Slashdot Mirror
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"
Regardless though, having a native solution is always good.
must be pissed. How do they look when a bunch of coders implement in three weeks what they worked on for months? Surely the quality is not the same and the Mono guys still have a lot to do but damn, this is fast!
This will give MS more of a foothold in the market. They wanted this to happen! Now flash isn't the only cross platform game in town so now the marketing guys will be able to say YES IT WILL WORK ON LINUX so you dont just need to use flash!
... to congratulate Miguel and his team for this remarkable achievement!
Gives an insight into what Open Source is capable of.
Y
fast! you call this FAST? most MS-software is developed in a view minutes!!!11!1ONE
(at least it runs like as if... *SCNR*)
LOL
I was going to paste essentially the same thing, but realized it would be redundant.
"Linux developers copy Microsoft product in record time! The future is Linux!" ??
It's often said that ideas are a dime a dozen, but implementations are few and far between.
If it had been done on a normal time scale, the novelty here would be the fact that the implementation exists. But considering it was done in three weeks, instead of six months, shows the sheer speed and effectiveness that Miguel's teams demonstrate.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
"Microsoft® Silverlight(TM) is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web. Silverlight offers a flexible programming model that supports AJAX, VB, C#, Python, and Ruby, and integrates with existing Web applications. Silverlight supports fast, cost-effective delivery of high-quality video to all major browsers running on the Mac OS or Windows."
:-)
Remember, Google is our friend!
No matter where you go... there you are.
Right, so MS had promised from the start that Silverlight would have a Linux version.
I just didn't realize they had been planning on achieving that goal by getting a bunch of OSS coders to do all their work for them for free.
Oh well, probably better this way, since it might remain capital-F Free. What's the Moonlight license, anyway?
If this _is_ a "FREE" implementation of Silverlight it really will start to look like a nicer alternative to the poorly-supported, closed-source Flash for Linux.
http://silverlight.net/
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
"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.
Ok, they might develop thousand times faster than Microsoft. Unfortunately it is and always will be Microsoft leading the way, Mono & Co lagging behind. Nothing will change that.
Woderful. now if they could think of a better name. What's wrong with moonlight? well other that not sounding right to me it's going to be hard to search for it on the web.
Of course my favortite suggestion has the same problem: MONOchrome.
Suggestions:
"monochrome" instead of silverlight. (ie. whitelight versus single frequency). Of course those opposed to it might call it silverblight.
Other possibilities:
flash-light
silver-lux
silver-tux
silvix
sliver
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Moonlight does not use Mono or .Net or C# or anything like that. It's written in C++ and can be used as a Firefox plugin directly. Read all the links at the top of the Slashdot story.
Do you want the real answer (not likely), or some snark? It's Monday, so what you want is immaterial -- snark is all i'm capable of.
Silverlight, a Wiccan coven in North Carolina.
Terry Silverlight, a drummer/composer/producer/arranger/educator.
Silverlight, a weapon in the Runescape MMORPG.
Want more? I'm sure I could drag up plenty from the depths of search engine hell. Hell, I could even do a tag search on flickr, I'm sure that would be amusing.
At any rate, you've all the resources at your fingertips to know what Silverlight is in TFA's context -- even more so if you read TFA.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
It seems to me it's as path-breaking as Silverlight will ever be (judging by how easy it was to copy it).
Strictly speaking, Linux developers copied Microsoft's copy of a product acquired by Adobe from FutureSplash via Macromedia.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
What the heck is Silverlight?
:-)
Okay, Silverlight is a Microsoft product, and is some kind of plug-in related to "media experiences and rich interactive applications for the web", according to the above page. Not finding that especially enlightening, I clicked on the FAQ, where the first question is "What is Silverlight?". Great! Unfortunately it yielded a "We're sorry, the page you requested could not be found" error. Maybe I need Javascript turned on or something? Ah. There we go. [Shrug] Huh? Same terse verbiage-filled useless description as before. Thanks for nothing. Other information on the FAQ page imply streaming of content using "Windows Streaming is another major goal of the product, complete with fancy DRM [weak Golf clapping].
