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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."
Guess I can forget about it for BeOS.
1. Insure all your Linux DLLs (*.dll) are in your PATH statement.
2. type make
3. ???
4. profit!
Microsoft has NEVER supported a competitor at first and then let that version slip to a very sub-optimal state so the Windows-only version seems better, have they?
No. The "primary fear" is and has always been that Microsoft will get some "Intellectual Property" into a Linux project in such a way that it will allow Microsoft to sue the developers/users of that project.
If Microsoft wants to port something to Linux, that's their option. They have the people and they can download all of the source code.
And they can license their product any way they want to.
The only problems arise when Linux developers (as opposed to Microsoft developers porting something to Linux) have access to Microsoft "Intellectual Property" and may become "tainted" by it.
ActiveX? Are you fracking kidding me? Microsoft itself has admitted that ActiveX was a major cluster-fuck from a security view. It seems more like they want Silverlight to replace ActiveX.
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
How exactly is Microsoft going to be supporting these cross-platform apps? Maybe they're thinking about doing what they did with IE on Macintosh, produce a version for other platforms, then stop distributing or providing updates to it once they decide it's no longer convenient.
Business applications are kind of strange beasts in the software world because of the long usage life they're expected to see. That's one of the reasons companies often want some big name company behind a product because they're afraid somewhere down the road the company might fold and they'd be left without support for a vital application. The problem is most of these companies haven't yet realized that open source applications provide much better guarantee because even if the original developers quit working on the application, it's always possible for someone else to take up the reins. In a proprietary system, even with a big developer behind it, there is nothing insuring that development continues on any given application.
Of course, in this case it sounds like maybe Microsoft is doing the right thing and actually helping the Mono guys make their product compatible with Microsoft's, but I'll still be wary of anything Microsoft is distributing directly.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
Honestly, the MSFT folks are a bunch of smart people. They hire pretty much only the best. I would wager that a significant chunk of their workforce, and even a majority of their developers and researchers, would love to do interoperability and open-source. If they can convince the business guys, the people in charge who make the high level decisions, that cooperating is better than extending and extinguishing, they're on the way to making the software world a better place for all.
Office and Windows are what is keeping Microsoft alive, and they know it.
Read, and read.
I'm not going to rag on the writer of TFA since he makes it clear he's presenting things from the perspective of a developer, but from the business side, no way. Ever.
The Banjo Players Must Die!
I'm sorry but MS Sliverlight is a direct attack on Adobe and their Flash product and this is a direct move to protect the Windows monopoly. Adobe Flash is a well established development platform which runs across all desktop computing platforms. Heck, Nokia even has it running on the N800. Adobe is the new Netscape and Flash the new Navigator with MS Silverlight being the new MS Internet Explorer.
So anything which grows that MS product will be good for protecting the Windows monopoly. If Flash is killed off, and in typical Microsoft fashion, MS Silverlight will become a Windows-only product. In 20 years of Microsoft history, there is absolutely NOTHING which shows any other path. A press release does not mean squat when it comes from Microsoft. Talk about doublespeak and truthiness.
And to even think that Microsoft wants to help enable Linux by the goodness of their heart is a fool. At Microsoft, it's all about 'Adobe must die, Linux must die. Long live Windows, long live Microsoft.' and only a complete newbie would/could think otherwise. IMO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
There's no need to port all that stuff.
.Net-to-ActiveX. There's a tiny amount of support for COM interop in the full .Net library. In case you don't know, COM is the mid-90's ugly-hack programming "standard" that Microsoft pushed for library (dll) programming.
.Net. It's going to be .Net-by-the-ECMA-standard instead of .Net-direct-from-R&D-in-Redmond. Which is basically Mono anyway. It wouldn't be wise for Microsoft to attempt to kill Silverlight after getting everyone to use it, either. Web designers and programmers move from one technology to another very quickly. Ajax already is losing ground to better stuff. Perl isn't as popular as it once was. Neither is PHP. Nor Tomcat. And since much of the Silverlight development for non-Windows platforms is done by the Mono project, I'd guess that Microsoft has minimal control of whether or not updates are issued. And that's ignoring the fact that it's all based on a published standard.
ActiveX is dead. Microsoft doesn't do anything with it, and there certainly isn't an interoperability push for
DirectX is simply "the Windows graphics API". Microsoft has stopped trying to make it more than that. Once upon a time, they wanted to go up against OpenGL, but when they realized they'd have to play nice on other platforms and give up some "superiority" in the gaming market (read: the only thing people "need" Windows for), they dropped the idea and moved on.
