Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft To Open Source Some of Silverlight
Kurtz writes with word that Microsoft is about to follow in Adobe's footsteps by releasing the source code to part of its Silverlight technology. The news comes less than a week after Adobe announced plans to open source the Flex SDK. Microsoft is hungry to build the developer base for its rich Internet app tools, if it can.
It's Microsoft, they'll probably release the comments in the code and keep everything else shut in. I mean comments are part of the source code, why not just release those and claim it's open source?
It's not quite a complete lie, but it's underhanded in the evil villian sort of way.
I like muppets.
So RTFA - but none of it's official, there are no details other then a little about the market space. In fact I suspect the discussion on Slashdot will be more interesting.
The rock, the vulture, and the chain
I like the way the link wants to print automatically.
Perhaps next we can get one of those nifty `email this automatically to everyone on my contacts list' scripts?
Call me cynical, but...
...
Then refuse to allow it on any operating system but Windows?
They..
Get behind their new technology and push
Use every leverage they can to promote it to their "partners"
Give away source code under a restrictive license
Give away development tools
Wait until it is a eb de-facto standard
Flash works, Flash movies work, Flash is ubiquitous, Linux/OSX support it, Everybody knows it. So why do we need anything else?
The underlying argument goes like this: when a technology is established and "good enough" for everyday use then nobody needs to fix what is not broken.
Am I the only one who gets the feeling they keep on arriving too late every single time?
I mean, call me picky, but shouldn't they finish developing IE to an acceptable standard before they start on a Flash competitor?
* Game Over * High Score: 264,846,927 -- Your Score: 14
Of a system being worked on by the users for the users to gain a better system through the networking effect, now is slowly becoming another means for industries to get cheap labor. From the OS community POV quite saddening.
From a commercial POV, if prices do go lower and more people would buy/use it with the backings of corporate Marketing, compared to when it was just OS and mouth to mouth, it might (emphasis on MIGHT) spread more awareness and interest in genuine/creative software.
Microsoft is anti everything the internet stands for.
.Net stacks and the dotcoms will laugh and fart in their general direction.
The Internet is for open, platform neutral communcation.
Microsoft if for closed source mono-culture.
The internet is for the creation of new tools, paradigms and technology by anyone for anyone.
Microsoft is all about where they think you want to go today.
Fact is, Microsoft has made it their mission to break everything they possibly can, whether it be standard, language or platform.
If it's not from microsoft, they want to kill it.
So any developer that sincerely uses MS in anything but their server-side stack is a user hating pro-MS pundit that wants to try to force their user base to use Windows and Windows related products. And personally, has no business whatsoever calling themselves a web developer. Anti-web developer is more like it.
So I don't care what MS does. A psychopathic culture can not be changed.
And MS has always been and always will be a psychopathic culture, feigning to be "nice" if it thinks it there is something in it for them.
Adobe has been quite sincere and has done some great things with Flex, Apollo and will also be creating some nifty webservices.
Buying Macromedia was a great move and wise to insure that technologies such as Flash, Flex and Director lived on and became more prominant.
Microsoft on the other hand is reviled and dying a public death in the online marketplace.
MSN and it's related services are a joke. Online music? maps? Online calender? Search?
MS will tie their apps to Vista Servers and
I am happy to see MS blowing wads of money on what is bound to be yet another failure.
Been there, done that. M$ is trying to do an ActiveX 2.0. Too late. I for one welcome our new Adobe overlords!
Read the article but it is intentionally vague on the license and the quantity.
Correct me if I'm wrong on this but I think Microsoft have released shared-source programs before but never properly allow modification and redistribution rights. I'd be surprised if this is any different.
Remember that Adobe is the company that sais:
"you are allowed to read the SWF specification, but if you use the information and thoughts created in your brain by reading this document, you are not allowed to implement a SWF viewer!"
Or in other words, legal barking:
"If you threaten our monopoly in the SWF business, we'll sue the crap out of you for the most absurd reasons".
