Submitted by On his blog, Miguel de Icaza announced the first public releases of Moonlight. Moonlight is the open source implementation of Microsoft’s Silverlight, the company’s Flash competitor. Moonlight is not yet free of bugs, though.The release comes in two forms; you can either download the easy-to-use installer that excludes multimedia codec support, or you can compile Moonlight from source and include the FFMpeg codecs, using the build instructions.
It works on both Firefox 2.0 as well as 3.0, but support for the latter is shaky due to recent changes in Firefox 3.0 and requires a user-contributed Greasemonkey script [.js] to work properly.
Yet another Microsoft product creeping into Linux. Mono was not enough.
Unlike most .NET supporters, I don’t think .NET is the greatest thing since sliced bread. It is a pretty good thing though. Just because Microsoft comes up with something doesn’t instantly make it “BAD”. .NET brings an entire set of easy to use and fully capable APIs along with countless different languages can use those APIs to create OS agnostic (but perhaps limited to x86 and x64) applications. Sure .NET is slower than native code in most cases and sure it uses more resources than native code in most places. But the rapid application development it allows for while simultaneously supporting such diversity has not really been achieved with much else.
From a corporate standpoint .NET is a fantastic platform for in house development. Development time is crucial so the RAD is a huge plus. And with the advent of Mono most .NET applications can be easily deployed to Windows and Linux servers both 32 and 64 bit all with a single build.
Silverlight / Moonlight simply brings this same environment to a browser.
While there are countless situations where .NET is simply not an appropriate choice, the same can be said for virtually any other software development technology.
No, coming from Microsoft doesn’t make it bad from a technical point. It makes it bad because Microsoft is openly campaigning against the Linux platform. There is NO patent protection in using their platform. FOSS is better off steering clear of this technology. Adobe on the other hand, is opening the specs on their products so that GPL’d versions (Gnash and others) will actually work right without having to reverse engineer everything. There are also opening up their development tools to Linux. When Microsoft actually starts working with open standards and file formats, then it will be time to consider their technology.
There is NO patent protection in using their platform.
If I understand it correctly (and I very well may not), the patent protection was one of the big things in the Novell-Microsoft agreement. It was essentially an agreement of patent and lawsuit protection between both parties. Perhaps I could be wrong but that was my understanding of it after reading it.
Edited 2008-05-15 15:18 UTC
So that means you are tied to Novell/Microsoft not just Microsoft.
Edit: And I’m not sure exactly how much the Novell conenant not to sue actually covers.
Edited 2008-05-15 15:48 UTC
Although you are not allowed to read the details, this covenant apparently only covers Novell SLED customers. Not even OpenSuSe.
Virtually all Linux users, even OpenSuse users, are apparently still liable to be sued (in Microsoft’s eyes) for running “Microsoft technology” … even when Microsoft hasn’t actually written any of the actual code involved.
Mono is tied to ALSA which makes it Linux only … it does not AFAIK even support an abstraction layer such as Phonon or PulseAudio or somesuch.
There is absolutely now way to use Mono to create Silverlight content … Mono is a “render only” technology … it is essentially just a player.
Creation of Silverlight content remains strictly tied to Windows platforms only, and is very much a patented Microsoft dog-in-the-manger technology.
In the final analysis, everyone (other than Microsoft) is far better off using JavaFX, Flash or SVG/HTML5 (I don’t really care which). All three are in a far, far better position to become platform-independent web standards than Mono/Silverlight.
Microsoft has, to the best of my knowledge, agreed to allow any user (no matter what distro) to use Moonlight+MSCodecs in any browser.
However, they do not allow anyone to use their codecs outside of Moonlight hosted within a browser.
That is the only restriction afaik.
I assume you meant Moonlight here and not Mono.
Yes, Moonlight was implemented using ALSA, but we aren’t refusing patches to make it work with something else. We’d even be willing to help abstract out the audio support.
There’s already a guy working to port it to Windows for use in a video game, so at some point soon he’ll probably get to the point of helping us work out how to best make the audio code pluggable and abstract it out a bit.
Well, obviously… Just like there’s no way to use the Silverlight browser plugin to create content
However, we are also working on development tools for creating Silverlight content on Linux (or whatever else). This project is called LunarEclipse. We’ll also be integrating this with MonoDevelop once we get a bit further along.
Not at all, you can create Silverlight content on any platform today. Granted, it’s /easier/ to do so on Windows using their Expression Blend tool, but you can use a text editor to write XAML and JavaScript. You can also use InkScape to create XAML.
Microsoft is just pretending to be open with Silverlight. When Microsoft announced Silverlight, their claim to it being cross-platform was based on the fact that it could be used on windows or Mac. Their omission of Linux was pointed and quite deliberate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Silverlight#Criticism
“The Mono team is currently developing a free and open-source implementation of the Silverlight runtime which they named Moonlight. The project is officially supported by Microsoft who, under an agreement with Novell, has made available the specifications, beyond what has been made publicly available, and test cases to the Mono team. The Mono team also has access to the Silverlight Base Class Library APIs which other developers do not have access to. Microsoft will also provide binary codecs for use in Moonlight. Moonlight targets both version 1.0 as well as 2.0 of Silverlight.”
…
“Microsoft has also been criticized for not using the Scalable Vector Graphics standard for Silverlight, which, according to Ryan Paul of Ars Technica, is consistent with Microsoft’s ignoring of open standards in other products, as well. However, according to David Betz, an independent .NET technologies specialist, Microsoft would have needed to alter the SVG specification to add .NET integration and UI constructs on top of SVG to make it suitable for scenarios Silverlight uses markup for (UI and vector markup, by default). Consequently, he thinks the “choice by Microsoft to use XAML over SVG, served to retain the SVG standard by not adding proprietary technology [to extend SVG]”.
Typical. Hide bits of the spec. Hide bits of the API. Make some vital pieces available as binary blobs only.
Pointedly ignore any open standard. Use something invented by Microsoft instead, with the express intention of adding Microsoft-proprietary hooks into it.
Then pretend it is open, and try to get the whole world to use it, so that everything depends on Microsoft-proprietary technology, especially in areas that are currently supposed to be platform neutral.
… eg. binary codecs aren’t going to be any use when trying to run Moonlight under Linux on a PS3 or a Sun Sparc or a Linksys router or NAS, for example, are they?
This way, all other platforms become lesser platforms, incapable of doing most things because they are not blessed by Microsoft (and they pay Microsoft no dues).
To hell with Microsoft. Avoid Silverlight and Moonlight and related technologies like XAML like the plague. Use the open equivalents instead, such as JavaFX, SVG … even flash has recently become open enough to allow unencumbered implementation by any party.
The really disappointing thing about Moonlight and similar efforts (eg. Mono) is that it is well-intentioned FOSS authors who are walking straight into the mire of Microsoft’s encumberances, apparently with very effective blinkers firmly in place.
Edited 2008-05-16 02:23 UTC
Random comment, but I’m curious. Do you write code, implement OSS systems professionally, or do anything else to forward the open source cause in the real world? Or do you just post on internet forums? That’s a sincere question.