Silverlight is a subset of
I don't think Microsoft can get away with the same shenanigans they pulled in times past.
Most of the mono team works for Novell so are getting paid. I also assume cooperation between MS and Mono is part of the larger Novell/MS IP sharing agreements, but that is just an assumption.
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
Shouldn't you be doing something else? Like updating your website?
Your courageous and selfless spelling corrections have made me a better person.
John Carroll the author of the FUD piece, who literally spent years doing trolling the ZDNet talkback forums back in the day in support of Microsoft, so much so that, lo and behold, he was then given a column of his own to write Microsoft FUD articles, and was eventually, in 2005 awarded with a job at Microsoft, something he's been hoping for for years (only took him something like 7 years). The guy is the biggest shill for Microsoft I have ever seen. He was praising VB and ASP as being superior to Java (no lie, look it up in the archives at ZDNet) back when the whole .Net circus was still a wet fart in BillG's pants. It is HIS JOB to paint Microsoft in a favourable light and as being better than anything else.
Does anyone really expect Microsoft to continue development of Silverlight for Mac and/or Linux after Silverlight has killed Flash? After Microsoft killed Internet Explorer for Mac and Windows Media Player for Mac (not that they even remotely considered maknig any of that available on Linux)? You trust them? You trust some guy who has been praising Microsoft exclusively to the detriment of all else for almost a decade?
You have to be joking, right?
Microsoft is trying to expand their platform, which won't make you platform-agnostic at all. While that can technically be labeled as cross platform it isn't what either you or me would call cross-platform.
I mean, when you hit compile, it generates and spews out a command line to a little text window. Which is fine, but it doesn't bother to actually parse that data and present it in a meaningful way. You end up scrolling through dozens of warnings (if you're not compiling with the equivilent of -ferror) to find relevant errors.
;-)
Of course if you choose to view the raw output via the "Output" view, then yes you will get that. Of course, I always find it much easier to choose the "Error List" view where you can just toggle to choose if you want to see errors and/or warnings and/or information messages. Then just click on each any item in that list to take me to the corresponding issue in code.
I think the above shows your level of "I've tried using visual studio tools", so I don't see the need to go further (in fact I didn't read any further)
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
Everyones a skeptic, I know, but there are a few good signs. For one, the dev work isn't being done at Microsoft, its being spearheaded by the MONO crew. The Microsoft folks are kind of technical advisors, in direct contact with the Linux developers, giving advice and recommendations on implementation, etc. That I think is the biggest sign this will be a success. This isn't an internal project that we know of based on a memo or press release, this is an active project which has screenshots and source that can be downloaded and played with ...
First, you have to recognize the target, which is *not* Linux. It's Flash.
Right now, Flash is a cross-platform delivery system for highly interactive content. (READ: unstable piece of shit that is not a real standard.) It's very popular for media players (Youtube), ads, and cheezy games. It basically made ActiveX irrelevent, and Microsoft is still a little peeved.
So, by helping the Mono folks make Silverlight available cross-platform, they get to look like the good guys, as well as give Adobe a full-frontal assault on Flash.
Right now, we are in the "embrace" stage.
Once Silverlight takes off and displaces Flash as the delivery system of choice for shitty-assed content, Microsoft will be free to extend Silverlight in any way they desire, without passing those changes on to the Mac or to Mono. So, they get to extinguish Java and Flash, and then once Silverlight is the only delivery system on the internet, they get to displace the web, as well.
This is just like their bid with ActiveX. The main difference is, they learned their lesson the first time. Don't make it MS-Windows-only until *after* it is perceived as the only system available.
Yes, this is paranoid ranting. But after you've been kicked in the balls four or five times by someone, you get a little antsy around them.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Unless Microsoft plans on going whole hog on cross platform compatibility, this is only an attempt to get the web dev community which has historically been LAMP/JAVA based
Huh? I made my living as a web developer using MS as a platform. So did everyone at my former employer (who is being bought out). I don't think you know the true market, because we never had any problem finding clients.
What if the third party developers develop tools for Silverlight in Linux and these tools become very important for the customers? MSFT can release the next version and wait for the previous one in Linux to die a quiet death. But if the customers refuse to budge? Could this happen. I know it is almost wishful thinking but still, why would the customers continue to play the same game after knowing so much about the tactics of MSFT?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Deal with it.
/. hoping to get mod points so you can bury comments you don't like.
Ballmer talks about how the GPL is a "cancer". Yet you hang out on
That doesn't change the facts.
