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Mono Coders Hack Linux Silverlight in 21 Days
Etrigoth writes "After the recent announcement of Silverlight by Microsoft at their Mix event in Vegas, Miguel de Icaza
galvanised his team of developers in the Mono group at Novell to create a Linux implementation, a so-called 'Moonlight'.
Remarkably, they achieved this in 21 Days.
Although they were first introduced to Silverlight at the Las Vegas Mix, de Icaza was invited by a representative of Microsoft France for a
10 minute demonstration at the Paris Re-Mix 07 keynote conference, should they have anything to show.
Joshua, a blogger for Microsoft has confirmed that the Mono team did not know anything about Silverlight 1.1 before its launch. Other members of this team have blogged about this incredible achievement, Moonlight hack-a-thon. It's worth noting from a developer perspective that Moonlight is not Mono and doesn't require Mono to work"
Joshua, a blogger for Microsoft has confirmed that the Mono team did not know anything about Silverlight 1.1 before its launch. Other members of this team have blogged about this incredible achievement, Moonlight hack-a-thon. It's worth noting from a developer perspective that Moonlight is not Mono and doesn't require Mono to work"
"Linux developers implement in two weeks the compatibility and usability features that Microsoft intentionally left out."
Miguel de Icaza doesn't hate Microsoft.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
What Open Source is capable of?
Would Miguel's team not have been able to code this under a closed license? Was there significant public involvement that was critical to the project?
Also, what was accomplished? A 100% direct rip-off of a product already created and demonstrated by a closed-source development house? Impressive. Wow.
Considering that mono and friends is a project at delivering an open-source, Linux-compatible implementation of .NET, I completely fail to see how they could get ahead. Unless they have a time machine hidden somewhere... It's like complaining that German translation of books written in English are always released after the English versions.
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
That depends, if it were demonstrated to have been yanked to stifle the competition, then yes it could be an antitrust problem. If they yanked it because it was a huge security nightmare, and they were going to release a new more secure browser, then probably not.
But that being said, Apple hasn't been bitchslapped or even investigated for the charges I read about from time to time, about early on how Jobs manufactured an iPod shortage to enrich Apple's margins. That kind of amazes me, because I'll read about that from time to time in articles that praise Jobs performance since he got back. I suspect that if that and the mandatory minimum pricing on the iPods isn't considered to be fodder for antitrust suits, I doubt that MS should be smacked for removing an insecure browser from the market. Even if it does harm the competition or consumer.
swf is an open format so THAT obviously isn't the problem...
From http://www.adobe.com/licensing/developer/
"This license does not permit the usage of the specification to create software which supports SWF file playback."
It's a bit like having a research library that permits you access to any book you want, as long as your paper doesn't cite one as a reference.
Skype is too convoluted... Now I'm reverse-engineering the Kyoto Protocol.
I just watched the video. I saw nothing that Flash couldn't do, much less anything that Shockwave couldn't do.
The reason why Flash is popular isn't because you can create complicated applications with it. (You can, but nobody uses them.) The reason why it's popular is because it's small, fast, and has a very large, cross-platform installed base. Silverlight isn't any of those three.
~ roscivs
Court: "Microsoft, you've been found guilty of anti-competitive and monopolistic practices. What do you have to say for yourself?"
Microsoft looks at the floor, hands in pockets, mumbles "Sorry...."
Court: "Well, don't let it happen again!"
Just junk food for thought...
The real reason that Flash is popular is because that is the standard that YouTube decided on.
And why did YouTube decide on Flash as their standard? Because Flash plugins were mature and reliable, worked well with all leading browsers and OS platforms, and even came pre-installed with many browser distros. Because it allowed them to avoid the game of "Select your poison: Windows Media, Real, or QuickTime?" that users at previous video sites had to play. Because tools for generating and publishing Flash content were not onerously expensive.
Is Silverlight any of these things yet?
>All they have to do is yank iexplore32 and flash dies overnight.
All they have to do is yank iexplore32 and Firefox wins overnight.
There, fixed that for you.
Ok, before Mono I, as a Linux user, was unable to run applications written in C#. After Mono I, as a Linux user, now have the choice as to whether or not I want to run a C# application. You want me to be mad about that?
Miguel has not taken anything away from Linux, everything he's done has added to the choices we have. I would rather have an open-source implementation of Silverlight for Linux than have no implementation or a closed-source implementation. If you don't like Silverlight, don't install Moonlight, but don't presume to tell me if I should or should not use it.
If anything, Miguel has just proven that even if Microsoft keeps changing the API, the Mono team can keep up.
http://www.mhall119.com
The opcodes of the machine are documented on the standard ECMA 335.
The standard libaries and browser APIs are available from http://msdn2.microsoft.com/ a lot of the documentation is still under development for Silverlight 1.1 (1.0 is much more complete) so for a few things that are new in 1.1, you have to guess what they are, or look it up in the WPF docs (which is where stuff ultimately came from).
The format of the Silverlight compiled scripts is documented in ECMA 335 as well.