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Silverlight Released, Linux Version Coming
Today Microsoft announced the release of Silverlight 1.0 for Windows and Mac OS X. This cross-browser, cross-platform browser plug-in is fully supported and competes directly with Adobe Flash. Included in this release was the promise from Microsoft to support the 100% compatible Linux version, called Moonlight.
They also provide a complete list of the supported codecs. I hope that, though I'm never touching *light with a 10-foot pole, this move makes Adobe finally release a x86_64 version of Flash (yeah, we all hate those banners and such, but being able to watch youtube videos without hacks like nspluginviewer would be quite nice. Besides, my nspluginviwer-ed version of Flash SUX at playing real time streaming video...).
My 0.02 cents
Microsoft will include Silverlight as an update and makes it high priority. Silverlight becomes success and passes Flash as the major app in the sector. MS will discontinue Moonlight because of BS reason. Linux is locked out by vendor lock-in.
This is purely hypothetical but not at all improbable.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
...stick to open formats and Free code ;-)
.net to kill off the huge popularity of Java, especially now that Java is moving to GPL they are trying extra hard to kill it off.
They are trying hard to encourage
will it be called sunlight :-)
Want an alternative to Adobe's Flash? Take a look at gnash, the GNU Project's Flash player. It's still in alpha but works with a lot of flash stuff, including eg YouTube, and on 64-bit.
We don't need Yet Another Microsoft 'Standard'.
-- Alastair
Silverlight has been on mlb.com for a few weeks now, I guess they were one of the first partners. I find this all extremely obnoxious as that site is a huge crap mix of Flash, pop-ups, WMV, and now Silverlight. And that's not counting all the issues with the pay-to-view content, DRM, and content black outs. Sometimes all I want to see is some highlights from last night's games, but I don't want to jump through hoops to do so. Silverlight is just the next annoying hoop, it may look pretty, but it's also on fire.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
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Microsoft are publicly endorsing Linux as a respectable OS. Not more of the "multiplatform = Windows and Mac OS" crap.
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It does appear that Microsoft is willing to conduct a true partnership here - even offering Novell their internal test suites, which means they really do want it to work. Hopefully this isn't a temporary thing.
However, on the other hand,-
"[D]etails that might be necessary to implement 1.0, beyond what is currently published on the web"
...why are not all Silverlight specs and APIs publicly available? Are people supposed to pay money to develop on this platform, or are they strategically delaying publishing the specs, or what? In any case it sounds very fishy. Enlighten me if there is a good explanation for this that I am missing.
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The codecs are binary-only and only for use in a web browser. This is annoying, but it is about the same as Adobe do with Flash, I guess. Bad, but not quite 'Microsoft' bad.
So what is going on here? Hard to say. The only thing I am sure about is that after years of Miguel de Icaza following a not-always-popular pro-Microsoft approach, today he must feel quite vindicated: Microsoft has taken another big step towards respecting and collaborating with Linux (or at least Novell), and Miguel is a big part of that.FYI, it won't work if you have Flashblock enabled on FF.
Slackware
Doesn't this sound like the history of the browser all over again:
Someone comes out with a technology that threatens Microsoft's dominance: Netscape.
Microsoft develops a multiplatform technology to defeat it: IE on Mac.
Microsoft incorporates it into its OS to get it into 90% of the PCs.
Once the competition is destroyed, it levels off development, and ends support on non-Windows platforms: IE on Mac.
It'll support *light on Linux/OSX until Flash is defeated.
I've been creating some Silverlight apps the last monts and my impresions are very positive. I have created some flash apps in the past, and there is no comparation. With Silverlight you have a very important subset of the .NET platform ready to use. Silverlight is not only the presentation forms (whichis also goos), but you can transparently use databases, manipulate and parse HTLM, wire handler events for HTML, excellent communication capabilities, and a lot more. IMO everything is more powerful/organized than the flash conteirpart.... Way to go!
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
Why is the entire front page populated with stories by kdawson? Did the rest of the "editors" quit or something? It'd be nice to have more of a mix of stories on occasion.
I would hope that Novell were awake enough to include actual licenses for Microsoft patents in last year's pact. I would hope that would protect Mono and Moonlight from patent-fu.
Open letter to Adobe - release Flash under the GNU GPL today
Dear Adobe,
No doubt you've seen the news that Microsoft and Novell are to work on a version of Silverlight for GNU/Linux. This puts Silverlight onto all three major platforms now, and puts yourselves and us into a difficult position. As the free software community, we want users of computers to have freedom to do all the jobs they can, including all those nice interactive websites out there that use Flash. We have Gnash now, but it's not finished yet, but it at least lets us look at YouTube movies in the browser with little or no problem, and Homestar Runner works very well as well. We're not there yet, but we're getting somewhere. Now, from your point of view, you give away the Flash player, but only in binary form, which means that while I'm sure it's better than Gnash, your license prevents us from using it with freedom. So, here's the rub... if you'll do a little thing for us, we can do some great things for you. We can help you beat Microsoft and crush Silverlight, but you're going to have to do something a little unusual, and a lot of people at Adobe aren't going to like it, but you have to do this and do it quickly.
