Xamarin acquires RoboVM

https://robovm.com/robovm-acquired-by-world-leader-in-cross-platform-mobile-xamarin/

by AlexeyBrin • 11 years ago

78 26 11 years ago

I never really looked at RoboVM, would anyone whose used it care to weigh in on the positives and negatives of RoboVM?

duaneb2• 11 years ago

It has limitations on runtime introspection and modification, but once you learn them, you can use idiomatic java and/or scala. That said, the limitations make it difficult to easily port.

badlogic4• 11 years ago

The only limitation is the lack of runtime byte code genration. Reflection and proxies work as intended.

johncolanduoni2• 11 years ago

One big positive is that it uses the same class libraries as Android, so if you're already targeting Android and not using runtime code generation, you don't have to port any of your non-UI code.

crudbug• 11 years ago

Kudos to the Xamarin management for this strategic move.

(CIL BYTECODE / JVM BYTECODE) => LLVM => NATIVE

duaneb2• 11 years ago

How easy would it be for a competitor to use their code? It seems to me to be difficult given Xamarin's positive reputation, but are there any legal or technical barriers for a competitor to offer support, patches, etc., and contribute upstream?

jbigelow76• 11 years ago

Interesting business move. Since it appears the plan is to get RoboVM customers to use Xamarin Insights and Xamarin Test Cloud does that mean that Xamarin's original product of C#/XAML to native iOS and Android dev environment is going to come to be seen as the razor to the services metaphorical blades if you will?

seibelj3• 11 years ago

RoboVM has been free for libgdx users. Xanarin is disliked by independent developers for its pricing structure. Will RoboVM remain free to use? I hope so

jsmith02953• 11 years ago

Some components are open source. So as long as you don't need the Interface Builder or Eclipse/IntelliJ support, it'll still be free. They did raise prices though.

johncolanduoni2• 11 years ago

This is no longer true going forward. You must pay to use the newer versions at all; the RoboVM github repository hasn't been updated since early September and will no longer be developed.

iso8859-1• 11 years ago

"If you haven’t already, please make sure to start your 30 day free trial of RoboVM to get a license key which now is required in order to use RoboVM."

https://robovm.com/robovm-1-9-released/

jstedfast• 11 years ago

The open source version remains on their GitHub page here: https://github.com/robovm/robovm

coldtea• 11 years ago

Xanarin is disliked by independent developers for its pricing structure.

Define "independent developers". Because a lot of them do use Xamarin.

shadowmint• 11 years ago

Read https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7954406 if you like.

A lot of people are vocal about the price, use it or not; you can't pretend it's not true.

AlexeyBrin• 11 years ago

The official RoboVM page doesn't mention anymore the free option. They have some open source (at least for now) code on Github and you can fork it if you wish.

As the copyright holder RoboVM (or Xamarin) can chose at any time to close source the code and change the license for new versions.

badlogic4• 11 years ago

libGDX and PlayN folks get a free license with debugger support for commercial and non-commercial games.

seibelj3• 11 years ago

Thanks badlogic. Can you provide any details about why libGDX gets special treatment? I'm curious

Zigurd• 11 years ago

Xamarin is IMHO the best cross-platform SDK, but I wouldn't recommend it, or any cross-platform SDK, to indie devs unless that dev's background is in C# and they really really want to keep using C# AND they know what they want a cross-platform SDK for. It's best for shops with several C# devs.

jsmith02953• 11 years ago

And they've already raised the prices.

Edit: Actually, they've just changed their "startup" pricing and it isn't publicly available anymore. It might actually be better, if they allow you to have more than 3 devs.

throwaway_xgqtr• 11 years ago

More importantly, they've removed IntelliJ and Eclipse integration from the Solo/Indie plan to match Xamarin keeping Visual Studio integration out of their Indie plan.

jsmith02953• 11 years ago

Exactly. However, it looks like their IntelliJ based IDE is still included in Solo, which I missed initially because they put it at the top of the chart. That's a considerable improvement over MonoDevelop

needusername• 11 years ago

Isn't RoboVM in the same place license wise as Android? Start with loosely defined subset of Java. Transform to something that isn't Java byte code and doesn't adhere to the Java VM specification. Doesn't pass the TCK and never will.

Up until now RoboVM has been featured frequently by Oracle in an attempt to mask their weakness in the mobile space (since Oracle doesn't acknowledge Android). I wonder how quickly this will stop.

Xamarin acquires RoboVM

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