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GNOME, Mono, Xamarin founder Miguel de Icaza leaves Microsoft

(2022/03/04)


Just months after Nat Friedman quit as CEO of Microsoft-owned GitHub, his Xamarin co-founder has also ejected from the Windows giant.

Miguel De Icaza joined Microsoft when it acquired Xamarin in 2016, which marked the beginning of a change in Redmond's mobile strategy. He has [1]spoken to The Reg before about how different Microsoft is today from its [2]notoriously FOSS-averse past.

De Icaza has long been a pivotal figure in the areas of Linux and Linux-Microsoft interoperability. He was the original [3]founder of the GNOME desktop project in 1997, along with Federico Mena. A couple of years later, he started Helix Code with Nat Friedman. Subsequently renamed Ximian, the company [4]developed the GNOME email client Evolution and the Ximian Connector, which enabled Evolution to talk to Microsoft Exchange Server.

[5]

Aside from GNOME apps and its own, more polished version of GNOME, Ximian also developed Mono, an open-source version of Microsoft's .NET. Ximian got [6]bought by Novell in 2003, and a few months later Novell also bought SUSE.

[7]20 years of .NET: Reflecting on Microsoft's not-Java

[8]Microsoft previews Visual Studio 2022 for Mac, but why bother when VS Code runs just fine on Apple hardware?

[9]GitHub CEO forks off: Nat Friedman to quit this month, replacement will report to exec behind .NET Hot Reload fiasco

[10]Amid drama at .NET Foundation, Microsoft's De Icaza reveals it was meant to be like GNOME Foundation

Before the Novell deal, SUSE was quite KDE-centric. In early 2003, half [11]The Reg 's review of SUSE 8.2 discussed KDE, but mentioned GNOME in passing in just one line. Just a year after it had acquired both companies, Novell wedded Ximian GNOME to SUSE. A decade later, SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 no longer included KDE even as an optional extra – although an external community package arrived later for SLE 12 SP1.

In late 2010, Attachmate acquired Novell, and early the next year laid off the Mono team. A fortnight later, de Icaza and Friedman [12]founded Xamarin , which is how he eventually ended up at Microsoft.

Open source .NET mimic rises from Novell ashes [13]READ MORE

More recently, Microsoft has [14]moved to unify Mono and .NET Core.

As a veteran of two successful startups – being acquired for lots of money arguably being one definition of success for a tech startup – we suspect that another may be in the offing.

[15]

If we had to make a bet, we'd guess that it might be something to do with WebAssembly. Alongside Java and the JVM, the Microsoft .NET Common Language Runtime (CLR) is one of the defining cross-platform runtimes, and that is exactly the space in which [16]WebAssembly is the hot new thing … and he's expressed interest in it before, too.

De Icaza was not available for immediate comment. According to Microsoft watcher Mary Jo Foley, he's going to take an [17]extended break and consider his next move, likely a role in a startup. ®

Get our [18]Tech Resources



[1] https://www.theregister.com/2016/04/29/from_open_source_to_microsoft_its_a_different_company_says_miguel_de_icaza?page=2

[2] https://www.theregister.com/2001/06/02/ballmer_linux_is_a_cancer/

[3] https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-list/1997-August/msg00123.html

[4] https://www.theregister.com/2001/12/03/ximian_evolution_1_0_links/

[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/applications&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YiKaGYjCpB1OVnBrulia2gAAANU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0

[6] https://www.theregister.com/2003/08/04/novell_buys_ximian/

[7] https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/15/20_years_of_dotnet/

[8] https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/09/visual_studio_2022_mac_preview/

[9] https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/03/github_ceo_quits/

[10] https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/18/net_foundation_gnome/

[11] https://www.theregister.com/2003/05/01/suse_8_2_approaches_computing/

[12] https://www.theregister.com/2011/05/16/mono_founders_launch_new_company/

[13] https://www.theregister.com/2011/05/16/mono_founders_launch_new_company/

[14] https://www.theregister.com/2019/05/16/will_net_5_really_unify_microsoft_development_stack/

[15] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/applications&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YiKaGYjCpB1OVnBrulia2gAAANU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[16] https://www.theregister.com/2020/01/27/webassembly_intro/

[17] https://www.zdnet.com/article/former-xamarin-co-founder-miguel-de-icaza-is-leaving-microsoft/

[18] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/



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