Microsoft made an announcement regarding the transfer of the Mono project, an alternative implementation of the .NET platform, to WineHQ, the organization behind the open implementation of the Win32 API. The Mono project was initially acquired by Microsoft after the takeover of Xamarin in 2016. Originally intended for the development of mobile applications in C# using .NET technologies, the project experienced a period of stagnation since 2019, with no major releases but regular updates.
Given that Mono was utilized in Wine to run .NET files designed for Windows, Wine developers created a synchronized Fork called Wine mono, which has been actively maintained and updated. Microsoft decided to transfer the primary project to the Wine community and establish the wine mono repository as the main repository, while keeping the code in the old Mono repository in an archived state. The existing builds will remain accessible for four years.
Despite handing over the original Mono to Wine, Microsoft will continue to support the more modern fork called Mono runtime, which is included in the code base of the .NET open platform. The company plans to gradually transition components of its projects tied to Mono to this fork. Microsoft also recommends users of applications utilizing Mono to switch to the common .NET platform, including the Mono Runtime.