With Mono Tools for Visual Studio 2.0, Mono said it has created an easy way for .Net developers to build apps for the iPhone and (soon) Android platform.
The Novell-based open source project has also built itself a revenue stream, since unlike the basic project Mono is paid software.
What you download is just a 30 day trial. The individual version costs $99, there’s a $249 version for enterprise developers, and a $2,499 version that also includes licenses to re-distribute Mono on Windows, Linux and the Mac.
With some of that revenue Mono will finish work on Version 2.0 of its open source project, which is designed to work with Microsoft .Net 4.0.
“That will have the run time features of 4.0, which was finalized in April. We’re not too far behind at the core level, but some libraries take more time and are less important,” Novell product manager Joseph Hill said.
As for the future, Mono is focused on mobile developers. “We’re going to make embedding easier, so people can bundle Mono with application and devices,” Hill said.
The original Mono Tools for Visual Studio was focused on building applications to run as appliances using SUSE Studio. But since then the focus has been on broadening the market, so a version for Red Hat shipped with Version 2.7 and one for Ubuntu is in the works.
Now the team which did a version for the Apple iTouch is working on one for the Droid, he said. “
Dana Blankenhorn has been a journalist, writer and part-time futurist for over 30 years.
