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.