Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) closed the deal and acquired Xamarin on March 18, 2016. The company made it official on its website.
Nat Friedman co-founded Xamarin with Miguel de Icaza in May 2011. The company provides a structure for developers to work on different platforms. The company forms part of the .Net Foundation, which has been promoting open source software since March 31, 2014. The framework runs thousands of your favorite phone apps for both Android and IOS.
“We love C# and we want every developer to be able to take advantage of the power of .NET in every app, on every device. Being part of Microsoft makes it possible for us to do some incredible things, and today we are announcing several big changes to the way we ship our products.” stated Friedman in an article published on Xamarin’s blog on March 31, 2016.
Let’s start by order, the framework is now entirely free. Microsoft added Xamarin to their visual studio set with no additional charge including Visual Studio Community Edition which supports almost every existing coding language. In other words, anyone can write their own app for any OS without paying a single cent.
Mr. Friedman also said that they gave their Mono project to the .Net Foundation with previous improvements on the tool. The software allows developers to adapt their programs to different platforms. But that’s not all, Mono is going to be re-released under the MIT License to expand the where coders can work. The resulting software will support C#, Android, IOS, PS4, Xbox One and any other platform that comes in the near future.
The SDKs will follow up in the coming months including API bindings and the basic command-line tools necessary to develop mobile apps and the UI toolkit. This other MIT license will make it easy for developers to create apps directly from the cloud.
They joined forces with HockeyApp which provides an environment for people who want to test their apps for free. Xamarin Insights is a software that detects and reports bugs. HockeyApp users will be able to integrate the software to scan their codes for issues.
Everything from a cloud test server to a code university
After Microsoft bought it, Xamarin went universal and they are exploiting this with their cloud server. When you finish your app, you can go to the server and see if it’s compatible with every platform supported by it, which is basically all of them.
Are you one of those people that dream of making video games? Well, Xamarin has its own university where it teaches coding basics to anyone willing to try. Users can even get certifications endorsed by the company.
This acquisition has a huge impact in history. This date will be remembered as the day barriers were broken and the true open source community was really born.
Source: Xamarin