Aug 28, 2024 15:00:00

Microsoft donates 'Mono' to Wine team, some hope Mono will regain vitality by leaving Microsoft's hands

Microsoft has announced that it has handed over management of

Mono , the open source implementation of the .NET Framework, to the WineHQ team behind Wine, software for running Windows applications on Unix-based operating systems.

Thank you to all the Mono developers! · Issue #21796 · mono/mono · GitHub
https://github.com/mono/mono/issues/21796

Microsoft Hands Mono Over to the Wine Project - OMG! Ubuntu
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2024/08/microsoft-mono-project-to-wine

'WineHQ is now taking over upstream management of the Mono project,' Microsoft's Jeff Schwartz announced in a post on the Mono project's

official website and GitHub repository. 'Source code will remain available in the existing Mono project and other repositories, but the repositories may be archived. Binaries will remain available for up to four years.'

Schwartz praised the Mono project for pioneering .NET implementations on operating systems such as Android, iOS, and Linux, and for its contributions to the use of .NET across platforms. 'I'd like to thank the efforts of those who worked on it and all the Mono developers,' he said.

According to OMG! Ubuntu, a news blog that covers Ubuntu-related topics, this announcement has come as a surprise to some in the developer community, due to the turmoil the Mono project has gone through and the history of its involvement with Microsoft.

Mono is an open source project launched in 2001 by

Miguel de Icaza , who is famous for developing GNOME, a desktop environment for Unix-based operating systems.

Mono was used to develop a variety of popular software, including the Banshee media player, but it eventually came under fire because it reimplemented parts of Microsoft's .NET Framework, C# language, and related libraries, and Linux developers were concerned that Microsoft would sue them for patent infringement if they used even a small amount of Mono.

At the time, Microsoft was very aggressive in protecting its patents, so the concerns about using Mono were real.

De Icaza's Mono development company, Ximian, was subsequently acquired by Novell in 2003, and in 2011, Novell was acquired by the Attachmate Group, which promptly fired most of Novell's Mono development staff, including De Icaza.

So in 2011, de Icaza founded Xamarin to develop Mono, which was later acquired by Microsoft in 2016.

With Microsoft officially becoming the owner of the Mono project and sorting out the licensing issues, the patent-related concerns were over. Mono was used in many Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android apps, but it never regained popularity on Linux. In 2016, Microsoft released .NET Core (now .NET), a free, cross-platform, open-source implementation of the .NET Framework, which implemented similar features to Mono, reducing Mono's relevance.

Regarding the future of Mono after it leaves Microsoft's hands, OMG! Ubuntu stated, 'With Mono now in the Wine project, the patent issues resolved, and Mono returning to a more traditional community-driven development model, there is every chance that it will become more vibrant again.'