Open-sourced MicroSoft .NET vs Xojo

A client recently contacted me to ask my my opinion about this piece of news: Microsoft to open source more of .NET, and bring it to Linux, Mac OS X

Was I surprised? Not really. Once Ballmer was gone, MicroSoft was hinting there would be big changes. This is pretty big news.

However, I don't really see any changes in my professional plans. Even if the development of an application is with the Windows version of .NET, the deployment of a Mac or Linux version of the application will basically be brand new and subject to performance issue. (Speed or stability.)

The Mono Project, an open-sourced version of .NET, has been passed around from Ximian, to Novell, to Attachmate and now Xamarin. I love open-sourced projects but this one has a bit of an orphan problem surrounding it. Now that .NET is open-sourced, then the Mono team will be able to directly look at a lot of the code instead of just inferring operation based on behavior and documentation. This may give them a leg up.

I'm still confused on whether MicroSoft will create their own cross-platform .NET team or whether they will join forces with the Xamarin development/support team.

I don't know what will happen with .NET and its cross-platform capabilities but I think I'll keep on my current course and stick with Xojo for the foreseeable future. Xojo is here today and I really like developing in it. I haven't found anything better that develops desktop applications on Linux, Mac and Windows plus web applications as well.