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Microsoft Acquires Xamarin

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Re: Microsoft Acquires Xamarin

#331

Post by pjmlp »

Sir_Substance wrote: post #197
mynameisvlad wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering Microsoft has no Mac IDE, I'm not sure how Xamarin could be considered a competitor.

...because Visual Studio is a C#/C++ IDE that works on Windows, and Xamarin Studio is also a C#/C++ IDE that works on Windows? Xamarin Studio is a swiss army knife. I don't know about your use case, but I use it under the name Monodevelop on linux (not really sure what that association is) and as Xamarin studio on windows. For my use case, it's a C# and C++ IDE for desktop development, same as visual studio. It's cer…

Have you ever used .NET on its own platform?

Mono only supports a subset of the whole stack.

No sane .NET developer would use Mono on Windows, its purpose is .NET portability to other OSes.

Re: Microsoft Acquires Xamarin

#333

Post by josteink »

Sir_Substance wrote: post #86
littlegreenb18 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't apply here. This is a strategic purchase for Microsoft. They have no competing technology. That was in reference to standards. Microsoft wanted to turn open standards into proprietary standards to drive people toward their products.

...Xamarin studio isn't a competitor to Visual Studio? That's all I know that Xamarin makes, so I think this article is going a bit over my head, but it'll be a shame if I suddenly need a Microsoft account to use it. I do like diversity in my language tooling.

> ...Xamarin studio isn't a competitor to Visual Studio? That's all I know that Xamarin makes

Last I checked, that was just a forked and rebranded Mono Develop with Xamarin's main product line (iOS and Android support for .NET) bundled in.

Re: Microsoft Acquires Xamarin

#334

Post by 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?

Re: Microsoft Acquires Xamarin

#336

Post by josteink »

jonsmit wrote: post #38

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 down…

> 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

As a CoreCLR contributor, my impression was always that the mono-team was extremely happy about .NET official going open-source and how that made it possible to align the two code-bases in a much better fashion.

I don't think I've ever seen CoreCLR portrayed as an effort to "undermine" Xamarin or mono. Rather I'd take it as an imitation, the ultimate form of complement.

Where did you get/form that picture?

Re: Microsoft Acquires Xamarin

#337

Post by rbanffy »

bunderbunder wrote: post #281
EvanPlaice wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

> they never did anything to indicate that they might sue Ximian or Xamarin.

That doesn't mean Microsoft would never sue them or their users. If a Fortune 500 company using Mono receives a letter from Microsoft, they'll act exactly the same as any Android manufacturer that received similar letters.

Re: Microsoft Acquires Xamarin

#338

Post by rbanffy »

gnoway wrote: post #233
sirkneeland wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nokia was not successful (by any definition of the word) by the time Microsoft bought it.

That's true, they weren't. Several years before that purchase, Stephen Elop (an MS executive) became CEO of Nokia. Within 6 months of his hire, Nokia signed an agreement with MS to sell Windows Phone devices; the classic Symbian OS and the Linux-based Meego - both of which had shipping hardware - were canceled in favor of exclusive focus on Windows Phone. Within the next few years, Nokia laid off over 20k people, the…

> There was some amount of controversy associated with the above.

Can't see why. It's obvious Microsoft perfected executive outplacement as an offensive weapon.

Re: Microsoft Acquires Xamarin

#339

Post by vsl »

bad_user wrote: post #243

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. An…

FWIW, in 2014, Microsoft bought HockeyApp. It's still actively developed and new features are being added. I expected it to die soon then, but apparently not all acquisitions, by MS in particular, end badly.

Re: Microsoft Acquires Xamarin

#340

Post by rbanffy »

junto wrote: post #230
nelp wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

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