The Mono Project (mono/mono) (‘original mono’) has been an important part of the .NET ecosystem since it was launched in 2001. Microsoft became the steward of the Mono Project when it acquired Xama...
Makes sense. Mono was necessary in the “old .NET” world, where runtimes were tied to Windows versions and the framework was a pure Windows framework. Mono made it possible to run old dotNET framework versions (up to 4.8) on other OSes.
Since dotNET Core and then dotNET 5 and higher, the framework itself is cross-platform so Mono is not necessary anymore, except for backwards compatibility for apps that use a now unsupported framework.
So it makes sense that Microsoft, after dropping the old dotNET Framework versions, also wants to stop supporting the cross-platform library that was only needed for those old versions.
I’ve been trying to believe there’s something nefarious at work
I guess they just don’t want to bother with it any more?
Makes sense. Mono was necessary in the “old .NET” world, where runtimes were tied to Windows versions and the framework was a pure Windows framework. Mono made it possible to run old dotNET framework versions (up to 4.8) on other OSes.
Since dotNET Core and then dotNET 5 and higher, the framework itself is cross-platform so Mono is not necessary anymore, except for backwards compatibility for apps that use a now unsupported framework.
So it makes sense that Microsoft, after dropping the old dotNET Framework versions, also wants to stop supporting the cross-platform library that was only needed for those old versions.