Microsoft can put Microsoft coders to work releasing Microsoft products on Linux.
Microsoft can license those products under whatever license Microsoft wants.
And no one could complain.
But when Microsoft talks about "working with" non-Microsoft coders to get Microsoft products on Linux, there's too much of a risk of Microsoft's "Intellectual Property" being "improperly" incorporated into such projects.
Everyone who isn't a Microsoft fanboi needs to ask themselves WHY Microsoft wouldn't handle such project itself, with its own people, if it saw the need for such on Linux.
Unfortunately the Novell/MS IP sharing deal doesn't extend past Novell and it's direct customers. So even if Miguel and the rest of the Mono team are covered, Debian, Ubuntu and Red Hat may still be found to violate MS patents if they distribute this (assuming Moonlight utilizes MS patents).
http://www.mhall119.com
You end up scrolling through dozens of warnings (if you're not compiling with the equivilent of -ferror) to find relevant errors.
... Why does Visual Studio insist on cramming them into one single pane?
.Net because it's optimized for that. The code-assist, templates, and help files are all geared toward .Net development. If you're doing .Net, there's nothing better. That's where VS's advantages stop, though.
.Net and VS to other platforms, as well as keeping up Office and Visio, they could still dominate the software industry without the headaches that Windows brings. I want VS and .Net for the Mac!
I see you haven't discovered the "Error List" window. View > Error List (Alt-V-I or Ctrl-/-E). It has 3 toolbar buttons at the top (checked-state type) one for errors, one for warnings, one for messages.
I asked them why they can't just write a shell script (or dos shell script, whatever the hell windows has) and they said that it would take too long to develop that. Idiots.
Idiots, indeed. Create a new installer project. Tell it to use the output of one or more of the other projects in your solution. (Solutions are multi-project binders, projects are apps, libraries, services, sites, etc.) You can even add wizards and (*shudder*) registry entries in addition to the regular file copying functions. You can specify new files/folders/shortcuts in the program files, start menu, or any other place in the filesystem. From nothing to a functional (but ugly) installer takes little more than 5 minutes. And it handles all the uninstall stuff (and install-new-version-in-place-of-the-old-one stuff) for you too (your program will appear in the Add/Remove Programs panel automatically).
Why, if the OS is called Windows, am I only allowed to have one of them in my development environment?
Again, you didn't actually learn to use the tool. Tools > Options (Alt-T-O) shows you the typically huge (and rightfully so) options pane of an IDE. It's no larger or more complex than Eclipse's, if you want to get into comparisons. But notably, the first option on the first pane of the first item listed in the tree-control on the left (Environment > General) is called "Window Layout". It has a set of two radio buttons. The first one is the default, labelled "Tabbed documents". The second one is labelled "Multiple Documents". I'm guessing you want the second one.
Can someone please describe what is so great about visual studio? I've heard other people say it, but I really don't see it. (Please compare and contrast to Eclipse and/or Xcode.)
Personally, I find the all-in-one IDE (Eclipse and VS) much more usable than the everything-spread-over-hell-and-creation IDE (Xcode).
VS has advantages in working with
Eclipse kicks VS's ass in supporting eleventy-thousand languages and has a slightly less developed template system, probably due to most of those languages' plugins being in perpetual beta. Code-assist is nearly non-existent in anything other than Java, and is mostly useless because of that. Help files are also non-existent.
Xcode is geared toward C and Objective-C. Ugh. Screw that crap. It complains if you try to use Java, and it seems to ignore your commands if you try to use C++. You aren't doing it The One True Way With The One True Programming Language (Obj-C), thus you aren't worthy of, well, anything. Get off its lawn. I'm not wild about Xcode, mostly for that reason. Apple includes PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby (?), and probably a half-dozen other nice little languages with their systems, but they don't get off their ass and add the necessary meta-code to make Xcode work properly for those languages.
Personally, I'm of the opinion that if Microsoft would give Windows up as a good try and focus on bringing
``extending its excellent development ecosystem cross-platorm.''
Excellent development ecosystem? Don't make me laugh. I've been hearing about the asserted superiority of Microsoft's development tools and the wonderful enterprise features of their products for years, and always thought to myself "well, probably." However, I recently started working in a Microsoft shop and I can tell you first hand that the Microsoft "development ecosystem" is not excellent. It's not terrible, but it's not great, either. Certainly not worlds better than some already available environments (cross-platform or otherwise).