Edited 2008-05-16 02:28 UTC
I am involved in engineering development. Most of my customers are prepared to pay for (my team’s) engineering development time on the proviso that there are no proprietary encumberances (including our own) on the technologies that I deliver to them.
It makes my task much quicker, and my customers costs much lower, if I am able to integrate open solutions as far as possible into the final systems. Both parties win.
Both parties lose if I am forced to integrate closed, single-source technologies as part of the systems.
BTW, in what manner is trying to make people aware of issues surrounding such hidden encumberances not “forwarding the open source cause in the real world”?
I guess it’s a matter of how I assign values. That’s what spurred my curiosity in the first place.
Talk is cheap, and actions speak far louder than words, in my view. The fact that you are actively involved in the deployment of FOSS in your work is, in my opinion, worth about 10,000 forum posts on proper interpretation of this or that clause of the GPL plus 1 converted grandmother. 😉
Edited 2008-05-16 12:54 UTC
Actually, Microsoft has gone out of their way to ensure that we are able to deliver those codecs for as many Linux platforms as needed.
Provided we have the hardware to the platform and a working setup (ie, no “buy this machine on ebay, then hack it with this to boot” or variations of this) we will be happy to do the codec builds.
So why not just release the specifications for the codecs, and let any platform (such as, for example, a Nokia Internet Device running Debian on ARM I believe) write their own codecs without fear of legal reprisal?
That is clearly the better way. That way, no-one is beholden on Novell or Microsoft to be magnanimous and kindly give them a binary blob codec.
Your competitor, Adobe, is miles ahead of you in this respect. You won’t win ground against them unless you are more open and co-operative and less secretive and threatening about it all.
Edited 2008-05-17 08:51 UTC
The specifications for the codecs are already public.
There are, however, patents that you must license in order to use them if you don’t use Microsoft’s binary codecs.
Same for playing VC-1 and MPEG videos in any other Linux media player.
You already have the option of using Moonlight with FFMpeg (or you could port it to use GStreamer or some other media framework of your choosing), so you aren’t dependent upon Novell or Microsoft for the codec implementations.
Just remember to pay the license fees for the media codecs (I believe Fluendo provides licenses for these codecs along with plugins for GStreamer).
You might want to double-check that, actually. As far as I know, the codecs used within Flash still need to be licensed. When you use the binary Flash player from Adobe, they are paying the licensing fees for you – but if you use Gnash, you might not be legally in the clear without paying license fees to the patent holders of the codecs.
This is why most (all?) Linux distributions do not ship mp3 players or video players – even though there exist open source implementations of these codecs, that is not enough – the patents need to be licensed in order to be legally in the clear.
Edited 2008-05-17 16:07 UTC
MS has opened the specs of the .Net CLR, C#, and Silverlight. In fact, MS has been helping the Mono guys do Moonlight, with docs, support, etc.
I get as mad as anyone at Microsoft for their business tactics, and some of their software being crap, and not being totally customer focused. But some software MS does is very good, and MS isn’t always evil. So a little level headed balance is in order.
Always proceed with caution when dealing with MS tech compatibility. But don’t reject it outright.
BTW – I just downloaded the Moonlight plugin into my Firefox, running on Mandriva 2008 Spring, restarted Firefox, then went to the MS Silverlight demo website, and it worked flawlessly.
I’m glad I have the choice to use this. There are, and will be, websites that use Silverlight, and I love that I now have the ability to view those sights on Linux.
Also, as a developer who works in both a Windows world and *nix world, I’m glad I have an sdk for .Net and Silverlight to run on Linux.
Also, back to the tired old concern about MS patents – the .Net CLR and C# are open ECMA standards with “no sue” declarations, and MS has completely opened up the Silverlight specs to the Moonlight guys, and even helped them with docs and technical support. Also, it is very much in Microsoft’s interests to have this *nix implementation, and with no effort on their part.
So, in short, don’t worry, be happy – but still keep a weary eye
We’ll see how much support (and the Mac for that metter) they get if Silverlight becomes as popular and well-used as Microsoft hopes ;-).
No. What Microsoft does is partly open the specs. Some vital part it keeps for itself.
.Net is a classic example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_.NET#Standardization_and_lic…
“In August 2000, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, and Intel worked to standardize CLI and the C# programming language. By December 2001, both were ratified ECMA standards (ECMA 335 and ECMA 334). ISO followed in April 2003.
While Microsoft and their partners hold patents for the CLI and C#, ECMA and ISO require that all patents essential to implementation be made available under ‘reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) terms’. In addition to meeting these terms, the companies have agreed to make the patents available royalty-free.
However, this does not apply for the part of the .NET Framework which is not covered by the ECMA/ISO standard, which includes Windows Forms, ADO.NET, and ASP.NET. Patents that Microsoft holds in these areas may deter non-Microsoft implementations of the full framework.”
See? You can have most of .Net … but you can’t write a GUI because Windows Forms is held back. If you try to port Windows forms to another platform, so that a program originally written in .Net using Windows forms can be easily ported to that other platform … Microsoft would certainly sue.
Absolutely classic Microsoft behaviour, that.
For Silverlight … the piece of that that Microsoft have held back for themselves exclusively is the content creation part.
You can only create Silverlight content on a Windows platform.
Ergo, it is totally unsuited to become a standard … just like most of Microsoft’s stuff is similarly unsuited.
See? You can have most of .Net … but you can’t write a GUI because Windows Forms is held back. If you try to port Windows forms to another platform, so that a program originally written in .Net using Windows forms can be easily ported to that other platform … Microsoft would certainly sue.
So… why haven’t they sued Mono, yet?
“Mono’s Winforms 2.0 is now API Complete”
http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2008/May-13.html
Novell has a deal with Microsoft.
AFAIK from Microsoft’s perspective, it is perfectly OK for Mono to have WinForms … and any user can run code made with that combination on a Novell SLED platform.
I’m pretty certain however that Microsoft would feel absolutely justified in suing anyone who ran such an application on Red Hat or Ubuntu Linux, who have not paid any dues to Microsoft.
Even then, though … Microsoft won’t do this until they feel that they need to. Right now, Microsoft are probably waiting for programs built from these tools to become strategically important to RedHat and Ubuntu customers.
There’s really no reason for developers to write new applications that use Windows.Forms for several reasons:
1. Mono provides Gtk# which is cross-platform
2. Gtk# provides a much more native UI for Linux apps (why would Red Hat want Windows.Forms apps?)
3. Microsoft is phasing out Windows.Forms in favor of WPF
Mono’s Windows.Forms support is largely for aiding in allowing software written for .NET on Windows to be ported over to run on Linux.
“It makes it bad because Microsoft is openly campaigning
against the Linux platform.”
It is bad for vulnerable people to patent FUD.
Is bad for people with an anti-ms agenta.
But is fine for:
People who knows patent FUD is just that, FUD.
People who wants functionality and have a life.
So, there is your answer.
Are you saying that Microsoft is spreading patent FUD, or that people are spreading FUD about Microsoft spreading patent FUD?
Microsoft are the company who are the most detrimental to open source software, have described it as ‘communist’ and have done everything that they can reasonably do to deride it in every way possible.
