[joeshaw]

Mono was started by Miguel at Ximian, and most of the Mono code was owned by Ximian. Ximian was bought by Novell and with it, all the Ximian-owned Mono code. (I don't remember if a CLA was required before or after Novell bought Ximian.)

The Novell-owned IP was either sold or licensed to Xamarin later.

[migueldeicaza]

Joe is correct, the code was always owned by Ximian.

And we did require copyright assignment or relicensing rights from the start to support a dual-licensing business. It was the One Blessed Business Model endorsed by Richard Stallman at the time.