Without going into specifics, I can say that I spend more time struggling with Visual Studio than doing anything else. Most of the features I want are actually there, but it's not always obvious where to find them or how to use them. Some features are missing, or are nominally there, but fail to work in the situations where I need them. Then there is a load of baggage that just gets in the way. Erorr messages that it gives me are almost always uninformative, wrong, or both (my favorite so far is "'1' is null or not an object"). At first, I thought it was just me being inexperienced, but even colleagues with years of experience run into these same issues. And it's not like I'm very demanding; usually, I'm just trying to find out what the value of something is or how the program got to a certain point.
And that's just Visual Studio. We use a number of other Microsoft products in our workflow, and there are issues with most of them. For the most part, these are usability issues. They don't actually prevent you from getting work done, but they do slow you down. Stability issues come a distant second. One issue that hasn't affected me but is affecting the company as a whole is that a lot of time goes into making sure things work with the current _and_ previous versions of Microsoft products. Sometimes, this is as simple as just not using some new feature, but sometimes it takes up a lot of time.
Note that I have purposefully highlighted the bad parts and omitted the good ones. My point is not to give an objective impression of the Microsoft platform for development purposes, but to show that it falls short of excellence. I would never choose it myself, but I wouldn't say it's actually bad. Just not excellent.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I mean, when you hit compile, it generates and spews out a command line to a little text window. Which is fine, but it doesn't bother to actually parse that data and present it in a meaningful way. You end up scrolling through dozens of warnings (if you're not compiling with the equivilent of -ferror) to find relevant errors.
Huh? You're looking at the Output window, which shows the build output. Visual Studio does parse that into a list of errors and warnings, accessable from, the "Error List" window. You can turn off warnings in this window to just show the errors. Double clicking on the errors will take you to the correct source file and line that generated the error.
Oh, and then there's deployment. I worked for a while with some folks that had a C++ application that talked with the Microsoft SQL database and IIS. Their "push" procedure involved remote desktop to the server, clicking buttons to take down the server, pointing it at the maintenance site, creating a new directory in the file explorer, naming it correctly and copying the existing database files to it, copying over the newly compiled bits, testing it in situ and finally pointing the server back to the live site. This took them between 3 and 6 hours, every Friday night. I asked them why they can't just write a shell script (or dos shell script, whatever the hell windows has) and they said that it would take too long to develop that. Idiots.
Yes, they're idiots. We do all of this automatically through NAnt. I'm pretty sure you can do this all through the command line if you're masochistic (quite frankly, the Windows command line sucks hairy balls). But theres seriously no excuse not to have deployment automated, especially if its taking several hours.
But thats not what I'm here to rant at you about. I'm here to rant about Visual Studio. Why, if the OS is called Windows, am I only allowed to have one of them in my development environment? I never got the MDI thing, but I routinely, on Mac OS, have 20 source files open and visible. Why does Visual Studio insist on cramming them into one single pane?
Theres a setting in Visual Studio that lets you switch to a windowed environment. Tools->Options->Environment->General->Window Layout->Multiple Documents. It still constrains those source code windows to the area of the parent window (Visual Studio's window), but you can pane them and everything. If what you want is to be able to drag the source code windows outside of the main Visual Studio window, then you can't do that. I would agree that it would be much nicer if you could. I prefer the tab layout, personally.
Gargh, its frustrating. Why can't the compiler take normal command line switches with meaningful names?
I use MSBuild to compile our app, and it takes command line switches. I'm not sure what kind of switches you are looking for, however. You don't get things like specific optimization switches, since those are in the project settings, but I typically build one of a set of pre-defined modes (Release, Debug, etc).
Since we're talking about the "development ecosystem", why does the command.com shell so completely fail at being useful?
cmd sucks. Big time. It would be nice if they could actually start pushing powershell, but thats unlikely to happen anytime soon. They should have put it in Vista, at the very least. Hopefully their next server product has it.
The debugger is even worse, hiding and showing things based on what it *thinks* I want to see. The only benefit it has over gdb on the command line is mixed assembly/source view, but at least with gdb I can quickly disassemble whatever I need to, not just where the PC is.
Off the top of my head, I can't think of any examples of the debugger hiding and showing me things. It pretty much shows me what I ask it to.
Can someone please desc
I mean, when you hit compile, it generates and spews out a command line to a little text window. Which is fine, but it doesn't bother to actually parse that data and present it in a meaningful way. You end up scrolling through dozens of warnings (if you're not compiling with the equivilent of -ferror) to find relevant errors.