So, I'm still not 100% sure, but I think it's trying to emulate the typical user experience with Flash, including the ungraceful handling of missing/disabled browser features
Oh. I did find out that the Microsoft definition of "cross-platform" is Windows (versions unspecified) and Mac OS X 10.4.8+ (Intel and PPC), but they say they are considering wider support.
Favorite buzzword phrase: "free cloud-based hosting and streaming solution".
Cloud-based? I haven't heard that one before.
Now that Moonlight is finished Miguel and his team should, having listened to customer demand (I believe that's the excuse Microsoft always uses), build some Free extensions on to Microsoft's work. Meaning the best experience can only be had by people running Moonlight under GNU/Linux and that some functionality will be unavailable to other platforms.
Gosh, does that mean people will be locked-in to using GNU/Linux? Well Microsoft could use the GPL'ed code if they want to! We'll call it 'Freedom lockin'. :)
I'm going to transform myself into a mighty hawk. Either that or I'll just go and work at Dixons, haven't decided yet.
I wonder if teams like this were actually formed for a certain purpose, exactly what type of software can be cracked or copied, regardless of their origin.
Pretty interesting, nonetheless.
"Please, shut up. Just when I think you can't say anything more stupid, you speak again." -Archie Bunker.
Is it just me or did Perl just go away? I love Perl and use it on a daily bases. But it seems like of lot of things are going the route of Python and Ruby. When did this happen?
Time to pick up a Ruby on Rails and Python book.
... I would call it Moonshine.
It's a good hacking achievement, but let's just consider the usefulness of this.
Creating Moonlight assumes that there is going to be lots of web content made for Silverlight, and this assumes that Silverlight will be put in a fairly dominant position on the web in the not too distant future as a result. Silverlight is not a open web standard, nor is XAML, and its future development is always controlled by Microsoft.
I just don't think people think through what the ultimate aims, goals and endgames are for things like this regarding open source software.
Great achievement, and I say good job!
.NET before, or port of Avalon or anything at all.
But just preemptively want to explain why is the development timeframe difference between MS and Linux (because I see stupid uninformed posts coming, it's Slashdot after all).
What these guys did, is take Mono (for Linux), and make a standalone subset of it, Silverlight (for Linux). So there aren't huge surprises here.
On the Microsoft side of the story, it's different: they had to first sit down and figure out what the subset will be. Then they had to count the bytes (literally) of every feature they include, since for proper mainstream deployment, the plugin should be as small as possible (I won't be surprised if Moonlight is not something like twice the size of Silverlight or more).
Then they had to make it work on Mac, where they didn't have a port of
Strictly speaking, Linux developers copied Microsoft's copy of a product acquired by Adobe from FutureSplash via Macromedia.
That's not strict at all.
Microsoft used their copy of Java (.NET) to create a copy of FutureSplash which Adobe acquired via Macromedia, and Linux developers used their copy of Microsoft's copy of Java (.NET) to create a copy of the copy of FutureSplash.
I was wondering how hard it would be to port silverlight to macosx and other unixies?
If we want silverlight to suceed it must be multiplatform.
http://saveie6.com/
"Microsoft® Silverlight(TM) is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web. Silverlight offers a flexible programming model that supports AJAX, VB, C#, Python, and Ruby, and integrates with existing Web applications. Silverlight supports fast, cost-effective delivery of high-quality video to all major browsers running on the Mac OS or Windows."
That's fantastic. But I still can't figure out what it is from that marketing copy/Buzzword Bingo card.
So it's Microsoft's attempt to devise a Flash killer? Or something like that?
The real reason that Flash is popular is because that is the standard that YouTube decided on
You gotta be kidding. Flash was INSANELY POPULAR even before Youtube. Take a look at online animations, like Strongbad. Youtube has only contributed to Flash's popularity, making it a de-facto standard if it wasn't already one.
