MonoGame plan to create a non-profit foundation to support development

I don't normally comment on these, but speaking as somebody that has used MonoGame for ages and considers it to be one of the best options for game development (from a programmers perspective not a game designer). I'm super happy to know they plan to keep it that way. I've never been huge on game engines so MonoGame has always just been a good fit for me.

What the difference between MonoGame and FNA?

What the difference between MonoGame and FNA?

FNA from my understanding is more faithful to XNA and MonoGame is more willing to go their own way with things. Originally when XNA shutdown MonoGame was trying to get XNA to work with Mono if I remember right and so when XNA died they just made it a fork of XNA. Where as FNA is more like a modern XNA for game developers that want to stick to the original more. At least that's how I understand it...

Striking while the iron's hot. Good move.

What the difference between MonoGame and FNA?

That's a question asked heavily. I can't find it now, but I recently read a long blog post by a guy "flibijibito" or something like that who I understand is an absolute guru in Linux game tech. He apparently works on FNA and wrote this post about FNA vs MonoGame. For some reason that post seemed written through his teeth, diplomatically suggesting that MonoGame are just w4nk1ng in the wind and FNA has a more strict and smaller scope but they do what they do better. I'd like to say that to you as an answer but I had to mention this backstory because I feel this guru guy was biased and salty when he wrote it, so I cannot take that forward as fact to other people. Maybe others can also jump in.

I'm a bit sad MonoGame didn't get a little bit of that huge cash drop from Re-logic that the other projects did, I understand it's somewhat of a sibling of FNA and they also carry a lot of indie gaming weight, and it feels a bit sad, but fair play to the others though, free money is free money and can only be grateful to Re-logic.

I just have a bad feeling some devs of MonoGame might just be forced to go where the money is now (FNA).


Last edited by Geamandura on 21 September 2023 at 6:42 pm UTC

What the difference between MonoGame and FNA?

I can't find it now, but I recently read a long blog post by a guy "flibijibito" or something like that who I understand is an absolute guru in Linux game tech.

That's Flibitijibibo aka Ethan Lee. He's the author of FNA and a very prolific game porter. He definitely knows what he's talking about.

What the difference between MonoGame and FNA?

I can't find it now, but I recently read a long blog post by a guy "flibijibito" or something like that who I understand is an absolute guru in Linux game tech.

That's Flibitijibibo aka Ethan Lee. He's the author of FNA and a very prolific game porter. He definitely knows what he's talking about.

Poking around just a tiny bit, it looks like FNA was a fork of MonoGame in the first place, so he must not have been that happy with what MonoGame was like at the time. That was like nine years ago though, so who knows what MonoGame is like now.

FNA is more a replication of XNA, to keep compatibility.

MonoGame is more like the next-generation XNA.

FNA is more a replication of XNA, to keep compatibility.

MonoGame is more like the next-generation XNA.

In addition to this, some games were built with FNA for most of their platforms, then used MonoGame for specific ports. IIRC - at one point XBox started supporting MonoGame, but not FNA.

The name Mono hasn't aged well, I could imagine CoronaGame wouldnt be too popular either. Corona Beer sales probably aren't too hot either.

I'll beat the dead horse a little too -- stigmatized names like Gimp are going to sound offputting to donors. This isn't hard.

I wish them well with their efforts to transform and safeguard their ethos and values.

This tech feels somewhat too close to Microsoft. Also, while these developments are nice sounding in the context of Unity, they aren't revolutionary for opening up closed console ecosystems to Open Source development or anything - these virtual machine applications aren't fast. They're intended for lightweight games. There's a reason heavy engines are done in the normal C/C++ binary way.

The wider issue is Microsoft's strategy of Embracing, Extending and Extinguishing by "generously" volunteering to create new standards and APIs where they are influential, have total control, hold patents over projects, or which just seek to fragment even if it's with a subtle malicious license, in order to hinder independent opensource movements.

Microsoft licensed the upstream code to MonoGame/FNA under their MS-PL license 1 2 , which is designed with the aid of their lawyers to fragment the opensource movement:
https://lwn.net/Articles/254717/

... is bizarre. You're allowed to distribute derived works freely, under BSD-ish terms (basically preserve copyright notices). ...

The catch is, *if* you distribute the source, you must distribute it under the MSPL license.
You *can't* combine it into a GPL project. This seems designed gratuitously to break GPL
compatibility.
...
The licenses may be open source, but they're almost transparently designed to impede code sharing with other free/open source projects...which is one of the hallmarks and great strengths of the movement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.NET_Framework#History :

..Microsoft and their partners hold patents for CLI and C# ..

While the patent trolling avoidance in MS-PL is nice, of course Microsoft and Co. could also have just formally released their patents into public domain like e.g. NASA does.

...

Remember C# and dot net were originally attempts to extend and fragment the prevailing open standard.

On API's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft

The Windows API is so broad, so deep, and so functional that most independent software vendors would be crazy not to use it. And it is so deeply embedded in the source code of many Windows apps that there is a huge switching cost to using a different operating system instead... It is this switching cost that has given the customers the patience to stick with Windows through all our mistakes, our buggy drivers, our high TCO (total cost of ownership), our lack of a sexy vision at times, and many other difficulties [...] Customers constantly evaluate other desktop platforms, [but] it would be so much work to move over that they hope we just improve Windows rather than force them to move. In short, without this exclusive franchise called the Windows API, we would have been dead a long time ago.