/? is too hard for your. If you want to script something, there's the newer Powershell coming down the line. Until then, Nant is a wonderful scripting tool.
*Sigh* Here we go. Its call the "Error List" window. By default its there, so I would go and reopen it the next time you compile. Code properly, and the warnings go away. If you can't figure out good coding practices, then clicking on the Warnings button on the Error List window will filter out all the warnings.
Oh, and then there's deployment. I worked for a while with some folks that had a C++ application that talked with the Microsoft SQL database and IIS. Their "push" procedure involved remote desktop to the server, clicking buttons to take down the server, pointing it at the maintenance site, creating a new directory in the file explorer, naming it correctly and copying the existing database files to it, copying over the newly compiled bits, testing it in situ and finally pointing the server back to the live site.
Sounds like that's the process they wanted. My deployment is a simple nant script. All it does is copy files and create and sign a manifest file. I use Sql Compare to update the database along with some custom scripts. That's it. I can do an upgrade in 15 minutes. ClickOnce is a great way to deploy an application.
This took them between 3 and 6 hours, every Friday night. I asked them why they can't just write a shell script (or dos shell script, whatever the hell windows has) and they said that it would take too long to develop that. Idiots.
How is that the fault of any MS product?
But thats not what I'm here to rant at you about. I'm here to rant about Visual Studio. Why, if the OS is called Windows, am I only allowed to have one of them in my development environment? I never got the MDI thing, but I routinely, on Mac OS, have 20 source files open and visible. Why does Visual Studio insist on cramming them into one single pane? Gargh, its frustrating. Why can't the compiler take normal command line switches with meaningful names? Since we're talking about the "development ecosystem", why does the command.com shell so completely fail at being useful?
I guess you don't know how to redock the windows or use the split pane features. I also guess csc
The debugger is even worse, hiding and showing things based on what it *thinks* I want to see. The only benefit it has over gdb on the command line is mixed assembly/source view, but at least with gdb I can quickly disassemble whatever I need to, not just where the PC is.
Ya, its a pain how it makes the point the exception occurred at highlite in yellow, with a big box pointing to the line explaining what the exception is, and what some common causes are. That's AWFUL. How dare it do exactly what you tell it to (no, it doesn't change its behavior randomly, there are settings that YOU control which dicate how much to show or hide).
Can someone please describe what is so great about visual studio? I've heard other people say it, but I really don't see it. (Please compare and contrast to Eclipse and/or Xcode.)
Maybe if you took the time to learn the tool you'd have an easier time.
Speculative maybe. But it's good to be wary.
I work for a web services development company that relies heavily of most all of the targeted technologies (AJAX, server side scripting, Flash, etc). Just yesterday this very subject came up as we look at our business strategy over the next few years and what technologies we will need to adapt.
From what I've seen Silverlight is very much like Flash functionally. In fact (and please feel free to correct me) aside from being a WMV wrapper and there-by providing their own DRM system natively I see very little difference. From a developer stand-point it could be interesting. The multi-language support could speed development up in many cases and help create more interactive content as developers get to use tools they are familiar with to achieve the kinds of things they'd like to.
That said Adobe has been in this game for a long time now. Companies don't usually last that long being stupid so I'll be very interested to see if and how they respond to this. They absolutely *have* to see that this is a threat to one of their business models. And frankly I think Microsoft has done some things here that Adobe should have done already. Microsoft *will* get penetration enough to make a serious go if it simply based on their recent acquisition.
Gloves are off. Personally I'd like to see Adobe pull this off, but they are going to have to react quickly and I haven't heard a lot of buzz coming out of their corner. Time will tell. Silverlight is still in Alpha and while the demo's are interesting, I'd stop short of calling them revolutionary. I think it really will come down to developers on this one.
Quack, quack.
I agree with the basic premise, except for the Linux part. Apple has clearly taken the lead in this. The open path for migration for a proprietery OS vendor is through the BSD licensing. It allows for you to close whatever portion of your code changes you see fit. This is why Apple chose the Mach kernel for the base of OS/X. Converting to a standard UNIX-based operating system will help the customer more than anything else they could do.
Microsoft has never been strong on solid, stable, and secure kernel development. A BSD base would be a good next step for them. They could begin there and port the look-n-feel of their Vista. They could even continue using their beloved C:\, D:\ file system nomenclature on top of the native "everything is a directory off of root (/)" structure. They would then have to migrate off of NTFS, which should have been gone a while back. There are several, even GPL-released, file systems that they could negotiate a closed license from some of the IP owners or even use as open (most are inherently securable anyway, even open.) Who known, Microsoft may be the ones to finally break through the adoption barrier of adding ACLs to the UNIX FS as the required default.