It’s really quite funny, and sad, that all that people have in response to that is that people have some sort of anti-Microsoft agenda and are Microsoft haters. The same thing was said in response to every objection over OOXML. Oh, it’s all an IBM backed conspiracy and everyone hates us!
The ball’s in Microsoft’s court and they can give us a call.
Red herring. Microsoft has made public guarantees that it will indemnify customers from patent issues (as long as you’re not suing them, yourself) when using its technologies.
As long as they get it under an agreement from Novell ;-). They’ve made no such guarantees for anyone else or open source developers.
It’s a game you’ve got to ask yourself if it’s worth playing, or whether you even need to.
Not true. You don’t have to be a Novell customer to use the specifications. Anyone can use them (provided they aren’t actively litigating against Microsoft.
http://www.microsoft.com/interop/osp/default.mspx#ERCAC
Here’s an opinion by Red Hat’s counsel:
Red Hat believes that the text of the OSP gives sufficient flexibility to implement the listed specifications in software licensed under free and open source licenses. We commend Microsoft’s efforts to reach out to representatives from the open source community and solicit their feedback on this text, and Microsoft’s willingness to make modifications in response to our comments.
Mark Webbink
Deputy General Counsel
Red Hat, Inc.
I think that sums it up pretty well.
Edited 2008-05-15 20:58 UTC
That’s a promise, not a license, and is not enforceable in any way shape or form. It means very, very little, muddies the whole patent water still further and tries to ring-fence anything that Microsoft sees as its property in requiring a license or a promise.
This part of it tells you how worthless it actually is:
The OSP doesn’t cover any actual code, there is no sub-licensing of rights and the ‘specifications’ they list are very limited and cover an exceptionally limited set of useful functionality. You can implement OOXML if you don’t mind having Office not open your documents, as Office doesn’t follow the OOXML specification (nothing else is covered by the OSP!), and you can implement XAML and get a limited form of Silverlight, but none of the useful stuff around it like Windows Media formats.
In addition, the ‘promise’ does not extend to uses of the software beyond the covered specification so code effectively cannot be forked and copied.
In the face of that, it really doesn’t matter what Red Hat’s legal counsel said (the obligatory “We welcome efforts to reach out…” nonsense). When Red Hat start writing open source code where they believe it is covered by the OSP, give us a call.
So you know more than RedHat lawyers. All right I get it.
Well heres an example of your guarantee. In an article (Microsoft fights piracy through openness) on Inquirer.net, the author talked about Microsoft’s new push to be open.
“When working with Microsoft’s patented communication protocols, the company will provide a promise or covenant to open-source developers so that they could do their work without further needing to get their patent rights from the company.”
In response to this statement, Microsoft senior vice president and general counsel Brad Smith was quoted as saying:
“But then if open-source software is distributed commercially, for example by a company or used commercially by a company, then we would expect people to think about our patent rights. And if they need a patent license, they could come and get one from us.”
So what? We only get left alone if we don’t make any money or try to distribute it? Thats some promise. I guess Microsoft has a patent on making money now too. Only someone who is completely clueless would trust Microsoft not to sue them if there is money involved. And how the hell does a promise stand up in court? Its not a legally binding contract under law.
Well, can you really blame them? Microsoft isn’t a charity. They’re a for-profit business. What they’re saying is that, “If you want to compete with us using our own technology, we’re going to assert patent rights.” I don’t see much of an issue there. If you’re going to compete directly with Microsoft on a commercial basis, you don’t want to be dependent on them for your core technology. It’s that simple.
You have heard of Java, right?
Java is just Java, while .NET gives you C#, VB.NET (ick), IronPython, IronRuby, F#, RPL, Boo, and Nermle to name a few. While there are a small number of languages that target java bytecode (groovy for one), it’s nowhere near as many as .NET.
http://www.robert-tolksdorf.de/vmlanguages.html
If you don’t have enough time to read the list of over 200 different languages, Jython, JRuby, OCamlJava all exist (JRuby in particular is much farther along than IronRuby).
I too thought the JVM was only Java, until fairly recently when after OpenJDK 6 was announced I actually took the time to look around.
I think the lesson is that branding is important, and up until fairly recently the branding/marketing was all Java. But technically speaking, that’s never been the case.
Edited 2008-05-15 17:55 UTC
You best look up the number of languages supported by the JVM… Not only are “common” scripting languages like python and ruby supported, but also “new” languages like groovy and scala are making headway.
Sounds like Java, what are the major differences between both?
So that’s why Tracker, a project that started out much later than Beagle with a lot less funding has more features, is more stable, consumes less memory and indexes faster? Given the so called Mono flagship applications of Beagle, F-Spot and Muine, how many people actually prefer them to their natively written counterparts?
People who criticize GTK+ have a point. However, when given the chance users will never ever tolerate an application that runs in a VM (even if there is a JIT). Such applications start up slower, take more memory and frequently run slower than their native counterparts.
It would be better to come up with GTK+ v3 or something and try to bring GTK+ inline with the clean Qt4 API.
Silverlight/Moonlight have been getting a lot of “shit” from FOSS and such lateley… however, is it all that worse than Flash?
At least we’re getting a open source implementation here. And whether Silverlight or Flash sucks or not… having an opensource implemention of Silverlight is good. Maybe it even could lead to Adobe helping out the GNASH-guys?
Moonlight aside: I find Flash to be the lesser of two evils here.
Edited 2008-05-15 14:18 UTC
I haven’t seen Silverlight or Moonlight but if Moonlight will work on a 64bit browser, then the answer is no..flash is not any better, it is much worse.
Adobe did finally got Flash to use ALSA, so now they’re only 5 years behind.
On a side note, someone told me that I can use some himem kernel option and actually use all 4GB of RAM in a 32bit Linux. This is looking pretty attractive to me.
Moonlight will work on 64 bit browsers, some of our developers develop on Linux x86-64
If you have PAE support enabled in kernel (most modern distros do) and your CPU also supports PAE (again, most modern CPU’s do), you will be able to use up to 64 GB of RAM on a 32bit Linux.
PAE is also available for Windows but in desktop versions (XP, Vista) it only allows access to 4 GB tops. To get more you need a server version.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension
Silverlight/Moonlight have been getting a lot of “shit” from FOSS and such lateley… however, is it all that worse than Flash?
Yes! Because it’s developed by a company with a very strong interest to protect the monopoly position of their own operating system.
Silverlight/Moonlight has the word TRAP written all over it. Avoid!!
Edited 2008-05-15 17:34 UTC
Just like Adobe tries to keep its flash monopoly.
Just like the FSF tries to keep its GNU Tools monopoly.
Those two are not better than MS in that aspect.
Just like Adobe tries to keep its flash monopoly.
Unlike MS, Adobe has no reason to make it work better on one particular operating system. MS can stop releasing new versions of Silverlight for Mac when it has got enough market share. And for Linux Moonlight will be one step behind (“almost compatible”).
Just like the FSF tries to keep its GNU Tools monopoly.
What are you talking about?
Edited 2008-05-15 17:56 UTC
Adobe is somewhat less dangerous than MS in that their dominance is somewhat easier to topple.
