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Wine Microsoft Open Source

Microsoft Donates the Mono Project To Wine (gamingonlinux.com) 67

Microsoft has decided to donate the Mono Project to the developers of Wine, FOSS that allows Windows applications to run on Unix-like operating systems. "Mono is a software platform designed to allow developers to easily create cross platform applications," notes GameOnLinux's Liam Dawe. "It is an open source implementation of Microsoft's .NET Framework based on the ECMA standards for C# and the Common Language Runtime."

"Wine already makes use of Mono and this move makes sense with Microsoft focusing on open-source .NET and other efforts," adds Phoronix's Michael Larabel. "Formally handing over control of the upstream Mono project to WineHQ is a nice move by Microsoft rather than just letting the upstream Mono die off or otherwise forked." Microsoft's Jeff Schwartz announced the move on the Mono website and in a GitHub post: The Mono Project (mono/mono) ('original mono') has been an important part of the .NET ecosystem since it was launched in 2001. Microsoft became the steward of the Mono Project when it acquired Xamarin in 2016. The last major release of the Mono Project was in July 2019, with minor patch releases since that time. The last patch release was February 2024. We are happy to announce that the WineHQ organization will be taking over as the stewards of the Mono Project upstream at wine-mono / Mono - GitLab (winehq.org). Source code in existing mono/mono and other repos will remain available, although repos may be archived. Binaries will remain available for up to four years.

Microsoft maintains a modern fork of Mono runtime in the dotnet/runtime repo and has been progressively moving workloads to that fork. That work is now complete, and we recommend that active Mono users and maintainers of Mono-based app frameworks migrate to .NET which includes work from this fork. We want to recognize that the Mono Project was the first .NET implementation on Android, iOS, Linux, and other operating systems. The Mono Project was a trailblazer for the .NET platform across many operating systems. It helped make cross-platform .NET a reality and enabled .NET in many new places and we appreciate the work of those who came before us.

Thank you to all the Mono developers!

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Microsoft Donates the Mono Project To Wine

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  • by Rujiel ( 1632063 ) on Tuesday August 27, 2024 @03:56PM (#64741054)
    ..that Bill Gates has given anyone Mono.
  • "Thanks" (Score:1, Troll)

    by CAIMLAS ( 41445 )

    So Microsoft gets a substantial tax writeoff for a charitable donaiton, and WineHQ gets... additional maintenance obligations.

    How very Microsoft of them.

    • Re:"Thanks" (Score:4, Insightful)

      by CrankyFool ( 680025 ) on Tuesday August 27, 2024 @04:07PM (#64741096)
      Too bad that, if that's the case, the WineHQ folks can't just say no to that donation but instead are forced to accept it. It's a damn shame that we live in a country where people can just force you to take over their software projects against your will. (Is my sarcasm too subtle here?)
      • by deKernel ( 65640 )

        Uhm....yeah....if they don't want it, they aren't obligated to accept this donation. Now with that, I believe they have already ownership of a fork for their needs.

      • by znrt ( 2424692 )

        they don't have much choice here, wine depends on mono. that's what you get yourself into when you decide to make stuff written for windows run on linux. so if ms isn't interested anymore, and not much anybody else gives a fig, they will have to maintain it themselves.

        ms has actually been paying for the whole thing all along from the beginning, in some form or another, because it validated the notion that their net thing was platform agnostic and "open" in nature, which was ofc pure hogwash they don't reall

    • So Microsoft gets a substantial tax writeoff for a charitable donaiton, and WineHQ gets... additional maintenance obligations.

      How very Microsoft of them.

      Maybe true, but doubtful anybody thought it through that far. It was likely this conversation, maybe using slightly different wording:

      "We gotta dump this trash."
      "Give it to the chodes at WINE? They'll gobble up anything and treat it like gold."
      "Awesome. We lose a piece of shit and gain bonus points in the field? Well done. Next?"

      • Mono is not trash. Its a way to export Microsoft frameworks to environments outside of the Microsoft platform. If WINE didn't utilize mono, they wouldn't have accepted Microsoft's offering. If you really want to prevent mono from being used outside of Microsoft platforms, you should be attacking the software developers that choose to use mono (and then be a dick like Microsoft).

    • So Microsoft gets a substantial tax writeoff for a charitable donaiton

      Only if they're donating something of substantial value.

      The MS press release about their acquisition of Xamarin in 2016 didn't mention a purchase price, which is a pretty good indication of how immaterial the acquisition cost was. So unless the value of Xamarin increased post-acquisition, there's not much market value there.

    • I donated a pair of old sneakers to charity last night. I kept asking myself if anyone would really want them.

      Probably how Microsoft felt.

    • The secret of being rich is tricking other people into paying your bills.
  • You'll be able to hear a w(h)ine in only one channel

    its in dolby stereo but I never hear it right
    I don't care its all chocolate barrel wrap to me

  • by awwshit ( 6214476 ) on Tuesday August 27, 2024 @04:50PM (#64741250)

    Free disobedient dog with fleas.

  • "Formally handing over control of the upstream Mono project to WineHQ is a nice move by Microsoft rather than just letting the upstream Mono die off or otherwise forked."

    Isn't "handing over control" literally a combination of "forking", then letting the upstream "die off"? Isn't the difference only in who owns the name?

    Don't see how this is any "nice move", it's just bailing out, though in a non-litigious way.

    • by chefren ( 17219 )

      I didn't read the article itself, but if you donate (give away) something, you actually hand over the copyright.

      That means WineHQ could do things like release closed-source version or make it public domain etc. They also presumably get the trademarks; the name, the logos etc. If someone wants to buy a specially licensed version Mono to integrate into say their game engine software suite without it being open source, WineHQ could now sell them such a version, because they now properly own Mono.

      The article do

  • by berchca ( 414155 ) on Tuesday August 27, 2024 @07:07PM (#64741698) Homepage

    Iâ(TM)m sure if Microsoft really wanted to help Wine, they could come up with something else.

    Access to internal API documentation leaps to mindâ¦

    • by ksw_92 ( 5249207 )

      I don't think that Microsoft wants to pull the fridge away from the cabinets for anyone. Only they know what lives behind it and there could be teaming masses of bugs that scatter when the light hits them...

  • by big-giant-head ( 148077 ) on Tuesday August 27, 2024 @11:25PM (#64742204)

    Wonder if they will start updating Mono Develop Again ? It wasn't a bad tool until M$ made it Visual Studio for the Mac.. now that it's discontinued.

  • Why .NET being open source and fairly complete, what's the point of Mono these days? Shouldn't Wine just dump Mono and adopt .NET too?
    • by McLoud ( 92118 )

      Why .NET being open source and fairly complete, what's the point of Mono these days? Shouldn't Wine just dump Mono and adopt .NET too?

      The UI-side of things has no official Linux counterpart, no Winforms, no WPF or the new-ish MAUI

    • Why .NET being open source and fairly complete, what's the point of Mono these days?

      .NET is only a "framework". It is implemented in "unmanaged" languages as well as "managed" languages. You're assuming that .NET "the spec" runs 100% the same on linux as windows. (There's a possibility mono may have a higher compatibility (by implementation) to windows code behavior.) Some casuals don't want to code in a compiled language, and prefer "muscle" memory to reinventing the wheel in a different language.

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