They were already maintaining a fork of it though?
The “fork” is the real version of Mono and Microsoft is not giving it up.
The repository managed by “The Mono Project” still targets .NET Framework. Microsoft does not care about the official version of that. Why would they want to manage an Open Source replica of it.
In some ways though, this is good. Nobody should be seeing the Mono Project as a viable cross-platform development framework at this point. It is nothing more than a support layer for running legacy software that was originally Windows only. That makes it a good fit for Wine.
If you want what Mono used to be, a cross-platform application framework, you can just use the actual .NET from Microsoft. It includes the Mono runtime for targeting mobile platforms and Microsoft continues to actively develop it. They are not passing control of that to anybody.
Technical debt is transferred to Wine team.
They were already maintaining a fork of it though?
The “fork” is the real version of Mono and Microsoft is not giving it up.
The repository managed by “The Mono Project” still targets .NET Framework. Microsoft does not care about the official version of that. Why would they want to manage an Open Source replica of it.
In some ways though, this is good. Nobody should be seeing the Mono Project as a viable cross-platform development framework at this point. It is nothing more than a support layer for running legacy software that was originally Windows only. That makes it a good fit for Wine.
If you want what Mono used to be, a cross-platform application framework, you can just use the actual .NET from Microsoft. It includes the Mono runtime for targeting mobile platforms and Microsoft continues to actively develop it. They are not passing control of that to anybody.