I'm no Microsoft fanboy. I've been in this industry since they began and so... do not trust them... at all... They have, however, been producing an incredible tool chain for development in the Visual Studio/C#/SQL Server combination that I have enjoyed as much as the original dBase III/IV before Ashton Tate bit the dust. Granted SQL Server was obtained by questionable trade practices from Sybase, but they have not wrecked it like some of their other partner-then-stab acquisitions. Also, the .Net framework scratches the itch that Java just never reached. If I had a Visual Studio/C#/.Net tool chain for OS/X and Linux/Unix I would be very happy.
With new leadership, it is possible that they are trying to play both smart AND nice. I will, however, be much more comfortable when Balmer sees fit to retire as well.
I am hopeful of these new peace offerings to the development community (notice that I didn't say Linux community...) It would be beneficial for both Microsoft's longevity as well as overall quality of the software industry. Understand, however, that if they string this out and then plunge in the knife like before, Microsoft won't last very long. A dog can only bite the hand that feeds it for so long before you have put it down.
Are you serious? .NET. I like Mono. I use linux for most of my computing because it meets my needs better. But I hold nothing against Microsoft, and if they can beat flash, then god bless them for it. I'd love to be able to build that type of interactive web content in visual studio (gotta admit, it's fast. Particularly when dealing with multiple data sources whether they be on linux or windows). The time I'd save at work would be incredible.
Flash: It has a monopoly right now. It is a piece of shit. It barely supports linux. And beyond that, I have to use terrible development tools in a windows environment to do anything with it.
Silverlight: Gives me hope. I like
Adobe Live Motion in 2000 ADOBE couldn't take down Flash
now flash is even more common and powerful and wide spread
does this mean MS is gonna buy adobe
geeze I hope not...
----------
Trying to fix or change something only guarantees and perpetuates it's existence
Actually, if you want to get technical, Macromedia has been in this game for a long time now. Adobe's fairly new at it, unless you count their (relative) success pushing PDF as a de facto standard. Adobe does not have a perfect track record for developing great software, so I'd say the jury is still out as to how Flash will fare under their stewardship. I wouldn't underestimate Adobe's potential stupidity. Didn't I hear rumors about them wanting to tie Flash and PDF together in some way, and make them downloadable as a single (presumably gigantic) plug-in?
Breakfast served all day!
I think this is the "let's make use of free labor" step. The Mono guys, assuming they're happy not getting paid, would be smart to ensure that Microsoft grants them full immunity from any legal claims as a result of their development. Otherwise, if they decide to pull out they can simply say "Silverlight on Mono violates a number of our patents, sorry we forgot to tell you".
Novell develops Mono and if you recall they signed a patent deal that so many people got pissed about that protects Mono and Moonlight from Microsoft's patents. So despite all the naysayers, Microsoft's participation in Moonlight development is a good thing. I am usually the first person to bash MS but in this case I can't see a negative. I guess time will tell.
Time makes more converts than reason
A nice smooth professional-feeling SVG editor is/was needed to give SVG traction. Inkscape is a good start, but it's still a just a start. It needs to run on Macs without X11 to really break into the design market.
For most developers who complain about Silverlight going cross platform (including its .NET component) I bet I can find a past post or two complaining that Microsoft keeps users locked into one platform. It's not about technology, it's about an agenda against a company and finding the negative point from any angle even if points conflict with one another. I call these "pseduo-developers" -- very opinionated but also most likely very young or having a very small slice of experience or of vision.
I do a lot of pseudo-developing myself...
.NET, and Linux/Firefox/Mono people will be struggling to catch up.
But I'm at least consistant, and I think you've got a strawman here. Has anyone on Slashdot complained about anything going cross-platform?
It's not that we don't want silverlight to be cross-platform. It's that we're looking at it from every possible angle, trying to figure out why MS would be giving us something like this, because every time they've appeared to give us something in the past, it eventually led to us being screwed over.
It's that we're afraid that Linux and OS X will adopt it, we'll have Silverlight all over the place, maybe Silverlight on my cell phone powered by Mono... and then MS will move from the Embrace phase into Extend and Exterminate. They'll start adding features that aren't in the spec, people will start using them, and before long, you'll see half the Silverlight apps are only meant for Windows/IE with actual
They've done it before.
When someone kicks you in the balls enough, you get scared of them. It's only natural.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!