have been watching their platform decline in here?

------
wehadfun
How is this going to effect pricing?

~~~
vijayr
It would be awesome if they make it fully free. That is one way to take on
iOS/Android. Microsoft doesn't have anything to lose anyway

------
PanosJee
I wonder why it was so much delayed!

------
alehander42
heroic stuff for miguel

------
itgoon
'Bout time!

------
rbanffy
Not surprising.

------
kul_
SHIT!

------
netsparkmobiole
wow this is amazing.

------
draw_down
I stopped paying much attention to .NET because I switched to JS a while back,
but I seriously thought this had already happened years ago.

------
l3m0ndr0p
Say goodbye to this product in a few years.

Resistance is futile

~~~
momozaur
yep

