Killing a well functioning piece of technology instead of open sourcing it is not just downsizing. MS is applying their "Embrace, extend, and exterminate" strategy to cross platform mobile development.
It happens all the time, companies unload unwanted or unaligned assets to focus on their roadmap and strategies. RoboVM should pick a page from Xamarin and buy out IP and support from mothership.
That's ridiculous, what % of software companies open source the software they kill? 0.1% maybe? Did Google open source Reader or Dodgeball when it killed those?
Google was heavily criticized for killing Reader. Why should we not criticize Microsoft?
Criticize them all you want but "Feels like the MS of the 90's is back." isn't criticism it's FUD meant to invoke fears of how closed down software was back then.
It's not FUD if it's true.
Exactly. I think we should wait until they shut down Xamarin before we get out the pitchforks. The simplest explanation is that they want to focus all of their cross-platform development resources on the core product that they acquired, and it sounds like Microsoft is very invested in Xamarin's future.
How does focus on the core product prevent them from releasing the source code?