I think it is awesome what Miguel has done, but why is SlashDot so slow in posting news. This story came out last week. http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/061907-linux -microsoft-browser-plug-in.html
So Silverlight is a virtual machine that runs as a browser plugin?
Alrighty. If it is a virtual machine, where can we find documentation about:
1) the OPCODES of this vm
2) the standard libraries and interbrowser API
3) The format of silverlight compiled scripts
I have been un-able to find this information from the silverlight website.
Maybe this kind of information is what the MS/Novell deal meant when they said "exhange of technical information"?
And the Mono team was able to pull this of from this? Given these info, maybe someone else can implement Silverlight in 18 days in perl, 15 days in Ruby and 11 days in Python!
That's definitely not the case in this thread.
Disclaimer: I love Python.
Python has been displacing Perl and Java for quite some time now.
I think the best example of this is that 5 years ago it was hard to find Python bindings for lots of libraries. Now, Python often has bindings before either Perl or Java. It's easier to read, easier to write, and its natural level of abstraction seems to hit a sweet spot that resonates with developers.
Just my take on it.
*sigh* back to work...
Flash doesn't run on Linux x86_64. As a software engineer, I can do everything on my Athlon linux box but play (most) video games and run Flash. I hate Adobe for their lack of Linux support and hope to see them either shape up or get destroyed by Microsoft. Let's not also forget that the vast majority of Flash websites are obnoxious eyesores and extremely tedious browsing experiences. I despise sites that rely on Flash for navigation or form handling. Some are nervous about MS controlling rich media websites. I ask. How can it get any worse than what Macromedia has done? The performance is poor, the linux support is poor, the experience is terrible. There's nothing positive about a site coded in Flash. As this article points out, I'll have a better chance at viewing Silverlight on my Ubuntu workstation than any Flash monstrosity.
And?
Lots of web content is made for Flash, which is in a dominant position on the web today. Flash is not an open web stndard, and its future development is always controlled by Adobe.
The difference? Thanks to Miguel and his team, there's a free and open-source implementation of Silverlight. There is not a free and open-source implementation of Flash; the only usable Flash implementations are and remain the locked-down, closed-source ones produced by Adobe themselves, and they use horribly restrictive EULAs to ensure that nobody who has ever looked at any Flash documentation is ever allowed to write a free competitor. Microsoft is actually being MORE free and MORE open than Adobe here. Haters take note.
Whether Silverlight succeeds or not, our dominant rich-web-content technology is going to be a closed technology controlled by a corporation with a chequered history. Given that fact, you know, I think I'll go with the one with a free implementation.
Having a competing implementation, used by many people, will mean that they cannot "embrace and extend" and cannot lock people into their products. After all, if they try to change the Silverlight standard, who is to say whether the MS implementation or the FOSS implementation will become the defacto standard?
Then we need to port Moonlight to Windows (and every other platform), so that the MS implementation isn't hte one that's mostly used. Otherwise, MS can just extend their own version in whatever way and have a large impact on those using Moonlight. If instead Moonlight and Silverlight have 50/50 market share, if Silverlight has a new feature, it won't be used by most until Moonlight catches up, or vice versa.
Twinstiq, game news
This is a shame, because that person has been flaming everywhere.
The slashdot admins have said that they can not do anything about it.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Wow, you just listed like the 4 worst things about Linux.
The Farewell Tour II
I sure hope so. Then they can lock him away somewhere underground in Redmond so we won't have to put up with him ruining Linux anymore.
The Farewell Tour II
what could have come about from the Mozilla-GNOME collaboration several years back if people had been as dedicated to Mozilla/XUL/XBL as they are to Microsoft/Silverlight/.Net. I think it's kind of sad, personally.
