Cross-Platform Microsoft

willdavid sends us to the ZDNet blogs for a provocative opinion piece by John Carroll. He points to Microsoft's evident cross-platform strategy with Silverlight, and wonders whether the company couldn't make money — and win friends — by extending its excellent development ecosystem cross-platorm. "Microsoft, apparently, is helping the folks at Mono to port Silverlight to Linux. This is good news, as the primary fear I've heard from developers is that Silverlight will be locked to Microsoft platforms and products. Microsoft has already committed to supporting Silverlight cross-browser on Windows, and has a version that runs on Mac OS X (which is even available from the Apple web site). The last step is Linux, and Microsoft is working with Novell and Mono to make this happen."

Comments

Re:this might be good.

[Locutus]

gawd are you living in a dream world. Developers at Microsoft do not run the company and do not determine direction. Never have and never will so wake up and smell the acid that's eating your brain. Microsoft is out to terminate Adobe Flash, gain control of the cross-platform AJAX developers, stop Firefox growth, and force Google to work under Microsofts terms.

Microsoft is losing control of the development community. First it was Java on the servers, Then it was AJAX, and now with the addition of Adobe Flash and Flex. They are losing control and they know it. MS Silverlight is one attempt at bringing those all home to Microsoft and Microsoft's control. Watch for some massive campaign to tie MS Silverlight into college CS curriculum real soon. Remember all the financial deals MSFT was making which resulted in dropped Java courses and added MS .Net courses?

MS Silverlight is their golden egg laying goose. The world needs that goose to drop no egg. IMO.

LoB