The FSF is hardly a monopoly. They are a software provider with tools which simply work exceedingly well, and have a sometimes annoying leader, and some overly vocal fans who do more harm than good.
I use market share and “barrier to entry” criteria to gauge monopoly status. But I set the gauge threshold to be the price/functionality ratio needed to cut into the dominant player’s market share. That can place the barrier at a relatively high absolute level. FSF has good stuff. But the balance may well shift in the future.
“Adobe is somewhat less dangerous than MS in that their dominance is somewhat easier to topple.”
So now we have levels fo danger?
You guys are such hypocryts, some time speak in absolutes, black or white, and now you have “levels of danger” condoning the behavior of a few just because it helps you in your anti-ms agenda.
About the GNU tools, the FSF is using its positions of control to push its agenda,just like they tried to use it to puch the GPLv3, thanks for us GPLv3 was a fiasco and GPLv2 remains.
But of course, they can do whatever they want because they are protecting our “freedom”, right.
Hiev, maybe we are not all of a piece? Please speak to me, Steve Bergman, sbergman27 here on OSNews. I will not answer to “you guys”. No individual here should. People fall into the trap of allowing themselves to be treated as “you guys”, even taking on that role, far too often in this and other forums.
Speak to individual people, please, and not to your own conveniently pigeon-holed groups. And don’t allow others to pigeon-hole you.
Edit: I would be more than happy to continue the conversion on those terms.
Edited 2008-05-15 18:26 UTC
Im answering to 2 persons, polarbear and you, so is plural.
Nice try. But it doesn’t fit the facts. You were responding directly to my post with “You guys are such hypocryts (SIC)” and then proceeded to imply that I had said things which I have not said and would not likely ever say. Black and white is not my style. Never has been. And you didn’t even bother to check.
Please converse with individuals and not with nebulous groups. It would save a lot of confusion and unnecessary bad blood. It would help foster understanding, which is a very worthy goal.
On a side note, screaming “hypocrite” is usually a bad strategy, too. Especially when you misspell it.
I see you are just trying to avoid him and not ansering to his post, tipical.
No. There are successive levels of how receptive people and companies are to free and open source software and open platforms. Adobe has at least sought to port Flash to different platforms and have contributed in HTML and other standards working groups. What was Microsoft’s response and ‘contribution’? Silverlight.
You’re trying to deal in absolutes because that’s the only defence you have here.
No one has an anti-MS agenda. Microsoft has an anti-everyone else agenda, and that has become very clear over the past twenty years or so. What would you like people to do in the face of that? Kiss Ballmer’s ass?
Your spinning sweetheart. You’re desperately trying to come up with some convoluted way in which the FSF is somehow a monopoly, painting over the fact that enough people can walk in there and take development away from the FSF by forking. That’s what open source software is for.
Wonderfully ironic, eh? You’re trying to paint the FSF as a monopoly, and then proving that they’re not and proving what the concept of open source software actually is.
Nobody wants any monopoly, but the fact is that Microsoft controls an OS and the stack all the way up to Silverlight. At this point in time that is infinitely more of a problem than something that runs on at least a variety of platforms today, and where Adobe has an incentive to see that it stays that way. Microsoft simply doesn’t, and they will drop Moonlight and the Mac version of Silverlight like a hot potato if Silverlight achieves what they feel is critical mass.
They have no interest or incentive in non-Windows platforms, and you have to be so much of an idiot it isn’t even funny if you still don’t understand this. Do you really need this explaining to you after all these years?
As for Adobe, one hopes that they will come into line with HTML5 and keep producing tools which people buy anyway and where they will have an incentive to do so. The fact that they don’t control an entire OS, development platform and browser means that this is much more likely.
Come again? This is open source software (or as RMS calls it, free software) which means that people can pick up development independently and fork from any FSF or GNU influences should they so wish. Many have already done so.
What the hell is your definition of a monopoly?
Those people over at the mono-project should go work for Microsoft, nobody wants your crap in Unix.
As for moonlight, it’s “Linux-only”, only supports “ALSA”.
Edited 2008-05-15 14:18 UTC
I was wondering if I could try it out on Safari.
Thanks for the info!
My 2 cents: In a multiOS open source world, where users of all kinds blend together, is it really that smart to make your application Linux-only by ties with ALSA or what else? I mean… isn’t this what we are running away from in the first place?
Crap? Taking away potential political bias, the .NET platform seems pretty OK to me. Sure, a virtual machine is may be slower (or arguably faster in some situations), the .NET framework makes it largely possible to use the same class library and platform with different languages. Additionally, C# is a nice language. It seems to be largely inspired by Java, and there seems to be some cross-pollination now.
Sure, there is the potential of litigation, but probably not over ECMA-submitted parts. And Mono buys good code compatibility to what seems to become one of the standard platforms on Windows. For some odd reason people seem to bash Mono, but have no problem against the inclusion of WINE or Gnash in free *NIX systems. Double standards?
I think .NET provides healthy competition to its free software counterpart, Java. Mono brings compatibility. I can’t see what is wrong with that, as long as no critical components or one-of-a-kind killer application depends on Mono, no ships are burnt.
One could say that compatibility with such technologies make it more popular. That could be the case for OS X, but I think with the small desktop usage of Linux or BSD, there is not so much influence over these technologies. Supporting them makes Unix-like systems more attractive to newcomers. I have seen many friends who were interested in GNU/Linux (primarily through Ubuntu), go away because of the bad support for some media formats. The average user out there wants to watch missed TV broadcasts, not C code
.
Edited 2008-05-15 14:48 UTC
The zero cost RAND agreement that covers the ECMA specifications (and which Microsoft are bound to provide as ECMA members – not the zero cost bit by the way) is exceptionally flimsy, doesn’t stop Microsoft having or acquiring patents and can easily be revoked by Microsoft getting the standard cancelled.
WINE and Gnash aren’t covered by the above, where something looks open but really it isn’t. Mono would have been better off ignoring the ECMA specifications all together and coming up with an independent implementation like WINE or Gnash.
With WINE, it just happens to be a piece of software that happens to be moderately Win32 API compatible. The same applies to Gnash. With the ECMA specifications what Microsoft gets is a way to tie down different implementations and say “Ah, that is covered by this!”
It’s fairly clever really.
Beyond that, I hope Mono will be at least moderately useful in providing at least some compatibility as WINE has done. As with all open source software, someone goes out and implements it and we see what happens,
Microsoft isn’t going to help you there. Windows Media is not covered in Moonlight at all ;-).
Edited 2008-05-15 21:45 UTC
While I do groan a bit as we enter another “let’s struggle to be compatible with Microsoft” phase, you are correct. It is necessary. I am rather hoping that Mono, much as I am averse to it, will be somewhat more successful in its efforts at MS compatibility than was Wine.
segedenum said:
It has been a while since you made up facts on an as-needed basis. We missed you.
Miguel
Edited 2008-05-15 23:20 UTC
*We* did?
You only bother to show up when your products are featured here, Miguel.
Edited 2008-05-15 23:43 UTC
I didn’t ;-).