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
A list of stagnant "cross-platform" Microsoft products:
Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac
Internet Explorer for Mac
Windows Media Player for Mac
Internet Explorer for Unix
Remote Desktop for Mac
Virtual PC for Mac
Outlook Express for Mac
Though, for the first time, this is Open Source. So it may have a fighting chance, until perhaps Microsoft starts developing closed API's for the Windows version of Silverlight that are incompatible with other plugins such as "Moonlight".
grep -iw skynet
You see, now you got yourself modded redundant for pointing out the redundancy in redundantly commenting on a redundant post written with the sole purpose of being redundant. Shame on you!
Want to hear the voice of GOD? cat
Just junk food for thought...
You forget that Novell is not on our side anymore. We will just ignore their Microsoft backed wannabe "standards" after poking some fun at them.
Want to hear the voice of GOD? cat
Flash's future development is controlled by Adobe... Did that change its adoption rate? Maybe... Maybe it could have been adopted even faster as OSS, but I think we should be realistic here and not take anything closed source as a nail in the coffin for any web technology.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Wouldn't it have been nice if the submitter or author would've included a link to silverlight in the damned post in the first place?!?
http://slashdot.org/~tf23/journal
"Microsoft® Silverlight(TM) is ...
OK, it's a browser plugin that has SOMETHING to do with displaying video. The rest is buzz.
So what the heck does it DO?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Ruby and Python have grown in popularity in many environments where Perl wasn't as well suited. Perl is still the "glue that holds the internet together", it's just that it's no longer popular for web programming (CGI) and it was never really popular for UI programs. Not many people write Ruby or Python scripts to perform basic sysadmin tasks.
Also the extremely long delay in Perl6/Parrot development has given these other languages an opportunity to take the market.
http://www.mhall119.com
How is Pythons regex? One reason I love Perl is because of it's regex and the ability to write some serious code in just one or two lines.
Huh? Perl may have been displaced by Java, but I doubt Python. It hardly seems like Java is going anywhere because of Python either. Sorry, I think you're letting your rosy glasses cloud your vision.
hate Adobe for their lack of Linux support and hope to see them either shape up or get destroyed by Microsoft.
Did you really just compare Adobe to Microsoft in terms of poor Linux support? If Silverlight becomes workable on Linux, it'll be because a group of hackers reverse-engineered and re-implemented it, not because MS gives a shit about Linux. If you're going to judge these techs by their third-party open-source implementations, then you should be talking about the several free flash players that are currently much more functional than Moonlight.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Your wrong. Flash is an open standard and has been for many years. SWF is a documented standard and there even are quite a few OSS implementations of compilers, VMs and such. IIRC amf, the remoting protocoll of Flash is also an open standard.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I tried installing Silverlight on my Mac, but the install exited with a message that I needed Mac OS X 10.4.8 or higher.
I have Mac OS X 10.4.10 - like most people who installed the latest patches.
I guess the six-character string "10.4.1" is less than the string "10.4.8"...
The Gnash (Gnu-Flash) team will take another 5 years to get their shit together, despite having declared a Flash 7 compliant Gnash player top priority. Whatever that means. Maybe they'll finish their website this year.
If only our OSS Microsoft Fanboy Midguel would galvanize his team to implement an entire pipeline of Flash tools, generators and Players. If MS doesn't kill this one off and a viable Kit of OSS tools & players for Silverlight comes to life I might even drop Flash RIA for it.
But no way, for as long as I live, will I support an non-open RIA standard that MS has total control over. I'd rather mess with Adobes crappy Flash IDE for another 10 years.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I work on the codec team at Microsoft, and have been working with Silverlight for a while. Silverlight actually comes out of the gate with extremely mature tools.
.flv encoders. WMV is also a better codec (encodes faster, looks better). And Windows Media Services in Windows 2003 Server is much more scalable and cost effective than the equivalent Flash server.
It's video experience is Windows Media, which has been shipping for years and is more widely available than good
For tools, there's the Expression suite for design, and Visual Studio for code. And unlike Flash, there's a really good workflow for designers, developers, and video folks to collaborate together without having a single person who runs the Flash app to integrate all the elements.
