The name Xamarin comes from the name of the Tamarin monkey, replacing the leading T with an X. According to de Icaza, at least part of the original Mono team had moved to the new company. On May 16, 2011, Miguel de Icaza announced on his blog that Mono would be developed and supported by Xamarin, a newly formed company that planned to release a new suite of mobile products. Īfter the acquisition, Attachmate announced hundreds of layoffs for the Novell workforce, including Mono developers, putting the future of Mono in question. Ximian was bought by Novell on August 4, 2003, which was then acquired by Attachmate in April 2011. The Mono open source project was launched on July 19, 2001.

NET Framework in June 2000, de Icaza began investigating whether a Linux version was feasible. In 1999 Miguel de Icaza and Nat Friedman launched what eventually became known as Ximian to support and develop software for de Icaza's nascent GNOME project.