The above is the situation I’m afraid Miguel. The RAND (and zero cost) licensing is only covered for as long as the specifications are ECMA standards. Microsoft can rock the boat to get it revoked at any time, and the only recourse the ECMA has is to cancel the standard. Microsoft probably won’t do this and will just stop contributing, but the thing is, they can. The ECMA provide you with no protection at all in these matters. You implement at your own risk. The ECMA also doesn’t stop patents being held now or acquired in the future on their standards, just that they can be licensed accordingly. Read the FAQ on the ECMA’s web site regarding this issue. I’ve looked everywhere to try and find that this isn’t the case, as I got piqued by it in the past, but it is.
http://www.ecma-international.org/memento/codeofconduct.htm
http://www.ecma-international.org/memento/guidance.htm
This is why there was some commotion some while back, as I understand it, to try and guarantee that the RAND and zero cost licensing is irrevocable. No such guarantee has been forthcoming.
I hate patents and all this stuff as much as the next person, and I think you should just be able to ignore them, but is this really a web worth bothering with for open source developers? You do see what Microsoft is doing here don’t you? They’re trying to make the murky issue of whether you’re covered by a software patent more certain where what they see as their ‘intellectual property’ is concerned.
Good luck.
Mono is an independent implementation. It is a ground up, clean room writing of the CLR and C#, based on the ECMA specs.
Gnash is also a clean room implementation of published specs.
Wine, AFAIK, is both a clean room implementation of published specs/docs, but also reverse engineering.
Adobe has patents on Flash, and could sue on them any time they wish.
MS has patents on Win32, and could sue on them any time they wish.
So, legally speaking, the risk level between Mono on one side, and Gnash and Wine on the other, is identical.
That said, I do trust Adobe to play nice more than MS.
Beyond that, I hope Mono will be at least moderately useful in providing at least some compatibility as WINE has done. As with all open source software, someone goes out and implements it and we see what happens,
[/q]
You’re missing the point. It’s an independent implementation of a specification that makes it CLR compliant. All of the patents you will see from Microsoft make reference to the fact that if you have implemented a compliant CLR via the ECMA specifications then you are covered. If you were to implement similar concepts in a JVM, for example, you are explicitly excluded.
It is not clean room in the strictest sense, because you’re following a published set of documentation that is RAND licensed.
Not quite. It’s very difficult to really tie a piece of software down to a patent that can be applied to it. With stuff like the ECMA RAND licensing and the Open Specification Promise, Microsoft is trying to solve this ‘problem’.
I’m not really a Mono fan. But I am glad that they are independent. I don’t exactly “want” Mono in Unix, but we need to have it just in case. Where would we be without Samba?
I was unaware that Moonlight was Linux only. That is unfortunate, but I don’t imagine that it will be a problem for long. Ultimately, OSS is looking like the right choice for all of us.
Well, it is Linux-only in that most of us use Linux, but this is open source code, so feel free to send us patches to improve the support for your favorite OS, or architecture, or browser.
In the last few days, some of our engineers landed support for Opera and WebKit on Linux, which is pretty cool. And some people on the #moonlight irc channel are porting it to Win32 (so they can embed the engine in their own apps).
So in the best spirit of open source, if you want Moonlight running on a different beast, use a different engine, get the source code and start sending patches.
Miguel.
I would like the choice of using this “crap” or not, stop trying to limit my choices. I choose the software I use on many factors, and usefulness, stability and speed come before manufacturer, or politics.
Haha, ya know the FOSS crowd is all about Freedom, until you attempt to use/build something they don’t like.
Of course, Silverlight is bad for no other reason than the source code isn’t publically available and it’s made by Microsoft. So if you use it or any open source implementation of it, you will most certainly burn in hell, so sayith the Church of FOSS.
FOSS advocates are not all of a piece. Please keep that in mind. This issue is complex. I’m pretty steadfastly FOSS. And I think we need to keep our options open. That means having Moonlight at the ready, even if I do have qualms about it.
I agree, best tool for the job, that’s what I say.
No. Silverlight is bad because Microsoft have reserved for Windows only the ability … and more importantly the legal rights … for the content creation part.
Therefore, it is not cross-platform.
Therefore, it is not suitable for use in any cross-platform context, such as … the Internet.
The source code is out, we would be happy to integrate patches that would make it run with your favorite audio solution on your favorite Unix variant.
Miguel
What’s this “nobody” crap? Thankfully, you don’t speak for Unix. Why are you so afraid of additional choice?
Not intended to be troll, but nobody actually cares about silverlight and moonlight..
Silverlight is no way a internet standard, it’s a try to implement one more closed format. Kinda like XPS.
Open source needs to focus the talent on other things instead of _trying_ to copy bad ideias.
Edited 2008-05-15 14:30 UTC
If Netflix on-demand movies will run on moonlight/linux, then I care about it.
Yep, just like WINE and Samba and FAT support. And Java up until a year ago. And Flash up until last week. And DOC and XLS and PPT up until earlier this year.
I find it interesting that people enjoy being able to open binary Office formats and read FAT disks, and transfer files with Windows computers, and view Youtube, but wanting to run Windows programs on Linux is the greatest sin one can commit. (only via Mono/Moonlight of course, most people are fine with WINE.)
wine and samba are projects that were started at a much different time and for different reasons. you can’t really compare the two (well, three). when wine was started, application support on *nix was not where it is today. and, ultimately, wine is a transitory tool. it helps people migrate AWAY from windows. as far as samba is concerned, simple networking in a mixed-platform environment is more urgent than a development platform of shady parentage. as far as binary formats and FAT are concerned, interoperability and supporting legacy devices and files are simply not comparable. nobody is using FAT or .doc because they simply love the tech. please… it’s pretty clear that FAT and .doc are two things everybody is trying to get away from.
***.NET/Silverlight may be great tech.*** but a major reason so many FOSS supporters (and myself) have a problem with it is that it will always be a moving target, ultimately steered by a company that ultimately is not looking out for our best interests. you can scream that C# is an open standard all you want. that doesn’t change who’s steering the ship. that’s not blind microsoft-hate. it’s conflict avoidance, and there’s nothing wrong with that. it’s not irrational and it’s not FUD. it’s troubling that microsoft has a tendency to urgently need their fingers in EVERY pot. they openly want control of the “whole widget” and that bothers people. it may not bother YOU, but’s it’s a valid concern. they want to own the desktop, the server, search and advertising, console gaming. and it seems like they’ll do almost anything to horn in on any market with potential. again, that may not bother YOU, but it’s a valid concern.
and on a sidenote, i realize that people throw a lot of their hostility and negativity at miguel unjustly. (this thread is clearly no exception) but, frankly, it seriously appears to a huge number of FOSS supporters that everything he does revolves around emulating microsoft. so many people have worked so hard to *not need* microsoft (or their standards) at all. it’s particularly unsettling to STILL be following their tails after all this time when, ultimately, it’s COMPLETELY unneccessary. you don’t have to agree with me, but acting like so many opinions are baseless is missing the point entirely.
I respect that opinion, and agree that a large part of Miguel’s work does involve porting Microsoft technologies. Where we differ is that I think this is one of the most important things that can be done to help FOSS.
Despite the representation we may see on OSNews, Slashdot, or Digg, we still live in a world where ~95% of the world uses Windows. This is especially true in businesses where no one will upgrade anything because it might break something, much less switch to an entirely new operating system.
