Guest post by Microsoft plans to extend its mainstream development tooling to Silverlight, its Flash challenger, and add support for dynamic languages. At the Mix ’07 Web developer and designer conference, Microsoft executives said the company will allow .Net developers to create applications for Silverlight, its alternative to Adobe Systems’ Flash format. Microsoft on Monday released an alpha version of Silverlight 1.1 that will allow people to write applications using .Net applications such as C#. Version 1.0 of Silverlight will be available this summer.
Great Microsoft, reinvent the wheel!
Well, it is not like Flash is an open standard.
“Well, it is not like Flash is an open standard.”
And it’s not that you are forced to use existing and established standards just because they exist… 🙂
True, but there is no other application like flash, then you have to use flash.
“True, but there is no other application like flash, then you have to use flash.”
That seems to be the sad truth, yes. “Flash” usually makes web pages inaccessible in general (if no “Flash” player is available), and especially for disabled people (along with other no-gos in web design). Today “script kiddies” abuse “Flash” as a replacement for HTML/XHTML. Allthough there are free standards for streaming media, for interaction and for vector graphics, they are not used; instead, “Flash” has developed for a “one size fits all” replacement in the web. The use of “Flash” can be avoided, but surely it’s not easy.
NB: This was a bit off-topic, but it shows how inferior proprietary solutions can develop into a replacement for free standards.
Flash is like salt…. It is good in moderation but can be fatal if used too much.
Yes, because no one should ever try to make a better product than someone else out there.
Miguel de Icaza has an interesting blog entry:
http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2007/May-01.html
and
Nice
“The release for the DLR is done under the terms of the Microsoft Permissive License (MsPL) which is by all means an open source license. ”
How does it interact with the GPL, LGPL, and MIT license that different parts of Mono is under? Also, I don’t think the Microsoft Permissive License is certified by the OSI or the FSF or the DFSG. The FSF says that their shared source licenses are incompatible with the GPL.
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/
Edited 2007-05-01 22:56
The Microsoft Permissive License is described here:
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/licensingbasics/per…
I’ve seen it described as “BSD-like”.
Edited 2007-05-01 23:08
For those that are actually open to information regarding this (rather than simply deciding to blindly dismiss it), here are some nice links:
MIX07 keynote
Excellent keynote with lots of demos on both Windows and Mac, showing coding, debugging, deployment, etc:
http://visitmix.com/Blogs/Joshua/ray-ozzie-and-scott-guthrie-keynot…
Silverlight developers reference diagram:
http://blogs.msdn.com/robburke/archive/2007/05/01/silverlight-devel…
http://download.microsoft.com/download/f/2/e/f2ecc2ad-c498-4538-8a2…
Informative links by MIX07 attendees:
http://codebetter.com/blogs/sam.gentile/archive/2007/04/30/new-and-…
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/PuttingMixSilverlightTheCoreCLRAndThe…
And finally, Steve Gillmor’s take:
http://gesturelab.com/?p=77
Going by this: http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/01/200226
We’re going to see a ‘blessed’ version of atleast the core of .NET – maybe this should cut down the development time for mono – and make the usage of it blessed by Microsoft?
For me, I hope that this is the beginning of a new start for Microsoft – where they stop giving a toss about the operating system and realise that the money is to be made in the middleware and delivering software as a service.
At the end of the day; isn’t it better to have an end user running Linux and subscribing their software from Microsoft than a user who doesn’t use Microsoft software at all?
If Microsoft came out tomorrow created some sort of weird online/offline version/fusion of Microsoft Office that could run on OpenSolaris/Linux, I’d use it straight away – they would win me as a customer – couple that with the Dynamic Runtime Language, and its all good.
Maybe Microsoft has also finally realised that its what is delivered ontop of the technology that matters, not the technology itself – you can have the worlds sexiest API/Framework, but if it is poorly exploited by the applications that run ontop and simply kept secret for the sake of holding onto/creating a new monopoly, in the end, it benefits no one.
Microsoft needs to realise what they suck at (Windows) and what they do bloody well – and work on what they do well; IBM realised that it made little sense them continuing in the PC world, so they sold it off. Will Microsoft come to that day when they realise that the desktop operating system market isn’t worth staying it, and simply just hand it over to the alternatives in favour of middleware and server platform? maybe. If you said IBM was going to sell of their PC business to someone 10 years ago, they would have laughed – look where we are today.
