All Technology roadmaps remain..........except for the ones that we won't tell you about
By now, its public knowledge that the Mono team has been fired by Attachmate. I know its been rumor for a couple of weeks, but I got info saying it was true. I think that this is a poor move by Attachmate. They have left their customers swinging in the wind. I feel sorry for the people that have been fired, they are first and foremost in my mind. These guys created MonoTouch and Mono for Android, which are now fully funding the entire Mono ecosystem, will land on their feet. These are smart guys. Someone will want them. They may be able to get Venture Capital to form a company and purchase the rights to all Mono products. While I think about them, I don't worry about them too much at all.
What really has me upset is that Attachmate seems to have mislead us. They have mislead the community as a whole, their customers specifically, and me! Specifically, Jeff Hawn, CEO of The Attachmate Group, made the following statement:
"We have re-established Nuremburg as the headquarters of our SUSE business unit and the prioritization and resourcing of certain development efforts - including Mono - will now be determined by the business unit leaders there," said Jeff Hawn, Chairman and CEO of The Attachmate Group in a statement sent to InternetNews.com. "This change led to the release of some US based employees today. As previously stated, all technology roadmaps remain intact with resources being added to those in a manner commensurate with customer demand."
Now, I don't know what he means by "all technology roadmaps remain intact", but it looks to me like they have gutted Mono. How you can fire all US and Canada Mono developers and keep all technology roadmaps intact, I have no idea? Does Attachmate have their own set of mono developers ready to go on this? The above just seems to be a very misleading statement. Attachmate seems to have nothing, nada, zilch.
Let me tell you why its such a big deal to me:
Books. This basically makes me question if there is any value in the 2 books that I have already published on MonoTouch. We've put our Mono for Android book on hold.
Training. I have had two agreements so far to provide training for developers on MonoTouch and Mono for Android. I've been talking with other members of the community about expanding this out. All of this is on hold.
Consulting. SDI has been contacted a number of times over the past few weeks about consulting on MonoTouch and Mono for Android projects. I think we'd get a couple of them.
Startup. I've been looking at a startup for a while now. I built all the examples on MonoTouch and Mono for Android.
Add this up, and you can guess how I feel right now. I definitely feel mislead by someone. I think its Attachmate. They appear to have mislead the community.
Now, the next question is what am I planning on doing? I still think that iPhone and Android are the winners in the current marketplace. Windows Phone 7 is still a huge bet on the future. This is my decision "tree":
Listen to what Miguel and Joe Hill have to say. I think the heart of the Mono community will do this. Miguel is Mono. He is the heart and soul of the product.
Listen to what Attachmate says. I'd like to know what they have to say. Can they do something to work with the "former" Mono team? How are they going to satisfy their customers going forward.
Review all of my options for iPhone and Android development. Maybe ObjectiveC and Java are the right ways to go. Maybe I should do PhoneGap and Appcelerator. Maybe I should look at something else.
Anyway, thanks to Attachmate.