My video compression blog
C++ and Perl aren't "expressive". They just have disgusting syntax that makes people who live on pure sense of superiority(which is more dangerous than any other force in human history, by the way) feel good while doing their expensive mental masturbation. Python(with C bindings for all the lower-level stuff) makes C++ look like the retarded stepchild of Paris Hilton, and Ruby pretty much aces Perl in any department except inertia.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
One of the interesting things with Moonlight is that its develops plan to implement a simple C# canvas object, which allows it to be used for for standalone application development, or to embed widgets into other programs, such as the Gnome desktop. So, even if Microsoft manages to destroy compatibility with Silverlight, the Moonlight code will still have a lot of potential in the Gnome environment, which currently lacks such tools.
As usual, Slashdot editors just assume that everyone knows what Silverlight is, as though we all follow Microsoft's every move.
.NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web. Silverlight offers a flexible programming model that supports AJAX, VB, C#, Python, and Ruby, and integrates with existing Web applications. Silverlight supports fast, cost-effective delivery of high-quality video to all major browsers running on the Mac OS or Windows."
.NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications..."
... experiences"? Is Silverlight psychoactive, like marijuana?
The developers of Moonlight make the same assumption. I see no explanation on the Moonlight developer web site.
From Microsoft: "Microsoft® Silverlight(TM) is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of
Most of that seems to be written by a marketing man who doesn't understand the product, but wants write about it anyway. What are "... the next generation of
What is "delivering
What kind of "experiences"? Does someone ring your doorbell, and when you answer it, pour water on your shoes?
How is Silverlight "fast"? Isn't the speed limited by the user's internet connection?
What does "on the Mac OS or Windows" mean? Does Microsoft intend to exclude Linux?
That's odd... I just tried out the Video Editor that was written in ActionScript here:
http://www.youtube.com/ytremixer
and yet my browser is, strangely enough, still alive...
Silverlight is basically a Microsoft attempt to extend their proprietary new (and ever exploding) Windows APIs onto the web. Sure, right now they're position it with a focus on video and as an alternative to Flash, but if you look closer at its underpinnings (.NET subset, XAML, etc.) it's really a complete application delivery platform. That it runs within a plugin within a browser is almost incidental, because it doesn't appear to use much browser infrastructure at all. They could also write a Silverlight application that IS the browser, and that can only access that particular part of the web written for Silverlight. Once you start coding to Microsoft APIs for a while, those other "cross platform" and "cross browser" plugins will inexplicably start drifting behind in compatibility and currency. If you think this is paranoia, keep in mind that Microsoft have always looked for ways to make the Web theirs, one way or another. Flash has been bad enough, but at least they're not trying to sell you an OS along with an entire software infrastructure to go along with it.
The problem is just that the stability of nspluginwrapper+flash makes the stability of Windows ME look good...
I got rid of quite a lot of annoying browser crashes when I removed the nspluginwrappered flash. Albeit at the cost of losing a bit of video content on the 'net. Sure one can fire up a chrooted 32-bit browser with a 32-bit flash plugin that plays nicely, but it is quite a hassle switching between browser instances depending on the content one is about to view.
Of course, one can just use the 32-bit browser all the time. At which point one has to ask the question: why bother with a 64-bit operating system / apps as quite a few headaches do come up due to that. I keep telling me "because I have a bloody 64-bit system and because I bloody well can", but I am not so convinced anymore after 1½ years of enduring pretty much unnecessary problems with all the various 32-bit binary blobs that don't play nicely with 64-bit stuff..
while true; do eject; eject -t; done
Have you ever tried using flash on linux? we just recently got version 9 (8 was skipped). The linux plugin is so broken that you only view around 5-6 flashapps with sound in a row without flash freezing up mozilla (or konqueror for that matter).
Its probably busy polling for sounds access but still couldn't they have implemented a time out and error message?.
mature and reliable my arse
I'm really excited about this. As a web developer, I prefer open source tools, but there aren't any animation and media streaming tools that can approach the power of flash.