This paper covers Microsoft's strategy in some detail, of interesting read generally:
https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4144&context=sis_research

Extend:

Extend: Microsoft extended HTML/CSS/JavaScript by creating DHTML, and Java with C#, while its SMB was extended by others into SMB2 and CIFS.
...
Phase 2: Microsoft Embraces and
Extends Java
Potential conflicts were apparent even before Sun’s press release hit the news wires. At the very same Microsoft strategy workshop in 1995, Bill Gates famously announced the company’s intent to “embrace and extend” Internet standards. After describing Microsoft’s approach to spreadsheets (Excel with respect to Lotus 123) and local area networking (Windows NT’s built-in functionality with respect to Novell Netware), Gates (1995) applied the same logic to the Internet: “So [for] the Internet, the competition will be kind of, once again, embrace and extend, and we will embrace all the popular Internet protocols. Anything that a significant number of publishers are using and taking advantage of we will support. We will do some extensions to those things” (III).

Fragment:

...offered a superset of Sun’s Java functionality: the ability to writecross-platform Java applications, as well as to take advantage of “native” Windows features. However, the J++ product manager acknowledged the potential incompatibility that might result: “In some cases, it will break the cross-platform nature of Java. In some cases, it won’t” (CNET, 1996b).
...
Internal documents revealed during the United States v. Microsoft antitrust trial suggest that this was part of a coordinated strategy to “Let [the] Java class library space fragment, so that ‘write once, run everywhere’ does not happen (Algaze, 1996). In July 1997, Microsoft explicitly indicated that it would not distribute JFC with its next release of Internet Explorer, choosing to promote AFC instead (IV) (Wingfield, 1997).
...
Microsoft eventually paid Sun $20 million to settle the lawsuit and terminate its license agreement. Microsoft proceeded to develop C#, a Java-like programming language, as part of its .NET programming framework, abandoning even minimal efforts at cooperation with its Silicon Valley rival (I).

Show true values when people don't fall for it:

Microsoft appears to have not anticipated the degree to which Sun would fight its efforts to extend Java, as it had done with other rival standards before. In the face of this opposition, Microsoft abandoned its embrace and extend strategy and shifted back to direct rivalry.

Our examination of Microsoft’s responses to nearly a dozen such efforts over a 15-year period suggests that at least two distinct forces are at work: the desire for legitimacy among a community of adopters, and the desire to leverage the underlying technology while establishing a new standard under a firm’s own control. Legitimacy is primarily about strategic perception, while leverage is about technical reality.

Last edited by Nim8 on 22 September 2023 at 12:19 am UTC

The name Mono hasn't aged well, I could imagine CoronaGame wouldnt be too popular either. Corona Beer sales probably aren't too hot either.

I'll beat the dead horse a little too -- stigmatized names like Gimp are going to sound offputting to donors. This isn't hard.

I wish them well with their efforts to transform and safeguard their ethos and values.

Hmm... What's wrong with 'mono'?

I'm a bit sad MonoGame didn't get a little bit of that huge cash drop from Re-logic that the other projects did, I understand it's somewhat of a sibling of FNA and they also carry a lot of indie gaming weight, and it feels a bit sad, but fair play to the others though, free money is free money and can only be grateful to Re-logic.

I just have a bad feeling some devs of MonoGame might just be forced to go where the money is now (FNA).

Re-logic plans on supporting monogame at the same level once the foundation has been set up.

Source: announced by the terraria_logic account on twitter.


Last edited by emphy on 22 September 2023 at 9:14 am UTC

The name Mono hasn't aged well, I could imagine CoronaGame wouldnt be too popular either. Corona Beer sales probably aren't too hot either.

I'll beat the dead horse a little too -- stigmatized names like Gimp are going to sound offputting to donors. This isn't hard.

I wish them well with their efforts to transform and safeguard their ethos and values.

Hmm... What's wrong with 'mono'?

eli5; It's another name for herpes

The name Mono hasn't aged well, I could imagine CoronaGame wouldnt be too popular either. Corona Beer sales probably aren't too hot either.

I'll beat the dead horse a little too -- stigmatized names like Gimp are going to sound offputting to donors. This isn't hard.

I wish them well with their efforts to transform and safeguard their ethos and values.

Hmm... What's wrong with 'mono'?

eli5; It's another name for herpes

Mono is short for mononucleosis, which has no connection to herpes. Maybe you made that leap because people call it "the kissing disease". In any case, even though I spent a few days in a hospital bed once because mononucleosis made my throat hurt so much I couldn't swallow anything at all, that's hardly the first thing that comes to mind when I hear the word "mono".

Mono is short for mononucleosis, which has no connection to herpes.

I mean, it is caused by the Epstein–Barr virus which technically is human gammaherpesvirus 4. But it sure doesn't carry the stigma of genital herpes, and I have never heard of anyone catching glandular fever being described as having herpes...

Anyhow, these confusions surrounding names tend to be quite localized. Around here I think MonoGame would probably be construed as something involving sound for games (mono as a single channel audio) or possibly a game engine made explicitly for single player games (mono as synonym to single)?

Native Spanish speakers would probably not be as confused as Mono in this case refers to word for monkey. The Mono project was started by a company named Ximian (simian is another word for the higher primates) which later became Xamarin (a Tamarin is a species of monkey).