So, legally, Adobe is worse than MS.
The problem with Silverlight is if it only plays on a personal computer it is already obsolete. Even if it played on Windows, Mac and Linux personal computers, still no good. There are too many phones and iPods and various other devices that have the ability to play audio and video (not to mention TV's), and these devices all have H.264/AAC decoders in them. There is no room for multiple codecs and no general purpose CPU to decode them. Spoiler: Mary Jane dies. These are DVD players which are data-storage agnostic.
People say why doesn't AppleTV let you watch YouTube in addition to streaming movie trailers from Apple.com? Because the AppleTV decodes H.264 video in its GPU and YouTube is not H.264. Spoiler: Mary Jane dies. The CPU in the AppleTV is under clocked to stay cool, it would have to run all the time to decode YouTube and it would have to be 2-3x the speed also. YouTube is not iPod-ready, not handheld-ready, not living room -ready by any stretch. It's very PC-oriented.
If MS can't sell WMA then how can they sell Silverlight? It is foolish. Even if every iPod user didn't already have QuickTime on their Mac or PC it would be a really hard sell to content creators to be bothered with multimedia content that is personal computer only. There are two billion phones that all need to be replaced in the next two years and the iPhone is kicking off the true handheld Web by reading actual Web pages plus MPEG-4 audio video. Spoiler: Mary Jane dies. It is way too late for you if you are talking about what format audio and video is going to be stored and streamed in. It is also way too late for MS to get a fair chance with content creators when their greatest contribution so far has been to fuck with QuickTime at every chance they get.
"[Sam] Ramji[, Microsoft director of platform technology strategy,] made it clear Microsoft has no plans to open Silverlight." http://www.theregister.com/2007/05/01/microsoft_op en_source_mix/
Microsoft?... Open Source?... Does not compute, does not compute!
http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=3045 08
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
#include "bsod.h"
/* anyone remember the days when slashdot allow you to quote pre-formatted text? */
main() { if(running_on_linux()) { crash(horribly, messily); } return proprietary_blob(patented); }
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
i thought "windows presentation foundation everywhere" was more catchy, anyway, I don't see it getting everywhere like Flash, so let's just forget about it
It's a cross platform CLR? I don't read any negative comments at all.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
MS finally announces they'll open-source something, and all that the Linux users do is complain.
More important than the source code is an Open Format, which IMO is a key advantage over Flex/Flash. Silverlight's Markup Language, XAML is pure XML and easier to decode. Flash is a proprietary, binary format and the Specification forbids you from building an alternative player.
The Flex Plan
1. Open Source Flex, and Flash Runtime
2. Drive a strong adoption wave, since its "Open Source"
3. Alternate Tools spring up, Flash becomes the "*.doc" of RIA
4. Flash format remains proprietary, all RIA belongs to Adobe
5. Profit!
I can't imagine any other reason why anyone would want to open source the tools, while protecting the format.
Anyway competition is good, and might actually result in Adobe opening the Flash Specification.
Life is a conviction.
Microsoft has been using open source for some time, albeit sometimes with restrictive licenses, but rarely has any of it been useful for anything but developers already committed to Microsoft's platform.
... people are interested in what open source does for them. Open source frees them from dependence on a single vendor, it frees them from license fees and royalties, it allows them to share responsibility with a large pool of like-minded developers, and so on. Open source products tied to a single vendor, whether it's hardware (like a Linux-based set-top box or PDA) or software (one of Microsof's efforts was an open-source installer for Windows applications) is only going to be interesting if it's useful for the things they're already doing.
There are several reasons people may be interested in open source, but they all have one thing in common
Open-sourcing *part* of a product, when you're potentially going to have to pay Microsoft to use the rest (the price I read was the first million users free, then 25 cents per user after that), is a pretty obvious poison pill.
