So, many years ago, Miguel de Icaza tried to create a .NET compatible environment in the open source environments with the Mono project. Somewhere along the way, the Ximian company running that project got bought by Novell, then shuffled off by Attachmate, then spun off as Xamarin (with $87,000,000 in venture capital funding) and now bought by Microsoft.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsofts-xamarin-purchase-is-a-blunder/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_(software)
Supposedly, the first targets (Linux and OS X) have been changed to IOS and Android.
Is anyone using Ximian to write apps for phones?
I know in the 80s and 90s, there was a popular business model around Microsoft that people would work for the company for a few years, leave and start a skunkworks project, and if they got significant buzz, get bought by MS and come back to work with a tidy little payoff, lather, rinse and repeat. I don't know if that's still in fashion.