The ones that are willing to progress are still left with hundreds or thousands of internal custom applications that no one maintains any more. Rewriting these apps is out of the question. Miguel is interested in trying to give them options to move these things to Linux.
If you aren’t in the 95% still stuck on Windows, you aren’t the target audience. Just keep in mind that any effort that brings more people to FOSS helps all FOSS users have the numbers needed to demand things like better drivers and commercial applications.
Miguel may never win back the love of FOSS supporters, but I think he’s ok with that. He is fishing in a bigger pond: the other 95%.
there _aren’t_ hundreds of thousands of critical .NET apps that no one maintains any more. it’s much too new for that. but, that’s not really the point of mono. that is where WINE comes in handy, really. which, i don’t believe miguel has anything to do with.
i have to respectfully disagree. the 95% still using windows generally *don’t know a darn thing* about mono/moonlight. they are NOT the target audience. and, if they *were*, they don’t care. the target of mono is developers. the target of moonlight is sorta users… but not many developers are using silverlight to begin with. and honestly, i hope nobody does. (see my previous comment) the last thing we should be doing is supporting a not-free-enough platform controlled by a not-trustworthy-enough company.
don’t know why you got voted down, even though i don’t agree with you it was a well reasoned comment
Here is the other side of the picture. This is a gap in technology that has existed since the mid eighties, and has been filled again and again by horrible solutions. the FLOSS community is either unwilling or unable to deal with web technology, it sucks, but its true. We have gotten a big fat nothing from them so far.
To be fair, its not like the commercial sector is that much better. I know everyone talks about them with awe and reverence, but W3C specs tend to be some of the poorest specs in existence. Overly complex, ambitious wording, and alot of just plain bad ideas that come out of consortium politics. It’s no wonder nobody can implement this stuff properly.
Same goes for the rich application interface technologies. Java has been promising truly cross platform UIs for 30 years or so now, and have delivered poorly designed, unresponsive, and buggy results for just as long. Flash ended up gaining dominance, but it was never designed for what it is used for. As much as it is an incredible interactive vector animation tool, it is not fun to do serious coding on it.
So in 30 odd years that this has been a huge gap in the web space, where has the FLOSS world been? HTML 5 is still in whiteboard land, and to be honest, the technologies it uses are already obsolete. SVG has not exactly been winning any performance awards, and Theora is about four generations behind VP7 and VC-1.
I use technology based on its merit, If FLOSS is able to come up with a silverlight killer, I would be more then happy. But until then, the arguements dont really have legs to stand on. “Don’t use commercial protocols, use nothing.” is not a viable option.
That kind of fanatacism and backbiting is the #1 reason I no longer contribute to the linux community. There are some places I still hang out that have the feel of the old days, but I have no interesting in helping the community as a whole anymore.
This is what you don’t understand. This whole thing was never about not using microsoft, it was about making great technology. That is what has always been the motivating force in the open source world.
Java’s been around for 30 years?? Ummm it first came out in ’95. By my math, that’s slightly less than 30 years.
Anyway, Java has gotten much, much better over the last few years for both the Java desktop and RIA (see the new JavaFX). Speed is much better, native integration is much better, and look and feel is much better.
Actually, I’m rather stoked about desktop, and RIA, Java these days. JavaFX shows a lot of potential (and it’s easy), the new Nimbus LnF looks great and will be the default, there is a new consumer JRE (about a 3 or 4 meg intitial download, with the rest of full JRE downloaded incrementally as needed) looks great, and start up times are great.
Plus, Java is FOSS, and has multi vendor, multi-OSS project support, and it’s 100% cross platform, with no “half-ass” implemenations for some platforms that come out a year later after the initial standard platform release (see Flash).
Flash is cool, but falls short of full cross platform support. Until Adobe releases a Linux version the same time as Windows and Mac versions (not a year later), then it will be “truly cross platform”. Also, Flash is such a huge CPU hog, that I try to avoid it when possible. A web site done fully in Flex/Flash can bring my system down to it’s knees (and my systems are pretty up to date and fast and lots of memory). They also download slower.
Sliverlight/Moonlight look intriguing. And I’m glad for Moonlight – it’s good to have it as a choice for Linux users. But it’s tied into .Net, and MS’s incentives (dominence of their platform), so I suspect that the Windows version will always be well ahead of hte Mac version and Moonlight. Plus, it’s fully closed.
So, Java for me. Give it another try. It’s no longer the slow, ugly beast of yesteryear.
Dude, I dont know what planet you live on, but the web has only been around since the early ninety’s. Where do you get 30 years from? Also, the web was founded and runs on OSS. Apache, MySQL, Perl, Php, ring any bells? Things arent late. They were waiting (and still are in many places) broadband. No broadband, no rich internet experience.
maybe i/you need to clarify. if you’re referring to mono being about making great technology, i’m not arguing. (like i said in my first post, i’m not arguing the technical merits of the platform. i am arguing that those of us that choose to NOT use it have very valid reasons for doing so. it has become very frustrating to see so many .NET/mono supporters shout “FUD” whenever anybody suggests NOT using the fruits of their labors.)
but it is extremely presumptuous of you to deny that thousands upon thousands of developers perpetually strive to distance themselves from microsoft. and, the reasons are plentiful. whether it be political, technological, or financial, there are so many people developing OSS specifically to get away from companies like microsoft. that is only further cemented by the fact that we live in such a litigious time that completely distancing yourself from megacorporate “IP” is the only safe bet.
I do dismiss that. Companies develop software so that their users will not use competitors software. At least the non profession OSS devs (by that i mean not those being paid to work on OSS), the goal is typically just to make good software, not necessarily to make alternatives to existing software. At least that has always been my goal for anything I am doing because I want to, not because I am paid to. You do it because it is interesting and fun, and you have ideas you want to test out.
Now, free software is another story, but i dont have much patience at the best of times for FSF guys 😉
Neither do I. But maybe we should?
XAML isn’t exactly a “closed format”.
Uhhhhh … what? XPS has been submitted to the ECMA standards body. This is no different than PDF and ISO.
It’s fantastic to see such productivity comes to Linux environment. Go Monoers go!
I think it is a good way to crack the the flash stronghold, but I think in the end people will use more lightweight SVG + Video + JS once a sufficient amout of browsers have HTML5 etc.
I thought that I saw on Microsoft’s web site a Linux version listed somewhere on Microsoft’s roadmap.
Are we going to have 2 implementations of this?
I haven’t seen the specs on Silverlight, but it may have the potential to be better than flash. I’m no flash expert either, but it seems like the OSS implementations of flash are hacky reverse engineerings of a proprietary format. It seems like Moonlight will be an implementation of a runtime and APIs.
From what I’ve seen it’s definetely better than flash. At least on the programming side, but it’ll probably catch up on the visual aspect as well.
It has better libraries, support for an array of languages(you can for instance write your code in (Iron)Python). And also: it is now getting a open source implementation.
Despite this: I’m still sceptic. Silverlight might be a good product, but good products can be used “for evil”. Will Microsoft support Moonlight-developers if Silverlight becomes dominant? Adobe might not be an angel, but Microsoft sure as hell isn’t either.
