http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/May-16.html

Today we start Xamarin <http://www.xamarin.com/>, our new company focused on 
Mono-based products.

These are some of the things that we will be doing at Xamarin:

   - Build a new commercial .NET offering for iOS
   - Build a new commercial .NET offering for Android
   - Continue to contribute, maintain and develop the open source Mono and 
   Moonlight components.
   - Explore the Moonlight opportunities in the mobile space and the Mac 
   appstore.

We believe strongly in splitting the presentation layer from the business 
logic <http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Apr-06.html#split> in your 
application and supporting both your backend needs with C# on the server, 
the client or mobile devices and giving you the tools to use .NET languages 
in every desktop and mobile 
client<http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Feb-14.html>
.

Development started early this morning, we will first deliver the iPhone 
stack, followed by the Android stack, and then the Moonlight ports to both 
platforms.

The new versions of .NET for the iPhone and Android will be source 
compatible with MonoTouch and Mono for Android. Like those versions, they 
will be commercial products, built on top of the open core Mono.

In addition, we are going to provide support and custom development of Mono. 
A company that provides International Mono Support, if you will.

As usual, your feedback will help us determine which platforms and features 
are important to you. Help us by filling out our 
survey<https://spreadsheets0.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?hl=en&hl=en&formkey=dHZNYTFXU3dqbXp6d2JwajhXTGRUNlE6MQ#gid=0>.
 
If you give us your email address, we will also add you to our preview/beta 
list for our upcoming products.
Fighting for Your Right to Party

We have been trying to spin Mono off from Novell for more than a year now. 
Everyone agreed that Mono would have a brighter future as an independent 
company, so a plan was prepared last year.

To make a long story short, the plan to spin off was not executed. Instead 
on Monday May 2nd, the Canadian and American teams were laid off; Europe, 
Brazil and Japan followed a few days later. These layoffs included all the 
MonoTouch and MonoDroid engineers and other key Mono developers. Although 
Attachmate allowed us to go home that day, we opted to provide technical 
support to our users until our last day at Novell, which was Friday last 
week.

We were clearly bummed out by this development, and had no desire to quit, 
especially with all the great progress in this last year. So, with a heavy 
dose of motivation from mymusic teacher <http://benjaminzander.com/>, we 
hatched a plan.

Now, two weeks later, we have a plan in place, which includes both angel 
funding for keeping the team together, as well as a couple of engineering 
contracts that will help us stay together as a team while we ship our 
revenue generating products.
Next Steps

Our plan is to maximize the pleasure that developers derive from using Mono 
and .NET languages on their favorite platforms.

We do have some funding to get started and ship our initial products. But we 
are looking to raise more capital to address the shortcomings that we could 
not afford to do before, these include:

   - Tutorials for our various developer stacks
   - API documentation for the various Mono-specific APIs
   - Dedicated Customer Support Software (assistly or getsatisfaction)
   - Upgrade our Bug system
   - Training
   - Consulting and Support
   - and Marketing: we have a best of breed developer platform, and we need 
   the world to know. Our previous marketing budget is what the ancient Olmec 
   culture referred to 
asZero<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0_(number)#History_of_zero>
   .

Stay tuned for more, meanwhile, hope to see you in July at the Monospace 
conference in Boston! <http://monospace.us/>

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