I truly believe that it would&#x27;ve happened sooner, but Microsoft needed to wait until it had built up some degree of confidence among developers that the whole &quot;new Microsoft&quot; thing is for real. If they&#x27;d done it three years ago, everyone would&#x27;ve panicked, assumed that things like e.g. .NET on Linux were dead, and just written off Xamarin&#x27;s offerings immediately. Now I think a lot of people are at least cautiously optimistic that Microsoft&#x27;s cross-platform and OSS intentions are genuine.<p>You can see it right here in this thread: as another commenter said, not that long ago this news would&#x27;ve prompted universal predictions of doom, whereas now people seem thrilled. Timing is everything.