Today the only reason I keep VirtualBox installed with an image of Windows XP is so that I can watch netflix online which requires IE with activex crap.
Netflix did announce some time ago about a Silverlight client. This would be great if I could now watch it on Linux. Netflix will probably still find some way to make it MS only though.
Netflix is going to be using Silverlight 2.0, so you will have to wait until they get Moonlight 2.0 done I guess.
Yea.
We’ll be working hard on 2.0 as soon as we get 1.0 out the door this summer.
Being a Netflixer myself, I’m very interested in being able to view online movies under Linux 😉
What matters to me is *choice*. I have the *choice* to use moonlight or not, but i’m glad i have at least the *choice*!
I don’t care about patents, i don’t care if it comes from the “evil empire that eats us all”. I couldn’t care less about it! But I *do* care about a free way to view those silverlight pages. I care about interoperability with the “empire”.
They just won’t go away just because we don’t use their things…
Instead of overtaking, Linux keeps following the tail lights.
To overtake, Linux has to be better than Windows; not just “good enough”. A buggy and incomplete implementation is not “better” by any measurement, freedom included.
I seriously hope no major distro ever ships this because it would only give the green flag for companies to develop with silverlight instead of standards.
Flash is standard?
Assuming you didnt’ mean flash: HTML as of today is not up to par with neither Silverlight or Flash. I view Flash/Silverlight as software that enables us to do stuff that HTML is not yet ready for or have found a good thought through solution for. (Flash/Silverlight isn’t thought-through in the same way as HTML/CSS. For instance, there is little seperation between content and style.)
So because of this I don’t think it makes so much sense to compare flash to HTML. HTML is meant to last. Silverlight/Flash is more filling the gap between current HTML and when we’ll get a richer version(5?). That’ll probably be better than Flash/Silverlight in many ways.
On the other side: I guess there maybe should be more focus on developing lasting technologies such as HTML5 rather than using this “good enough but not open”-stuff like Flash and Silverlight.
And at the same time, companies need to get it into their heads, that you do not need Flash or Silverlight to make an input form, or a menu.
It’s this kind of insane web”design” that needs to be hammered out of companies by making Silverlight a non-option for these kinds of things.
So, what, are you saying that we should not ship Moonlight in order to stop companies from over-using Silverlight? Reality check: companies will still keep using it in a ton of bad (and good) ways, and the do-not-ship policy will simply mean Linux users can’t use those sites. Congrats on achieving nothing, except for making the FOSS desktop even more useless to regular people.
Also, just to be clear, there are plenty of uses for things like Flash or Silverlight that HTML/CSS/SVG/JS simply can’t do adequately yet (especially in terms of performance). New versions of Flash have 3D effects, for example, which is damn useful for certain applications. A lot of visual design tools are just way too damn hard to write in HTML/JS, even if it is technically possible, and the fact that I can whip together that kind of application in Flash/Silverlight in 30 minutes completely validates those technologies.
The same goes for Mono/Java/etc. vs C/C++.
This patent bullshit is also getting really, really annoying. If Microsoft has a patent that affects Silverlight, and they actually plan on using it to sue FOSS software, what in hell makes people think that they couldn’t use that patent against any kind of even remotely similar technology that the FOSS camps grow in an attempt to avoid Silverlight? Patents don’t say, “you can’t write software compatible to this format,” they say, “you can’t do anything that vaguely reflects this broad use case of this generalized mechanism.” If they have a patent on something in Silverlight that they plan on enforcing then you will find it amazingly difficult to write anything even remotely similar in purpose to Silverlight without infringing.
I am also amused at hwo people place so much faith in the “true standards” of HTML/CSS/JS. Why the hell are W3C’s HTML/CSS/etc. documents that no browser fully complies with more “standard” than ECMA’s CLR/Silverlight/etc. documents that no browser fully complies with?
Hello,
You must be a new reader to Kroc’s comments.
In his distorted take on reality Microsoft = Bad.
Never mind the fact that Silverlight allows for source code compatibility on a limited scale between all .NET technologies which include Client Side WPF Applications.
Never mind the fact that Silverlight spearheading the streaming of high definition media, with Flash being left to catch up.
He seems to have a vendetta against anything Microsoft, and even more violently so when the technology shows even a glimmer of promise. He’s quick to advocate the not-quite-here-yet solutions which would require MORE effort to get the SAME result.
HTML5 is NOT HERE YET. It has not reached critical mass in terms of adoption, and it won’t for a very long time.
Enterprises want solutions that are availible. Right now. This does not mean tomorrow, or next month, or next year. This means right now.
Some of your anti-microsoft rants are cute once in a while, but you easily become a tired concept.
You get me wrong,
I don’t like anti-consumerism.
The closed web will be the worst thing to happen to the Internet, ever.
Innovation will be killed dead.
I love javascript, but there are upper limits to its use in rich interfaces. GMail or Google Maps are good examples of the upper bounds of what a javascript ui can do.
Not only that, but like most web standards, the javascript spec is both poor, and has wildly different implementations on every browser, with plenty of gotchas, not to mention performance concerns (what might optimize on FF may just make things worse on Safari).
Thats not to say that there isn’t alot that can be done well with js/xmlhttprequest. But when you start getting into web applications rather then web sites, you start hitting the limitations of the platform pretty quickly.
Java filled this void extremely poorly, so poorly that it was replaced by flash, which itself sucks for rich interfaces. Silverlight is made to fill this void, and does it extremely well.
As for not letting MS lead the way, where has FLOSS been for the last decade? This has been a known problem and discussed at great length, and a better alternative then flash would not have been hard, especially flash support in the *nix world has been piss poor for a very long time. You cannot completely ignore a huge problem space for alot of people, and then complain when a company comes out with a good solution for it.
Oops. Replied to wrong person
Edited 2008-05-15 19:34 UTC
You may be interested in some work done by John Resig of Jquery fame. He has basically ported the processing language (http://processing.org / http://ejohn.org/blog/overview-of-processing/) to javascript using the canvas language. You basically write you app in the processing language and his it is compiled via javascript into javascript and uses the cavas support in the latest beta browsers. It could provide flash / silverlight functionality standard browsers. it won’t do video though. For info check out http://ejohn.org/blog/processingjs/ and http://ejohn.org/blog/processingjs-aftermath/.
Also HTML 5 is years away from being a standard. So its not something a company is going to build its business on.
In this case, “good enough” is very much a prerequisite of “better”.
I must say, I love the work Mono is doing on Moonlight. Great job guys, keep it up.
Here’s to 2.0 support!
FYI; the download link is broken; It is http://www.go-mono.com/moonlight .
There is a typo in the HTML on the “read more” page for the “download page”; the tag should be “href=”, but is t “hef=”.
LMFAO! Would somebody please let me know when any software product is “free of bugs”? Thanks, much appreciated.
But its interesting how they provide no Solaris package. sure, they have a mono package, but its only for sparc – scared that if you provide an x86 version for Solaris,it might drag some customers away? Where is the moolight plugin for Solaris?
