Story: Mozilla warns of Flash and Silverlight 'agenda'
This 'agenda' theory just does not make sense...
Since last September 5th, Microsoft and Novell have announced a technical collaboration on the Moonlight Project, which has been widely commented since, like here - also on ZDNet - by Mary Jo Foley: http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=695
Some quotes:
"Microsoft also announced it is officially has “extended support” for Novell’s port of Silverlight to Linux, the project Novell has christened “Moonlight.” Novell has been working in earnest on the Silverlight port to Linux since April. In June, Novell showed off Moonlight, claiming it took only 21 days to build the working prototype."
(...)
"Unlike the case with Mono, Novell’s port of .Net to Linux — where Microsoft had more of a love/hate relationship (love or hate depending on whether you were a Microsoft employee who saw Linux as relatively tolerable or cancerous) — with Moonlight, Microsoft is leaving nothing to interpretation with Silverlight. The corporate word: Novell’s Silverlight port to Linux is something to be embraced."
As you can understand, there can't be such thing as a "secret agenda" about SIlverlight and mult-platform, since whatever Microsoft should decide in the future, Moonlight is an Open Source project and is here to stay.
Furthermore, let's notice that it is incorrect to speak of Silverlight as if it were a pure "closed source proprietary" thing. Some parts of it have been open sourced, and this code directly reused by the Moonlight project, like the DLR, and some other parts are published under the Open Specification Premises, which guarantee that anyone can use those specifications, like for the XAML language for instance.
Our customers need solutions and technologies that work today, and in some cases they cannot simply wait until 2010 or later for some new unimplemented standards to be defined.
So far, though the technology is quite young, Silverlight has already an impressive momentum, and we do receive a very positive feedback from both our customers and partners, and the users.
Christophe Lauer -- Web & RIA Evangelist, Microsoft France
(NB: I'm not working at Microsoft Corp, nor in the Silverlight product group. All I mentionned is public data and information that everyone can verify)
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