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
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.
It was probably the printer friendly version that was linked, so it'd make sense to automatically show the print dialog. The alternative would be to have the article on 8 pages each with its own talking smiley pop-up that scares the shit out of you due to its creepy "I wuv you" catchphrase and the fact you forgot that your speakers were on pretty loud.
Why does my post history abruptly stop? I want to laugh at the stupid things I posted as a kid.
Been there, done that. M$ is trying to do an ActiveX 2.0. Too late. I for one welcome our new Adobe overlords!
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!
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