While not directly related to the open-source angle of this story, here is Scott Guthrie (Silverlight team manager) talking about some of the more in-depth aspects of it. (36m long) http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=3045 08
Just because Flash is good, it doesnt mean something cannot be better.
As far as I have understood, Adobe is releasing the source for all tools necessary to create fully capable Flash objects; that includes some sort of a compiler, too. Isn't it possible to document the Flash format itself by examining the code of the mentioned compiler?
They'll need to build on Java if they want to keep pace with Microsoft in that category. ;)
What unfettered arrogance on behalf of the publication that's hosting it in believing that their hack paragraph on a minor tech story is worth a piece of tree - presumably they have a deal going with HP to use up as much ink as possible.
Techworld - a website I will never, at any time, ever visit again. Makes Flash, or its MS competitor, look positively non-invasive.
The submitter linked directly to the printer friendly version of the page - notice the printerfriendly=1 in the URL ? It's hardly "unfettered arrogance" for them to assume that anyone who clicks on their "Printer friendly version of this article" link might want to, you know, print the article. The fact that a slashdot submitter bypassed that step is not the fault of Techworld in any way, and to suggest a conspiracy with HP is just ridiculous!
'More important than the source code is an Open Format .. Flash is a proprietary, binary format and the Specification [adobe.com] forbids you from building an alternative player'
.. to make, have made, use, practice, sell, and offer for sale, and/or otherwise dispose of the Original Code'
According to this Adobe is releasing Flex under the Mozilla Public License (MPL) which states:
'The Initial Developer hereby grants You a world-wide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license
How is 'Open Format' defined in the current context and do you have a citation for the Silverlight license.
was Re:Xaml v/s Flex, Format is the key
davecb5620@gmail.com
Perhaps Silverlight will make some noticeable in-roads with a certain development crowd, but let's not pretend that good developers make good designers. And ninety-nine times out of one hundred, swf just begs to be designed beautifully. You're going to have to rely on designers to make it pretty -- and that's what the pointy haired boss will care about as well -- which means Flash will not go quietly into the night.
Silverlight will probably bring a new generation of embarrassingly ugly animations. Although Flash is capable of some relatively high-end programming voodoo, I'll grant you that Flash will probably need to work harder at better integrating with additional languages/frameworks/devstuffgoeshere in order to outflank the 'lazy MS developer' threat. But a quick domination of Microsoft over Adobe? Methinks you've placed an unwise bet, friend.
The problem is that Flash doesn't integrate in with anything ASP or .NET
.. Passing values from ASP to Flash
'Below is shown the Diagramatic Representation of how Flash interacts with the database via an Active Server Page (ASP)'
Returning a valid string from ASP
Re:Really. (Score:5, Interesting)
davecb5620@gmail.com
3 things about computers: they're alive, they're self-aware, and they hate your guts.
God I hope that Microsoft never gains ground in the internet application area. With them pushing non-compliant code in Internet Explorer version after version, just image what they would do if they had control of any development, and utilization applications.
One word.... scary!
I am open source, and Linux baby!
Oh come on. Perhaps you could provide a link for those of us unfortunate enough to not have read the operating manual that came with the internet, which explains what it "stands for".
The internet doesn't stand for anything. It doesn't even really exist anymore. Its not a collegial network of computer wonks and academics anymore, benevolently helping humanity to advance beyond its primitive state. Its simple one more resource in the global economy, facilitating the movement of 1s and 0s between computers. Your misguided, naive attachment to some sort of noble ideal of what the internet should be is charming, but ultimately flawed. Do they still have unicorns in your internet? Lets face it, if the internet stands for anything today, it stands for an enormous bag of cash being slung over the shoulder of some corporate hack or pornographer or scam artist, or perhaps all three at once.
Life needs more saving throws.
I'm not kidding either. I still have my W2K partition, and the only trouble I have with it is that no one writes software for it. Granted, I don't have the network drivers installed, but that's what would be fixed once it was open sourced!
