Glyn Moody and Bradley Kuhn are terribly worried about the fate of Mono, which Attachmate blew out after acquiring Novell.
Here's why the worry is overdone.
First, Microsoft needs Mono.
If C# developers lose access to half the server market, which Linux represents, they're going to be a lot less interested in the language. That's why Microsoft allowed Mono to exist in the first place, despite all the patent and copyright issues it could have used to kill it. Mono is in Microsoft's self-interest.
Miguel de Icaza, who has been spokesman for Mono for years, has yet to blog about the move, but he's really in a great position. There should be ample capital available for Miguel, or someone like him, to spin Mono out into a new, highly profitable company. One reason he hasn't blogged about it is probably because he's deeply involved in doing just that.
Of course, people don't like uncertainty and until it's cleared up the short-term future of Mono is cloudy. But it has proven its value in business. It's not going away.
There's another important point to make, which involves not only this issue but many other topics of interest in open source.
The excitement in computing is moving rapidly to the Cloud. RedHat, VMWare, Microsoft, Oracle, Google, Amazon – they're all into the Cloud. And open source is essential to the Cloud, because by its nature it will be shared infrastructure. You can't run an all-Windows or all-Linux cloud – virtualization is built-in. Which means any technology moving to the cloud has to be cross-platform.
My conclusion is that the only company which has a problem here, with Attachmate letting go of Mono's developers, is Microsoft. My guess is that they will solve the problem, likelier sooner than later.
