Mono isn't safe just yet, but the news that Xamarin has all but taken responsibility for Mono now and in the future is good news.

Attachmate who recently decided to dump the Mono development team has done the right thing in allowing Miguel de Icaza's new company, Xamarin, a perpetual license to all the intellectual property of Mono, MonoTouch, Mono for Android and Mono for Visual Studio. This allows them to continue to develop and sell the products. Of course this income might just give them the time needed to support the software which is a good thing as Attachmate has also handed over the support for all existing customers to Xamarin.

You can now buy both MonoTouch (for iOS) and Mono for Android at the Xamarin store.

Xamarin will be taking over the stewardship of the Mono open source community project.

This more or less makes Xamarin synonymous with Mono and all things Mono.

Miguel de Icaza commented:

Our immediate plans for both MonoTouch and Mono for Android is to make sure that your critical and major bugs are fixed. We have been listening to the needs of the community and we are working to improve these products to meet your needs. You can expect updates to the products in the next week.

So the future of Mono still isn't completely safe as there is no guardian angel just at the moment but at least Attachmate has decided not to play the part of the devil in making it more difficult for Xamarin to take over Mono. Now what is needed are some corporate sponsors that are serious about the long term survival of .NET as a cross platform system - anyone seen Microsoft?

More information:

Miguel de Icaza's blog

Xamarin website

Related news:

Mono in trouble?

Mono for Android V1.0 now shipping

Mono 2.10 released with reservations