Miguel de Icaza: "We could refresh the look and feel of the entire desktop with Moonlight" (derStandard.at)

I think you'll notice that the same legal issues for Silverlight apply directly to Flash.

If you really care about Microsoft patent promises/threats (I see no reason to, since Flash or
any other multimedia framework is likely to infringe just the same patents) then you might
note that their licensing for Moonlight is not restricted to Novell, since they want to spread
usage of Silverlight as far as possible and displace Flash.

In particular, there will be legal (in the USA) codecs available for playing video in a web
browser.  Binary blobs, yes, but gratis and legally distributable.

Joe,

It is not true that only "Novell customers" are covered by the Microsoft covenant for
Moonlight users.

The actual covenant is posted here:

http://www.microsoft.com/interop/msnovellcollab/moonlight...

It is certainly not perfect, as it requires users to obtain Moonlight from Novell's web site
or from any "Intermediate Recipients", but that is a far cry from "only Novell customers".   

You do not have to be a Novell customer to use Moonlight and be covered by Microsoft's
covenant.  

I agree. I can't stand the Mac fanboys. But coming out of Miguel's mouth the Mac complaints
stink of misdirection. There are legitimate concerns about Miguel's (and Novell's) connection
to Microsoft, and him saying "oh yeah? What about the Mac users!" isn't a sufficient response
to those concerns.

I've been running Linux as my main OS since sometime in the mid nineties. At the university, I
installed it everywhere I could get permission. I advocated it as OS for an embedded startup.
At work our server room ran 85% Linux until we got a
Everybody-uses-Windows-so-it-can't-be-wrong CEO, etc. etc. etc. I've been pushing it hard to
everybody whenever I got the chance; I use Linux on my desktop machine at work, I develop
embedded software using Linux, and so on and so on. I'm very much a believer.

Yet, in February I broke down and bought a Mac. Why?

It's really very simple: A few months earlier I became a Dad. Exit spare time. Exit time to
fiddle with things. Exit time to resolve dependencies. Exit time to get printers working
properly for photo printing. Et cetera.

Two of my main hobbies, as little time for them as I have these days, are digital photography
and playing music (on my own instrument). I have around 20,000 pictures, mainly raw format,
organized in a folder hierarchy I've never really gotten comfortable with. And heavens knows
I've spent hours innumerable trying to get a working setup that I was happy with, that (to a
reasonable degree) did what I expected, and didn't corrupt my data or crash.

For music, I use Rosegarden and Ardour, and both are really great pieces of software, but
Ardour is still somewhat a work-in-progress; it'll trip on its own toes pretty frequently. For
digital photography, I haven't really found something OSS that works well for the full
workflow. GIMP is cool, yes, but 8-bit and dcraw is an amazing jack-of-all-trades,
format-wise, but not really a master of any. Bluemarine isn't out of alpha yet. Bibble, which
is proprietary, is a great raw converter, but not much of an organizer.

So: On Linux I never reached a suitable setup, neither for music nor for photo organization
and editing.

But I can do a ton of other cool things on Linux, and for many other applications, the open
source selection is certainly sufficient, and often of high quality.

But: Apple Logic for music and Apple Aperture for photos -- Linux just does not have anything
that integrated, quick (for the most part) and stable. Sorry, everybody, we don't have it. We
have a ton of tools we may be able to knit together into something that resembles but isn't
quite "there".

That's why I have a Mac and am reasonably comfortable with it: For the things that are
important to me, it works very well -- Logic and Aperture are two pieces of seriously cool
software, and they are very, very stable in daily use. They "Just Work".

And yes, I know about the lock-in, the proprietary nature and all the other evil Apple does.
To me, it simply came down to this: Given the little spare time I have, do I want to work with
my music and my pictures, or do I want to work with my Linux setup? For me, it was easy.

To just list CUPS and WebKit among Apple's open source projects when comparing OS X to other
proprietary operating systems is to ignore the (very relevant) fact that the Darwin base
system stuff- the XNU kernel, GCC/LLVM, BSD userland, etc- is all open source.

You don't have to be a rabid Stallmanite ("all proprietary software is pure baby-killing evil,
and to install something which doesn't fit the DFSG on your machine is to deny yourself
salvation") to be a supporter of open source software.

I'm not really thinking towards Plasma here, but somehow I think that 
using Moonlight, which in my understanding mostly is a technology for the 
web, pretty much like Flash, just probably a bit more advanced, is not 
really suitable for a desktop.
With the uprising of Flash nobody made a FDE (Flash Desktop Environment), 
and probably for good reasons.

Also I am not so sure how much overhead running a GUI in Mono would give. 
Wouldn't that also be a bit like a DE in Java? Haven't seen many of those 
either...

Sure, modern machines are capable to handle all this, but why waste 
resources where it's not necessary?
So, in my opinion Moonlight and Flash can stay in the web, but don't need 
to start taking over my desktop.

It already makes me shudder when I think about all those 
full-moonlight-sites popping up like it was when Flash was on the rise, 
which of course reminded me of all those animated GIFs in the times 
before Flash...

A full Moonlight 1.0 install comes down to 3 megs (including codecs).

A full Moonlight 2.0 install comes down to 8 megs (including codecs and all Mono
dependencies).

Miguel.

I have no idea what other things MdI may have pushed, but I personally think C# is a pretty
nice language, and I am personally excited about it. I also think it wouldn't hurt to have
more stuff written for Windows to work on Linux, and vice versa, as in general the Mono effort
promotes a common API for these two very different platforms.

The .Net class libraries and CLR could be pretty ubiquitous in the future, and maybe
Silverlight succeeds in where Java applets failed. I don't hold much hope for it, because AJAX
is a quite viable competitor, and the new <video> tag fills an important gap, too... We'll see
how it goes, I haven't thought much about this.

However, if Microsoft pushes Silverlight in on the next Windows update, then it could be found
on 90 % of all computers all of a sudden. In that case I think it doesn't hurt that we have a
chance to get part of that action through Moonlight.

"Why does de Icaza keep on pushing Microsoft-technologies on Linux all the time? No matter
what MS creates, he always thinks that it's the best thing since sliced bread. How on earth
can such a MS-fanboy (I do not use that title lightly, but it does seem fitting here) be
working on Linux?"

You just tell aloud what, I believe, most readers here would also think privately.  
I believe that most readers here would assume the following answer to your question: Miguel
did probably receive substantial compensations for acting as a MS evangelist in the FOSS
community.   Since Miguel is reading this list, he has the opportunity to make a clear public
statement about his exact ties with MS, about the financial or other advantages coming
directly or indirectly from MS, and whether or not he ever signed any contract with this
mega-corporation.  As long as Miguel does not clarify this point the suspicion will remain
strong among the FOSS community and his credibility will stay low.