While there are open source flash players out there, I don't know of any equivalent IDEs, so I will be taking a close look at Moonlight, and Silverlight adoption on the client side.
What's the deal? It will quickly go down the drain like all the other mono based applications ... er ... I mean, the sole other mono based application, Beagle.
Want to hear the voice of GOD? cat
Want to hear the voice of GOD? cat
Use what you want to use. However, its not like Ballmer hasn't very publicly and clearly indicated MS's intent to sue Linux developers and users over the use of MS-patented technology. Actually, even if MS promsed not to sue, I'd disbelieve it, and the corrupt courts in the US wouldn't hold MS to such a promise. Wanna use mono & Sliverlight? Good luck! Hope you don't cut your throat with them. The mono infection in Ubuntu is why I've switched to Sidux. If neccessary, I'll switch to Debian. Screw MS, Ballmer, MS technology (including mono), and their worshippers.
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
Flash (most notably Flex which runs in Flash Player) has only one real advantage over Silverlight. It runs on Linux and Mac. Now that advantage just got smaller. Pretty soon, Flex is about as popular as Delphi. Maybe 2 years? Because the Silverlight player will go out to everyone through MS automatic updates.
Nothing, but it needed to be posted early to try to get the discussion away from anti-trust issues.
Sometimes Slashdot discussions rocket down a path that is far from central to the Slashdot story.
Generally, it means "kinda, sortof, sometimes works, until we get tired of supporting it and/or it's to our advantage not to."
See also: Windows Media, Internet Explorer.
(Yeah, Office OS X is actually pretty great, but I think a good deal of that has to do with the fact that they can pull in cash AND perpetuate file-format hegemony.)
Tweet, tweet.
no one in the linux community gives a shit.
We can only hope. I'm fearing the day that one of the big Linux distros backs miguel's future project (that I'm sure he's already thinking about): gnome.mono. He'll probably find some way to write it in c# with a moonlight front-end, ick.
The Farewell Tour II
Silverlight is a scriptable video and web application framework. It's based on .NET and supports several scripting languages.
This is cool because it's a hell of a lot less proprietary than Adobe Flash and can do a lot more since it's capable of running real code and not just javascript.
There are many different kinds of smarts--being able to code in a low-level computer language isn't the only indication of smartness.
Your kind of programming language egocentrism can get quite irksome.
It's as powerful, but not quite as terse.
In Python, you need to compile your regex before you use it (one extra line of code), but once compiled, you can use it as many times as you like.
In general, Perl code is denser than Python unless it was written to be maintainable. In that case, it's pretty similar lines-of-code-wise.
*sigh* back to work...
It's possible that I'm succumbing to confirmation bias, but there is at least anecdotal evidence that Python is displacing Perl. For instance, in a recent Linux World magazine, someone from the animation studio that made Shreck 3 explained that all their new stuff is done in Python and all the old stuff was Perl. He also said that he wished they could replace all the Perl with Python, but that they haven't had the time to do it.
If you'd like to read it yourself, it's in the issue with Schreck on the cover (I don't have it with me, but could find it later this week if you'd like).
*sigh* back to work...
In turn, I think the Cairo guys need some congratulations for making this possible. Without a good canvas, I don't think there's any way the Silverlight team could have done this so quickly.
Innovation is about new ideas and new approaches. Quality is about predictability, stability, and security. Innovation does not imply quality in any way, positive or negative.
The traditional "cowboy approach" has been along the lines of "given an innovative base product created by the cowboys, let's test it and fix it until it's full of quality." We know how well that works; as the old joke goes, "At Microsoft, quality is job 3.1!" But the "quality first" approach tends to isolate the developers out of the creative process, meaning the people who know the language and tools best are left with very little say in the final product. Even if there is innovation added by the development teams, it seems to be only on a small scale, and not at the product level.
And perhaps it was unfair to say Microsoft will never be a "great" choice for innovation -- they've certainly been successful at purchasing innovative small companies, and bringing their innovations to the Windows world with their giant marketing machine.
