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I wouldn't jump to conclusions too quickly. The mono team is pretty amazing. And Microsoft has already open sourced several parts of Silverlight to help their effort (such as the controls). From my understanding, Microsoft has also made available their entire test suite to the mono team to ensure 100% compatibility.

Now having said that, I still feel that Silverlight is way overkill for most web apps. For a company that has a C# client and wants to move it to the web, Silverlight is great. I think it is also unmatched for speed on a rich featured apps (such as games). So, I think this technology will do very well in the enterprise and certain web apps. But I think the "open web" will continue to be far more popular for most generally available websites. And chrome certainly proves how fast javascript can be if implemented well. Flash... well not sure why anyone on Linux would want a buggy closed source app over an well written open one, but Microsoft hate abounds so common sense may not matter.

This is part of the very problem. It is actually at the heart of the issue.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonlight_(runtime)#Microsoft_support


The words "exclusive access" are the heart of the problem. Those words mean "no open source coders beyond Novell". No downstream participants. No open standard, no open development ... indeed, binary codecs, supplied by Microsoft.

Hence, Microsoft control.

Hence, Microsoft can withdraw support, and their permission, on a whim.

Hence, Silverlight is a way for Microsoft to make it a "Microsoft Web", and for Microsoft to put any other party out of competition ... at their whim, whenver they want to.

Hence ... no Silverlight.

Independent thinkers wouldn't touch Silverlight with a ten-foot pole.

It really is pretty simple.

Edited 2008-10-14 08:40 UTC

Amen.
Well said.
End of story.
And Novel can choke on its Mono and whatever else they come up with.

Yup, independent thinkers will all act as one and follow the dogmatic line, as opposed to deciding for themselves whether or not a product fulfills their need.

Need goes beyond technical aspects alone... At least in thinking individuals.

Well obviously. But one of the defining qualities of an independent thinker is the ability to come to independent conclusions. Saying all independent thinkers must come to this conclusion to be considered independent seems somewhat silly. I can't believe I actually have to explain this.

Well, that is because their are a lot of unstated premises with all of the made statements (mine included). The danger lies in the assumption that others will just pick up on those premises.

Well obviously. But one of the defining qualities of an independent thinker is the ability to come to independent conclusions. Saying all independent thinkers must come to this conclusion to be considered independent seems somewhat silly. I can't believe I actually have to explain this. "

What are you talking about?
Microsoft is evil,
End of story.
What are reasons, independent thinking, logical processess etc. do you need?
1+1=2
Microsft+Evil= Stay away from Silverlight
Gotit?

Best. Comment. Ever.

Can't add anything more to that. That's about the size of it. Open source and non-Windows platform support will continue only as long as Microsoft wants, and you can bet that if Silverlight reaches what they feel is a critical mass of usage you will see non-Microsoft platform support dropped faster than a diarretic camel.

Like a Microsoft manager let slip once, as developers you're being wooed as a one-night stand until they get their wicked way with you ;-).

At this juncture, you will usually get some smart Alec talking about Flash and Adobe. Yep, the situation with Flash is certainly not ideal, but it's a case of who your worst enemy is. At least with Adobe they don't have their own OS and platform to protect, so they're at least going to be committed to keeping Mac and Linux ports of Flash going because they need to keep maximum usage.

Because Microsoft does their Mac and Windows development in-house, but licenses out whatever *nix development they need to third parties?

Because Microsoft does their Mac and Windows development in-house, but licenses out whatever *nix development they need to third parties? "

That's fine, but if they were serious about supporting Linux they would point to the moonlight site and tell people to get that. The fact that they don't shows that they like to have Moonlight to point to if anyone questions their cross-platformness, but don't have any intention of encouraging people to actually use it or making sure it is actually on par with the other platforms.

Flash is buggy and closed source, but Adobe has no interest in competing with Linux, so it is still infinitely better than Silverlight.

For the moment it doesn't really matter. Flash is essential for sites such as Youtube. But It remains to be seen whether Silverlight will gain significant market share.

++

OTOH, I wonder when google will release its own would-be ubiquitous web multimedia codec just so there can be a proper dick waving contest. At least they control a very large portion of the flash based web time-sink properties so they could add a little carrot to the stick.

Google's bet is on the browsers (Ajax or whatever the kids are calling it these days). As for video/audio codecs, I'd hope they'd put their support behind something that can be utilized by the video tag (ogg or matroska container with theora/vorbis/dirac) - for now though they seem content to use Flash Video or whatever else is available on the various platforms (including the patented standard h.264 on iphones from youtube).

I think the main reason for Flash usage is that they don't want you to make a copy. Sure it is possible to extract the video stream, but most people don't know how to do it or lack the tools (I heard there is a FF extension). It would be quite trivial to download a raw embedded video though..

will they be shipping interface tools for it? It would be very nice If I could create a silverlight form in a free tool to use with the other free tools MS provides rather than having to buy expression stuff.

Silverlight for Visual Studio Express has been released earlier yesterday (it's in the "Get Started" part of the Silverlight.net site), and of course it has an interface designer (similar to other VSE GUI designers).

Expression looks like just a more fleshed out tool (the Photoshop to VSE's MSPaint, though maybe closer to Macromedia Flash in interface).

Now the interesting question is whether Moonlight kept up with Silverlight... it'll be fairly easy to test either way.

Edited 2008-10-15 05:43 UTC