The Open Sauce Mono project, which was the Novell led effort to provide an open source implementation of the Vole's .NET on Linux, has been moved to Germany and the US office shut down.
Attachmate has re-organised the Novell business it bought for $2.2 billion and has rallied its SuSE and the Buckshee's business in Nuremburg.
According to Internet News, Attachmate told an unknown number of US based Novell developers working on the open source Mono project to clean out their desks and collect their p45s.
It is not clear what the project's future is because Jeff Hawn, Chairman and CEO of The Attachmate Group said that prioritisation and resourcing of certain development efforts, including Mono, will now be determined by the business unit leaders there. Whatever that means.
He insisted however that all technology roadmaps remain intact with resources being added to those if customers are interested enough.
Mono is not a popular project among open saucers who see it at best as a necessary evil. It was started by Miguel de Icaza in 2004 and uses Vole-style technology. It is a way to run .NET on Linux. There are a few patent problems with the beast which is one of the reasons that Red Hat did not touch it.
It is not clear if Miguel has been sentenced to Nuremburg, but pulling apart his team like that must miff him somewhat. It is not clear if moving to Germany would give the project Lebensraum or be a precursor to being mothballed. Still anything would be better than Utah.
.jpg){kind=icon}
.jpg){kind=icon}
.jpg){kind=icon}
.Net was a reaction to Java, and Mono was an attempt to inject patent worries into an open source stack.
Java is still big, however Python 3, Ruby 2, lua, Google Go, all came after, and are not held back by compatibility with older implementations.
.Net and Mono peaked two years ago. They will always have a place in Microsoft internal business / cloud, however they will be amongst a stable of languages as Microsoft itself is now adapting, to running all those newer languages in it's 'platform as a service' stack.
An interpreted language such as C# cannot run without a piece of software to do the translation to native code.
That 'piece of software' is part of .Net on windows, and part of Mono if you really want it on Linux.
There can be no C# on Linux without mono.
So attachmate stopping / slowing development resource for Mono just means C# has less reach.
Now the semantics are over Mandy, I'll restate my point but put it in terms that you like.
C# was a reaction to Java
Java is still big, however Python 3, Ruby 2, lua, Google Go, all came after, and are not held back by compatibility with older implementations.