Here goes... Make Flash free software, specifically, release Flash - the player, the editor, the server, for all platforms, including embedded stuff, under the GNU GPL v3 and do it quickly. As soon as you do this, we can start to win. We can get Flash Player onto the One Laptop Per Child machines, which gets a ton more eyeballs looking at Flash. We can get gNewSense, Ubuntu, Debian, Red Hat, Fedora, SuSE, Slackware, Mandriva and all the others to distribute Flash Player with their distributions. OpenSolaris can have Flash Player, too. You can still sell copies of the Flash editor, in lovely cardboard boxes on the shelves of computer stores, even as Free Software - you just need to add value. Bundle DVDs of freely licensed shapes, characters, sounds, loops and effects and dead-tree editions of your now freely licensed manuals, and people will still buy it, and of course, you bundle it in with things like Creative Suite, so it gets onto more machines, and you make it a free of charge download, too. You encourage people to torrent it, and the source, and you'll see more features being added, you'll see more video formats being supported and you'll see people doing amazing things with software you created, but only if you act quickly and get this right.
Don't lose this to Microsoft, for the sake of freedom of computer users everywhere, for the sake of a free web and for the sake of generations of people to come, don't let Microsoft get away with this.
Sun are doing this with Java, they did it with OpenOffice.org. You can do this as well.
It's entirely down to you now. If you need help, ask. If you have questions, shout.
Call the Free Software Foundation today, and make this happen.
(+1-617-542-594)
Do the right thing.
Do it.
Best,
matt
Exploring Freedom blog.
you had me at #!
So now people can pwn my linux box by exploiting microsoft bugs ?
Good god. Shave off your fucking neckbeard. Try actually READING the fucking specs on silverlight and then saying that. It's actually a pretty nice transition from flash. But you're the average slashdot poster. Steve Balmer could save 25 children from burning to death in a building and you dumb fuckers would say he strapped them to a chair and threw them out the window to save them.
Try the showcase site, from the Silverlight home page.
http://silverlight.net/Showcase/
This space for rent.
Actually, Moonlight as of today already integrates with Mono, already exposes all of the Silverlight 1.1 API and already runs most of the samples on the net (modulo a lot of bugs
Miguel.
You haven't been watching Adobe if you think Microsoft is doing this just to compete with Flash. Adobe is planning on turning Flash into a complete OS-independent application delivery platform. (The Adobe rep insisted this included Linux when asked.)
The best example of a similar technology is Java Web Start. Adobe has the install base to push a new version of Flash to enough end users to get a large enough user base to really try something like this. Continuing the analogy with Java, Flash currently fills the Java Applet niche, and Adobe wants to move into the Java Web Start niche.
Microsoft wants that market, which is the point behind XAML and other technologies. Silverlight is simply Microsoft firing back at Adobe. They both see a future in rich applications delivered over the web, and are both competing for that market. Silverlight is just one part of that - both hope to get web developers hooked on their platform, to support their rich application delivery framework.
Since that's the point, you can expect Microsoft to support cross-platform Silverlight as long as Adobe supports cross-platform Flash. They're both hoping to slide into a new market using Flash-like technology.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Flash does suck in your case, but at the same time *someone* likes to develop using it. Who are these mysterious developers?
Because there is absolutely no incentive. Look at all the reasons Flash is being used: ads, quick games, video, music, forms, etc. With the exception of ads, there is a totally free (open source) method that could work (java, ajax, svg, ogg, etc.). So then why would the "FOSS" community want to reinvent something?
While making a plugin is not so difficult, who would develop for it if there is no content for it? And if there was content for it, why would they want to move from their already existing platforms (Flash) and switch to something new?
Actually I've seen some Nokia devices that support Flash, I think one of the mini tablets also runs Linux. So Flash *could* be more widely supported, and I suspect it *eventually* will. ... I'll bet Windows embedded devices will support Silverlight. ... But again, without content it doesn't matter.
Windows still won't ship with an OGG codec. I also remember reading that OGG was notably more CPU-intensive (still true?). While I have no objections to OGG, I do wish it was more widely supported (especially in some more popular mp3 players).
*** That's the biggest kicker. *** I personally think major FOSS "developer" products are seriously lacking when it comes to multimedia compared to commercial products (Flash, Director, etc.). Even if there was an perfect plugin, the SDK and all related tools including deployment would take a serious effort to polish to be even remotely competitive with current offerings.
A great goal, but unrealistic. In the end the commercial incentive for Flash (or Silverlight) are what pushes it forward, not any form of openness or accessibility. If you can't make money out of it, I doubt it will be widely used or developed.