> Kurtz writes with word
> that Microsoft
What? Excel not good enough for ya?
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." -- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Those are the key words.
Jeebus, this is frustrating. Saying a company is "Open Sourcing" some of their technology tells me almost nothing about it. Will it be under a reciprocal licensce, an academic license, a Microsoft wannabe open license? You've got to hand it to Microsoft. They're spinning this one pretty well, even though they're coming late to the party and without any pants on.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
When has Microsoft ever released small, tight, fast, bug free code that did one simple thing and didn't try to incorporate every other business agenda into a single offering? This software will be buggy, slow, not-really-open-source, bulky and have hooks into every single Microsoft package (in an effort to solidify the united front of Microsoft offerings).
Yawn. I've seen this movie before. It ends badly for Microsoft.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
There's already a developer community built around silverlight. For starters, i would say that you have at minimum 40% of the .net developer community. On top of that, i would say you have maybe 1000 at minimum developers who want to do some rich internet application development, but don't have the money for flash and media servers. On top of that, i would say you have 8% of the php crowd interested in silverlight (actually 20% are probably interested, but 12% of those don't trust microsoft).
so, add all these up and you are gonna have a fairly large developer community already, and adobe knows it. that's why they open sourced flex right as it was used, so that people would start using it!
The license is Microsoft Permissive License, a BSD-style license.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
When it's Nintendo vs Sony, people respond that this is good for the industry because it creates competition and raises the bar. How come when it's Microsoft vs Adobe, the response is always the opposite?
I'll take a stab at my own question: I think it's because there are a lot of software engineers here that have first hand experience with Flex but they only play console games. When they talk about Nintendo vs Sony, they're speaking from a gamers perspective. When they talk about Microsoft vs Adobe, they're speaking from the developers perspective.
In the grand scheme of things this may be better for the industry. After all, if Microsoft hadn't entered the browser war, we wouldn't have AJAX. Perhaps this Microsoft vs Adobe competition will result in the next AJAX.
you have maybe 1000 at minimum developers who want to do some rich internet application development, but don't have the money for flash and media servers.
What do you mean, don't have the money? If you can afford Visual Studio, then you can certainly afford Flash or Flex Builder. More important, you don't need Flash Media Server -- you can exchange data with any backend you please.
Disclaimer: I work at Adobe.
Flash isn't perfect under Linux, but it does work pretty well. It used to be nightmarish when it when through its long unmaintained-for-Linux phase, but for a couple of years now it's been pretty solid on mainstream distros.
There can be problems if you use anything unusual, or run a 64-bit native system.
That said, I have Flash installed in Firefox on my X11 thin clients at work with no issues beyond what you'd expect when combining software written by idiots (most flash movies) with low graphical performance hosts (X11 thin clients). The worst issue I see is that it can slow down the client a bit when playing animations created by "designers" who think everyone's using a Core 2 Duo machine with a high performance 3D accelerated video card. Usually ads.
Even then, nothing crashes and at worst the browser tab/session can be closed. The flashblock extension has made life a little nicer though by letting the users choose whether they want to view flash, rather than being forced into viewing lots of badly-written flash ad movies as they try to get real work done. I find the same thing to be necessary on my Core 2 Duo WinXP laptop.
In short - recent Flash versions are pretty darn good.
I'm sticking with Java!
Too bad that the dynamics of the merger dictated that SVG had to die.
Prior to the merger, Adobe was a strong supported of this truly excellent graphical development environment, one with all the behaviors of flash, one much more open to adaptive re-use of existing components, and one whose spec was truly open.
Now with all efforts thrown behind the "just OK" flash, SVG is being left to wither. I won't be able to warm to Flash until I am done mourning
OMGZORZ... it's like the voices of millions of Lunix Slashdork zealot d00ds were all raised in despair, but were suddently silenced.
Once again, Lunix will be in Microsoft's tail lights. It's starting to seem like the natural order of the universe or something.