Edited 2007-05-01 21:23
Don’t underestimate Microsoft: that’s not a desperate company (as Sun, for ex.) trying to open-source their shoes to see some light before becoming history.
The battle moved to server-side as Microsoft realized they cannot grow anymore in desktop market. Open markets are hostile to Microsoft (China, India and so on) so they’re trying to cash their desktop strength via reducing pirated copies.
And now they fight the server war, where they started to lead. And for that, Silverlight is a great technology.
I’m waiting for MS “Flash” since .NET came to light. Now the circle is closed and Microsoft developers have all they need. Excellent.
Microsoft needs to realise what they suck at (Windows) and what they do bloody well – and work on what they do well; IBM realised that it made little sense them continuing in the PC world, so they sold it off. Will Microsoft come to that day when they realise that the desktop operating system market isn’t worth staying it, and simply just hand it over to the alternatives in favour of middleware and server platform? maybe.
I hope not. I don’t really want *every* single OS to be a Unix variant. Unix was not created or designed by God such that it’s designs cannot be improved on. I actually wish Apple had succeeded with Copeland rather than making yet another Unix. Their OS was more interesting when it was their own thing.
Plus, I’d like to see what becomes of Singularity (Microsoft’s CLR-based OS that is in research).
Edited 2007-05-01 23:10
Plus, I’d like to see what becomes of Singularity (Microsoft’s CLR-based OS that is in research).
Microsoft Research’s track record of commercialization is not that great. The last big thing I can think of that came out of there was the vector-texture stuff from Blinn.
Oh, it’s not for lack of talent either. Microsoft Research employs some of the smartest people around. Whether the rest of the company pays any attention to their work, however, is debatable.
Microsoft Research’s track record of commercialization is not that great. The last big thing I can think of that came out of there was the vector-texture stuff from Blinn.
.NET Generics, the speech engines for current products like Vista and Speech Server, digital ink for Tablet PC, XBOX achievements algorithms, high-density barcodes, the CCR that ships with MS Robotics Studio, the Phoenix compiler, static driver verifier and other security/reliability tools, search technologies shipping as part of WDS/Live Search, real-time communications technologies, rights management, Office Roundtable, various SQL Server technologies, many others.
http://research.microsoft.com/aboutmsr/pastpresentfuture/contributi…
http://research.microsoft.com/aboutmsr/overview/default.aspx
Right. Microsoft is still investing more money than anyone else in IT. And while other players can work on a few fields, Microsoft has people researching almost any field in IT.
Irony is people is yelling at Microsoft not to be innovative and markets yell at MS because they invest too much in researching… lol
These are interesting, and there are several fairly big ones in there that I wasn’t aware of (Cleartype, speed codec). In light of this evidence, I’m going to have to weaken my original assertion. On the other hand, looking at that list, a lot of them are of the form “minor feature to existing mature product”. Microsoft Research has some really cool “big” technologies (polyphonic C#, singularity, many others), and I don’t see a lot of those filtering out of the lab…
“Microsoft Research’s track record of commercialization is not that great.”
That’s a common myth.
But see Kevin Schofield’s (MS Research lead) posts here:
http://scobleizer.com/2007/03/20/one-thing-microsoft-does-way-bette…
Commercialization of research is hard. Normally research ends up in other products rather than become products by themselves. And many times it’s watered down into more usable form (compare the concept cars at auto shows with the final products). The large research farms like Xerox Parc, Bell Labs, etc, all have “poor” commercialization records if you’re looking for a “pure” research product.
I don’t expect Singularity to become a commercial OS. But if the results of its research can be incorporated into future Microsoft OSes, that would be great. I’d rather that than Microsoft just say, “screw it, let everything be unix”.
Unix has many problems. I really don’t know from where this idea came that Unix is OS-perfection. In college, my OS architecture class was based on Unix, and we certainly were NOT taught that it is perfect by any stretch of the imagination. Such (mis)doctrine came later, and it’s affecting the pliant minds of the youth, such that they go so far as to think that anything that differs from the “nix” way is wrong by axiom.
Edited 2007-05-02 00:10
As it is, implementing dynamic languages (well, in a way that makes performance not suck) on the CLR is a bitch and a half. Oh, sure, the Python and Ruby guys are happy to just see any kind of native-code generation, but for dynamic languages with more demanding requirements the CLR is far from optimal.