John
The difference is that while Adobe doesn't try to sell you an entire OS along with lots of heavy and expensive software infrastructure to go with Flash, Microsoft does. Silverlight is basically a stripped down .NET runtime and uses XAML for the GUI. The whole cross platform and cross browser song and dance is just a bait and switch tactic to get a lot of people to write content against Silverlight. Want to bet that V2 of Silverlight and later on IE will start pulling ahead of the other platforms, eventually leaving them in the dust? By then in the worst case you would have a significant portion of a Microsoft Silverlight-on-Windows only web. And Microsoft will own the web. At that point it will be too late to turn back, just like today way too many IE specific sites don't bother to become cross browser compatible because it's too much work.
What is truly amazing is that they implemented Silverlight before SAMS published a book for it.
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
My First submission, apologies for the oversight. I was just thrilled by seeing the Hacker ethos in practice and a great success from an impressive group of coders.
When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
I would vote for this one.
Just because they put together an implementation quickly, doesn't mean they've put together a usable implementation...
.NET implementation, critical features have gone missing for a long time, like windows forms support, or any kind of usable development environment (a good plugin for eclipse anyone?!).
In general I've not been impressed with mono because, while they advertise themselves as a working
Hacking together a prototype quickly isn't impressive. Getting something production quality is. Will people actually be able to use this to view silverlight sites developed with microsoft tools, or will this remain forever a technology demo like mono has?
Seriously, I'm sure it's an impressive achievement, but I can't help thinking that in the long term, the only people who will end up benefiting from this are in the vicinity of Redmond.
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
Link didn't work on a standards-compliant browser, and silverlight (whatever the hell it is) probably wouldn't either, from first impressions (what you said, how the site says "download silverlight", etc.)
Flash still has them beat. Both are non-standards-compliant junk, that has no place on the web, other than as a modern animated gif.
While interesting, one animation studio does not prove a trend. The article wouldn't prove your point by itself.
Fair enough about the license, but my understanding is that the Flash format is quite well-documented.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Yours is one of the rare on-topic comments to this Slashdot story. Actually, the only one I've seen besides the grandparent comment. Thanks.
I knew it was Microsoft marketing dishonesty, but the real meaning was so hidden I didn't guess Microsoft was trying to compete with Flush... err... Flash.
Actually, as someone mentioned in a Slashdot comment a long time ago, Flash is not so bad (except that it arrogantly breaks browser features in some cases). It is just that most web page designers have no clue how to make moving pictures. But... they want to put Flash on their resumes, so they make everyone suffer.
My grandparent comment was modded up to +5 and now is down to +1. Apparently the moderators are conflicted about actually talking about the real issues, like defining the topic of the discussion.
Thanks again. I didn't want to spend an hour trying to decode Microsoft-speak, but I was interested in what was happening. You saved me the aggravation.
But rewriting history is not away to convince other people of the saving graces of your favourite product.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Their legal department passed around some very tasty Kool-Aid...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The issue isn't whether "there are real silverlight sites that work."
.NET presentation foundation. Have they even *started* work on that?
The issue is whether or not *all* or almost all silverlight sites work. Software that works "some of the time" isn't good enough to use.
Oh great, they finally have a working implementation of an old version of the software, significantly after the new version comes out. Again, your standards are *much, much* lower than mine.
Practically speaking, new software that comes out will run on
Oh, so now I have some obligation to help fix their stupid broken software? How about I just don't use it.
I love open source software, but I have a real for money job (developing what will be open source software) and I don't have the time or the obligation to fix every buggy tool I run across. If software sucks, I generally just *don't use it*.
I'm glad that some people are working on mono, because it would be an awesome tool to use if it ever started working, but a project that stays in "it'll be usable someday" mode forever is a failed project.
Seriously, I'm not waiting around for mono, I'm not waiting around for wine, and I'm not waiting around for *hurd*. A project that isn't usable after a certain number of years will never be viable.