Ultimately it would be in everyone's best interest to use what (non-proprietary) plugin systems that already exist interfaced with already open standards/technology.
Linux Resources
If you're comparing it only to Flash - and especially older Flash - you're not giving Adobe a fair shake.
.NET" available; Flex can definitely make standalone swf and can operate with it's full server installed. (The server can also compile on the fly)
Put briefly, Adobe Flex is in beta of it's 4th major version, and it's what Adobe is offering for programming targeting the Flash Player. For a programmer, it is worlds better than Flash.
Silverlight might be awesome, I haven't touched it, but everything you said about it are all the same improvements over Flash that Flex has been doing for years now.
Flash is an animation tool. People starting using it for applications, and starting in 2002 and again in 2004 Macromedia gave it real support as a programming language. This is all still true, and they've continued to improve that.
But we're now on version 2 (3 is in beta, 1.5 was a major version) of Adobe Flex, which should be considered the follow-on to Flash for programmers and applications. The Actionscript which underlies this is identical in the two platforms, although Flex is driving the new AS versions and Flash lags behind a bit. But Flex also removes all the major craziness that programmers hated in Flash - layout is in an MXML (specific kind of XML) file, there is no binary source file like a fla, and it has further strengthened the already-present OOP capabilities. They have a Dreamweaver-like WYSIWYG layout editor and IDE - and it's also an Eclipse plugin. But like Dreamweaver and unlike Flash, there's no requirement that you use that.
Oh, and if you don't mind command-line compilation and a text editor, the SDK is free.
And that's all only if you don't install the Flex server. It is ALSO a presentation layer server, and Flex Data Services have a bunch of really smooth ways to give shared persistence or to interact with any other application server you might have.
I don't know whether Silverlight also requires the server to support it - I imagine it must to have "a subset of
REALLY, though, my big issue is mostly that I just do not trust Microsoft to make a good secure sandbox; they've shown no evidence of being able to pull this off in the past. Using something like this is inherently allowing complex arbitrary code to run... I'm sure this will be better than ActiveX, because it couldn't be worse...
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
Why would they being doing this supporting other platforms thing? Here's my best guess:
1) knock Adobe Flash down from the top of the hill
-why? Adobe has nearly the same distribution channels as Microsoft since Flash is installed on nearly all computers sold. Flash is an API Microsoft does not control and its multimedia underpinnings are a threat to Microsoft's media file formats, ie control.
2) Makes Silverlight look like it's good to everyone in the industry by supporting the three major platforms, Windows, Linux, Mac.
-why? initial support from the industry for one thing. Linux is embedded in way too many devices to be ignored and Mac isn't doing too bad either. As stated by the parent, this won't last if Silverlight is successful in displacing Flash in the market. Microsoft has NEVER been a friend to anybody who's not a Windows-only vendor and they've never considered other platforms in their business model/methods other than how they threaten the cash flow of the Windows monopoly.
3) Make a platform to replace the browser neutral AJAX kits and eventually bring it all home to Windows-only.
-why? AJAX is spread all over the place and businesses are migrating old apps and/or creating new apps which run on any browser/platform. There is no NEED for Windows in this world and Silverlight brings that all home to Bill, Steve, and the friendly people at Microsoft.
Microsofts motives in everything they have done over the past 15+ years has been to keep Windows in a position of power and control. There has never been any desire to profit from cross platform software and nothing shows they've changed. This attempt at cross platform support is only a tool, or hammer if you will. It's going to smack everyone but Windows users on the head. But Microsoft has changed you might say. Just look at how they are manipulating the ISO process in attempts to get a proprietary format, MS-OOXML, as an international standard. They have not changed and Silverlight on Linux and Mac is nothing but a carrot hanging over the trap. There is no trusting of Microsoft and Novell is the fool for thinking once again, they can play in the pen with the wolf. IMO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Flash started as FutureSplash, a system for simple vector based goofy animations on the web.
Macromedia bought it, and ramped it up. About, oooh, a week (?) after Flash was bought, the writing was on the wall - Macromedia Director was a Dead Duck. What made Director useful, however, was its craptacular programming language, Lingo. Once the vision shifted from Director to Flash, the move was on to develop a programming language for Flash - the result? The even MORE craptacular ActionScript.
Several year ago, a survey was done and it was found that a full 80% of the users of the web would click "skip intro" and avoid using flash if they could. This set off a sea change at Macromedia, and now at Adobe, where Flash is no longer the funky little animation engine that couldn't if its life depended on it, but to become a "development environment" and platform for web based applications. Now, isn't THAT a totally stupid idea...
So, what Microsoft is trying to do is strangle and/or marginalise Flash as a dev environment before it gets any real traction.
Now you know.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
They want to kill off Adobe, not Linux.