On a slightly OT note. I know I shouldn’t expect quality journalism from CNet, but this one made me laugh: software that allows developers to write .Net applications using dynamic, or scripting, languages. There are dynamic languages that are scripting languages, yes, but there are also dynamic languages that are heavy-duty applications-programming languages! In that vein, not all dynamic languages are “duck typed”. It pisses me off that people who think Python and Ruby invented dynamic typing go around conflating “dynamic typing” with “duck typing”.
I will believe that when they release a Linux version.
“I will believe that when they release a Linux version.”
Um, implementing it for OSX makes it “beyond Windows” by definition.
“Um, implementing it for OSX makes it “beyond Windows” by definition.”
Flash supports Linux, OSX, and Windows, Silverlight is unnecessary, and there is no reason for them not to make a Linux version.
Silverlight, implementing a .net runtime, makes it very necessary. That means that you get .net anywhere you can run silverlight. I say very cool
I guess Novell will take take about this and include Silverlight in their MONO. That shoul be their part (and their advantage) in recent deal with MS.
But I don’t think MS has a priority in this. After all, Linux desktop strength is not so meaningful. OS X has much more strength.
But however, I think MS will push for a Linux version of Silverlight to make its technology more widespread.
“But I don’t think MS has a priority in this. After all, Linux desktop strength is not so meaningful. OS X has much more strength.”
They could easily make a Linux version, this is just the usual sleazy MS tactics.
“But however, I think MS will push for a Linux version of Silverlight to make its technology more widespread.”
We shall see!
“They could easily make a Linux version, this is just the usual sleazy MS tactics.”
You’re both forgetting one crucial point: Silverlight runs on the client not the server. Linux desktop penetration is small enough that from a business standpoint, it might not make much sense for MS to write an in-house version of Silverlight for Linux. Anyone will be free to write their own though, without fear of MS litigation.
“Linux desktop penetration is small enough that from a business standpoint, it might not make much sense for MS to write an in-house version”
Linux desktop marketshare is large enough for Adobe to make a Linux version of Flash.
“Linux desktop marketshare is large enough for Adobe to make a Linux version of Flash.”
Adobe and Microsoft are two entirely different companies with entirely different business models. To my knowledge, this will be the first product they are directly competing with each other on.
The point is that regardless if MS writes a Linux version or not, there will be a Silverlight runtime for Linux written by someone somewhere.
Linux desktop marketshare is large enough for Adobe to make a Linux version of Flash.
They didn’t care about Linux very much until they feel threatened by WPF technology and Silverlight. Honeymoon between Macromedia and Microsoft (if any) ended long ago when Macromedia didn’t release Flex for .NET/IIS6 systems as they were forecasting. That was a clear sign that they were in battle but still Macromedia didn’t release Flash for Linux if not last year or 2 years ago (can’t remember).
Now Adobe and Microsoft are fighting on every level with XPS battling PDF and Silverlight battling Flash. When you will see that Microsoft will switch its Flash contents on its own website with Silverlight contents, blood will flow. 😉
{But I don’t think MS has a priority in this. After all, Linux desktop strength is not so meaningful. OS X has much more strength.}
I don’t think so. I’m sure I have seen figures that indicate Linux has overtaken OSX on the desktop.
“I’m sure I have seen figures that indicate Linux has overtaken OSX on the desktop.”
The various web usage stats sites (and web usage is the main issue here) showing Macs with nearly an order of magnitude larger share than Linux.
http://www.onestat.com/html/aboutus_pressbox46-operating-systems-ma…
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=2
http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2007/April/os.php
http://www.webhits.de/webhits/browser.htm
And the various professional studies show a completely different picture of the situation. IDC estimated that the desktop Linux marketshare overtook OS X years ago (2003).
The IDC article gave a 2.8% figure. A more recent Forbes article gives an “under 2%” figure, but doesn’t give a proper source for the data. Both numbers are an order of magnitude higher than those hit counters. One thing to remember is that Linux usage is overwhelmingly skewed towards government, corporate, and educational markets, with very little penetration in the home market. Moreover, it’s also very skewed to the Latin American and Asian markets, with much less penetration in the US market. Thus, it’s not surprising that web hit data shows a lower share than actual deployment studies.
I don’t see Objective-C on their list for OS X support.