Supporting cross-platform WPF (or WinForms) at this point would be a terrible idea for Microsoft.
These frameworks have been around for many years, and many (if not most) of the applications built on those frameworks make heavy use of third-party control libraries. Those libraries, whether open source or propriety, often include at least some win32-specific interop code that has also been around for many years. Most of those libraries are now in “maintenance only” mode, if they’re even being maintained at all. Realistically, most Windows GUI applications built on .NET will never run on any platform other than Windows, even if the core UI frameworks become cross-platform.
As soon as Microsoft says, “WPF is cross-platform now”, they’d get flooded with bug reports that aren’t even related to their code.
Wow, someone who makes sense for once. I love and embrace open source but I'm sure as glue that the developers who want cross platform winforms and wpf will never use it.
I agree. My thinking is that the only place where any desktop app is still actively developed is the enterprise (and even there the trend is to get everything web based), and this is predominantly a windows environment. Outside of the enterprise everything has gone mobile where wpf isn't really an option (solutions like Xamarin aren't fun to use).
My guess is that desktop apps will come back with pwa+wasm. Then you can have a rich client that is fully cross platform, single code base, same behavior everywhere, easy to deploy, written in the language of your choice. But that doesn't involve wpf...
These frameworks have been around for many years, and many (if not most) of the applications built on those frameworks make heavy use of third-party control libraries. Those libraries, whether open source or propriety, often include at least some win32-specific interop code that has also been around for many years. Most of those libraries are now in “maintenance only” mode, if they’re even being maintained at all. Realistically, most Windows GUI applications built on .NET will never run on any platform other than Windows, even if the core UI frameworks become cross-platform.
As soon as Microsoft says, “WPF is cross-platform now”, they’d get flooded with bug reports that aren’t even related to their code.