Announcing Xamarin 3 • Hacker News Board

Re: Announcing Xamarin 3

#81

Post by supermatt » Wed, May 28, 2014, 5:20 PM UTC

migueldeicaza wrote: post #78

supermatt wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which would be breach of terms, resulting in unlimited civil penalties. It should be pretty easy for Xamarin to track that kind of behaviour. If said enterprise was so inclined they could share a valid license, or simply create new trial accounts every 30 days. Organisations I have worked for tend to be pretty hot on their licensing obligations. Fines can be pretty steep.

That assumes that we want to spend our time tracking down infringers (hard to do) and litigating (slow and expensive)

Well, thats your choice, but the duration of the trial doesn't affect that (given the 'workarounds' mentioned).

Re: Announcing Xamarin 3

#82

Post by adl » Wed, May 28, 2014, 5:26 PM UTC

migueldeicaza wrote: post #79

adl wrote: post #77

I know that the official comment regrading Linux support is that there are no plans to support it right now, I just want to say that there are people on Linux that are willing to pay for your product! I'm developing cross platform mobile apps with HTML5 and I would jump at the chance of using Xamarin instead (I was a C# developer in another life). I might just end up running it in a VM, but it would be great running…

Once we charge you, you would expect the same level of support that we provide users on other platforms. And The Linux desktop is just too fragmented for us to be able to do this and deliver the support you need.

Thanks for your quick reply Miguel, I do understand the difficulties of supporting the Linux ecosystem.

I hope that someday it becomes worthwhile for Xamarin to provide that support, in the meantime, another laptop or a VM will have to do. ;)

Xamarin 3.0 looks great, congratulations!

Re: Announcing Xamarin 3

#83

Post by soapdog » Wed, May 28, 2014, 5:37 PM UTC

I've never played with C# or Xamarin but this tool set is looking really good, specially the F# thing.

Anyone care to share their stories about F#? it appears to be a nice functional language.

Re: Announcing Xamarin 3

#84

Post by kayoone » Wed, May 28, 2014, 5:54 PM UTC

supermatt wrote: post #58

I tinkered around with Xamarin, and a very basic app (using some 3rd party libraries) or even using the tutorial/sample apps was immediately outside of their free tier. Now I would like to understand the logic behind the 30 day free trial. If you are preventing app distribution (binaries are only valid for 24hrs when compiled in the trial version) why restrict it to 30 days? Why not allow people to tinker around as m…

Agreed, for all i can see Xamarin is perfect, but as i can't really play around with it and as it's quite expensive if you just want to publish a hobby app, i can't see myself using it yet.

Re: Announcing Xamarin 3

#85

Post by wvenable » Wed, May 28, 2014, 5:59 PM UTC

migueldeicaza wrote: post #78

supermatt wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which would be breach of terms, resulting in unlimited civil penalties. It should be pretty easy for Xamarin to track that kind of behaviour. If said enterprise was so inclined they could share a valid license, or simply create new trial accounts every 30 days. Organisations I have worked for tend to be pretty hot on their licensing obligations. Fines can be pretty steep.

That assumes that we want to spend our time tracking down infringers (hard to do) and litigating (slow and expensive)

The assumption is the risk is high enough that firms will not infringe.

You're assuming that current overly crippled evaluation model is good enough to show off your product -- I think the overwhelming consensus is that it is not.

Re: Announcing Xamarin 3

#86

Post by bachmeier » Wed, May 28, 2014, 6:02 PM UTC

kerbs wrote: post #70

supermatt wrote: post #58

I tinkered around with Xamarin, and a very basic app (using some 3rd party libraries) or even using the tutorial/sample apps was immediately outside of their free tier. Now I would like to understand the logic behind the 30 day free trial. If you are preventing app distribution (binaries are only valid for 24hrs when compiled in the trial version) why restrict it to 30 days? Why not allow people to tinker around as m…

Considering it's per-developer: Imagine an enterprise of 20 devs hacking away at various Xamarin projects with one dedicated "deploy" person. They'd get away with not paying licenses for 19 of those devs.

And while they're busy stopping that one enterprise from using their software without paying (which probably wouldn't have happened anyway) they're going to lose 100 potential customers. Not the best strategy.

Re: Announcing Xamarin 3

#87

Post by hatred » Wed, May 28, 2014, 6:15 PM UTC

hatred wrote: post #35

gum_ina_package wrote: post #23

Now all they have to do is make it free. Seriously though, as a student I can't shell out $299 for a license and even at the $99/year student rate (with proof of relevant course work), I can't see myself paying $99/year to write/maintain apps I've built. Especially considering the $99/year Apple app store fee. Please, Xamarin, show us young C# devs some love! update: not really sure why the down votes. I'm big fan of…

I certainly did not like the lousy words written above which explains the down-votes. But certainly the team at Xamarin can look upon his request and try if they can lower the license fee for students.

I wonder why the down-votes are for when all I was making was a earnest request for a price reduction for fellow students

Re: Announcing Xamarin 3

#88

Post by migueldeicaza » Wed, May 28, 2014, 6:17 PM UTC

yawn wrote: post #20

How well does the new Forms stuff play with existing MTD? How hard would it be to transition from MTD to Forms?

You can mix and match.

The transition depends on whether you use MTD just as a consumer, or whether you subclass it extensively (like I used to do on TweetStation).

The former is easy, the latter not.

Re: Announcing Xamarin 3

#89

Post by octopus » Wed, May 28, 2014, 6:42 PM UTC

Aldo_MX wrote: post #76

benologist wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could do that right now anyway with a single license and a shared computer if they were really interested in circumventing the licensing. I think a much larger issue is the current (and onwards) generations of indies, enthusiasts and kids who are actively prohibited from trying Xamarin.

For "non-enterprise" developers, I would suggest Corona instead, restricting in-app purchases and adding a revenue limit for the free/cheaper tiers feels like the best model in my opinion. It doesn't compromise at all the experience for developers: http://coronalabs.com/products/corona-sdk/faqs/

Except that you need to use Lua (and most Xamarin customers are C# shops) and you don't have any control on the build process of the app. I hate waiting for some cloud service to send me back a binary version of my app. A slightly better alternative for Lua coders is to use Corona Cards (you do the building on your own machine) but this doesn't have a free version.

Re: Announcing Xamarin 3

#90

Post by benologist » Wed, May 28, 2014, 6:52 PM UTC

swalsh wrote: post #48

masivemunkey wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. It's a great product, but $300 per year is cost prohibitive for me.

I think $300 is a pretty cheap price to pay for a huge productivity boost.

It's only a huge productivity boost if you're already working with .NET. For everyone else the free trial limitations are so severe you're being asked to pay $299 just to try it out while most alternatives are cheaper, free, or open source.