Xamarin CEO Nat Friedman on getting acquired by Microsoft | TechCrunch

Check here for an index of Xamarin sessions at Build 2016; also see Xamarin now free in Visual Studio (Ars Technica) and Interview: Xamarin co-founder Miguel de Icaza goes from outcast to insider at Microsoft (GeekWire)

"While Xamarin long stressed that it wasn’t really for sale, Friedman argued that what also attracted him in this deal was the ability to reach more developers. “We had a very healthy, exciting, stand-alone business that we loved running, but when you have the opportunity to make your code open source and free and available to hundreds of times as many developers, it’s hard to pass that up,” he said.

He also stressed that after having met Nadella, Liuson and other members of Microsoft’s executive team during an offsite meeting a few weeks ago, he felt even better about the acquisition. “I was really surprised, to be honest,” he said. “Even already having this optimistic viewpoint that lead me to doing the acquisition, I wasn’t expecting the level of talent, passion, optimism, cooperation, and enthusiasm that I saw among Satya’s and Scott’s top team.” He also noted that he doesn’t think “the public reputation of Microsoft, even though it has improved, has caught up to the reality of what’s going on inside Microsoft.”"

Xamarin CEO Nat Friedman on getting acquired by Microsoft | TechCrunch