Novell sale leaves Mono project funding uncertain

Today the Linux and software company Novell announced its sale to Attachmate. Valued at $2.2 billion dollars, Novell have a diverse software portfolio, competing with IBM in many fields. In addition to this, and of more interest to readers of developerFusion, they also sponsor development of the Mono project.

Mono is an open-source and cross-platform implementation of Microsoft's .NET framework. It allows code written in .NET compatible languages such as C#, VB and - more recently following its open-source release - F# to be run on platforms such as Linux and Mac OS X. It has also moved into mobile platforms, including efforts on Android, iOS and other platforms.

No news has been officially released of the status of the project's future just yet, however along with the sale announcement it was stated that an undefined set of Novell's intellectual property (IP) will be sold to Microsoft for $450 million. Whether this affects the project remains to be seen.

Update: Mono developer Miguel de Icaza has tweeted that the status of the Mono project "has not changed". In his solitary update on the news, he has stated that the project was not part of the IP transferred to Microsoft, and his paychecks will now come from Attachmate. The long-term status of the project remains unclear.

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