06/19/2011 08:04:59 AM EST

I think what's missing in all of this is that MS Developer Division having revenue is *side effect* of the strategy of getting developers to write .NET apps in order to sell more OS, SQL Server, etc. licenses. As such, DevDiv revenues (while large to someone like me) are really quite paltry compared to the real powerhouse revenue-generators for MS and increasing those revenues will probably *never* be the driver of any strategic decision the company makes (at least not in the foreseeable future). In this context, anything DevDiv could do (including MONO) that doesn't directly help MS sell *other* of its own products is seen as a distraction/low priority for them. In this context, selling more VS licenses while enabling the sale of competing or replacement products (linux, Android, iOs, etc.) isn't in their (admittedly too narrow) interests and is the reason that MS has historically been luke-warm at best in re: its relationship to the MONO effort. Given this set of actual priorities for DevDiv, its hard to see how their embracing MONO could help them. Sure, they *might* get minor kudos from the small slice of the OSS-focused world not predisposed to hate all things from Redmond as a knee-jerk reaction, but at the expense of enabling the sale of products/platforms that directly compete with where the *real* money is made by MS. Such a move would make zero business sense given Microsoft's current business strategy IMO. Just my 2 cents -- I too wish for the success of MONO, but I doubt MS will be their White Knight (if indeed they need one at all).

United StatesSteve Bohlen

06/20/2011 12:43:43 PM EST

Great article! I think Microsoft should support and maybe even contribute to the open source Mono core. However, the Mono for iOS and Mono for Android products that Miguel and his new company Xamarin.com are working on are probably best served by their independent company. By the way, you can't use Visual Studio with MonoTouch for iOS, but that's an Apple restriction. They require you to use OS X to develop iOS apps.

United StatesCoderDennis