Silverlight

Silverlight

Posted Oct 3, 2007 15:52 UTC (Wed) by tony (guest, #3654)
In reply to: Re: The Mono Project: You Might Expect the Unexpected (Linux Journal) by drag
Parent article: The Mono Project: You Might Expect the Unexpected (Linux Journal)

.Net is a bit deal for Microsoft. They are using it to attack several of their "enemies" at once: Sun/Java, Adobe/Flash, and Linux.

Historically, Microsoft has attempted to control everything they can. That is why they are not content to participate in Java. That is why they aren't satisfied to present Flash-based web pages. That is why they are working hard to eliminate Linux. Unless they control the environment, their software must be judged on its merits, in a fair market.

.Net is about gaining control of cross-platform web-based applications, and displacing Java as the corporate server-side application platform. It's a direct attack on "Web 2.0," which is Microsoft's biggest threat right now, even though it's just a buzzword. If you don't need MS-Windows to access the best applications around, you might use Linux or a Mac instead.

Silverlight is their trial. If they can get websites to replace Flash with Silverlight, they win. Websites will only do that if Silverlight is cross-platform.

And that's where Novell, Mono, and Moonlight come in.

Microsoft learned from their Active-X disaster. They learned that too many websites aim for cross-platform compatibility to pick up a strictly-proprietary service like Active-X. .Net and Silverlight aim to repair that problem.

Microsoft will be able to sell Silverlight development environments. Once Silverlight becomes the de facto standard for web-based rich clients (more buzzwords!), they can make Silverlight just slightly incompatible with Moonlight. Make it look not-quite-right on anything but Silverlight.

As they learned with MS-Office file compatibility, "close enough" isn't good enough when visual layout is vital. (That also ties in with OOXML, but that's another rant entirely.) If things don't look or behave quite right on Linux or OS-X, people will go with MS-Windows. It's the operating systems that will take the reputation hit, not Moonlight.

As long as Microsoft controls the environment, they *will* use it against other operating systems. They are *not* willing to play in a fair market, a market they don't control. This is true historically, and this is reflected in their current methods (SEE the recent OOXML fast-track standards vote for an example). To believe differently is to ignore over 25 years of Microsoft behavior (yeah, I'm looking at you, Novell).

Anyway, that's my rant. Thanks for listening.

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