As for what I think of the project; the more competition the better – because lord knows currently the Adobe Flash plugin is horrible crap – no matter what platform it is on, and worse, any operating system other than Windows or Mac OS X is either neglected or simply provided with a half assed plugin that barely functions.
We would love to support Solaris.
If you can raise the funds to get us some powerful SPARC servers and desktops to test on (one of each would do), we will be more than happy to do the builds, publish the packages and even negotiate with Microsoft porting the codecs to Solaris as well.
As for Solaris on Intel, we would also like to do that, but we would need dedicated hardware as well.
If nobody steps up to provide these, we will still likely do them at some point, but there are just bigger fish to fry at this point.
Why do you need a ‘dedicated machine’? get virtual box and load it in a virtual machine. SPARC isn’t an issue; the issue is x86 – and this can be resolved through a Solaris session inside a virtual machine.
The issue isn’t resources; you can’t honestly expect me to believe you guys have never heard of a VM to run Solaris in – honestly? Come on, this is more an issue of, “I don’t want to do it” rather than it being one of, “I don’t the tools to do it”.
This is open source, how about you lead the way and show the world how to package Moonlight for Solaris?
It should not take you long to setup the VM, compile it and package it for Solaris use.
Once you are done, post the instructions for people to reproduce.
But somehow I sense that you do not even use Solaris in the first place, and these are just crocodile tears.
I think it is interesting that when I look at Microsoft’s sites they make generous use of Flash but there is little Silverlight tech.
More competition is good for Flash. Sun’s Java would still be distributed as a binary if it wasn’t for competing MS technology, such as C#. Even though open source Flash players such as Gnash and swfdec are available, it would be nice if Adobe’s Flash player also was released as open source. I doubt that will happen soon since Flash has too much of hold of the streaming video market. Perhaps the emergence of more Silverlight use in sites will stir this up. MS has done this before. They just add their plugin to the next IE 7 update and before you know it pages start sprouting Silverlight apps.
Edited 2008-05-15 20:35 UTC
Thom,
You should reword the sentence “Moonlight is not yet free of bugs, though.” Nearly every application I know of has bugs.
anything that does what flash does but isn’t flash gets instant points in my book.
hopefully silverlight to moonlight performance is no where near the drop that windows flash to linux flash is.
Look at this, for instance:
Adobe set to test new Flash Player
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9944702-7.html?part=rss&subj=news&…
Much nicer. Far more inclusive.
Not quite open yet … but far closer to being open than is Moonlight/Silverlight.
Would you mind pointing us to the download page for the Flash/Linux player on SPARC, Linksys routers, Linux/PS3 and NAS devices?
You seemed to believe this was a major issue just a a minute ago.
I sense a double standard here.
Ooooh, nasty. You are a sour one, aren’t you.
What is nicer about Adobe’s position is that the standards are open, anyone is permitted to implement them (even Sun for SPARC, or Cisco for Linksys, or Sony for PS3 etc) … even those parties implementing them want to make money, they still owe Adobe no money if they write their own implementation.
With Microsoft its like: “we’ll sue if you write a commercial implementation of “our stuff” … even if it really is your stuff since you wrote the implementation, you can’t expect us to just allow you to compete against us”.
Finally, as for “the download page for the Flash/Linux player on SPARC, Linksys routers, Linux/PS3 and NAS devices” … well, not from Adobe directly, although they are more encouraging for Flash to be implemented on a wide variety of platforms, those platforms are still going to have to write their own code if they want to have their own code. You can’t expect Adobe to do everyone else’s work for them … and yet it still remains kudos to Adobe to let those platforms write their implementation if they want to (even one that competes on the same platform directly against Adobe’s own code … Adobe is quite prepared to let anyone write such).
So … if any vendor wants a head start on implementing flash code on their platform … then here is one place to start:
http://wiki.gnashdev.org/Main_Page
Download that, compile it for your platform, and there you go … a zero effort implementation for you. Mind you, if you take that route, your code will have to remain open source (as you did not actually write it, you just downloaded it, so it is not actually your code).
Then again you are also perfectly welcome to write your own implementation. If you do, and even if you do intend to make money from it … Adobe won’t sue. In fact, Adobe have released the specifications for you to have such a go if you want to.
In the final analysis that is where it most decidedly is not a double standard to claim that Adobe is being far more inclusive, far nicer, and far less dog-in-the-manger evil than Microsoft.
Edited 2008-05-17 08:40 UTC
Before a few weeks ago, the specifications were not legally usable for anyone to implement a player. This is why the Gnash developers had to reverse engineer the formats.
The Gnash developers then published their reverse engineered specifications.
When Adobe opened up their specification, the Gnash developers had already reverse engineered them, so it didn’t really help.
That said, Silverlight’s specifications are also open – Microsoft has been updating and fixing their msdn documentation (which had been incomplete when Moonlight started).
Unlike Adobe’s original specifications, Microsoft’s Silverlight specifications do not restrict you from implementing a player based on them.
Then why is the Moonlight team being held to this responsibility when Adobe isn’t?
Ooops, so you actually are admitting to a double standard.
Really, where do they encourage people to implement Flash on other platforms?
People have been doing it with Gnash, yes, but that’s not because Adobe have been encouraging it.
They opened the specs because they had to in order to stay relevant. They didn’t do it out of the goodness of their hearts.
You mean sorta like you can’t expect the Moonlight team to do everyone’s work for them?
The difference between Adobe and the Moonlight team is that at least the Moonlight team is willing to do the work, they just need time.
Yes, kudos to them for caving to market pressure.
I notice that you told people that if they wanted Flash for their unsupported platform, to download Gnash, and then to port it to their platform.
What is the difference between that and someone porting Moonlight to said platform?
That’s where the double standard comment came from above, and you failed miserably to address it.
Sigh!
http://www.adobe.com/licensing/developer/
“Flash Player Developer SDKs
Adobe provides Software Development Kits (SDKs) for integrating related technology into third-party software products and systems. These SDKs are freely available via our licensing program.”
http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/04/30/Adobe-opening-up-Flash_1….
“Companies partnering with Adobe on Open Screen Project include ARM, Intel, Motorola, NBC, Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, MTV, Qualcomm and Sony Ericsson.
Adobe will remove license restrictions from use of the SWF specification, which is the file format for the Flash Player, as well as for FLV/F4V specifications for streaming Flash content. “Anyone can now read this and make use of this in any way they like,” said McAllister. “Adobe is no longer going to get in the way,” he added. For example, developers can now use the specification to embed Flash playback capabilities in other applications. Adobe will publish documentation on how to enable the porting of the existing Flash Player onto other devices or applications. ”
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39408915,00.htm
“Adobe is aiming for greater use of its Flash Player multimedia web software within mobile and other non-PC devices by launching its Open Screen Project — an industry alliance it hopes will garner the support of large vendors in the embedded multimedia space.
According to Adobe, Flash is already installed on 98 percent of all internet-enabled desktop PCs worldwide. The company said that removing licensing fees for embedding Flash on devices will drive the move to greater adoption in mobile and other consumer areas such as television. As such, the company will make the next major releases of Flash and the Adobe AIR runtime for devices available on a free-of-charge basis. This means that any handset maker will be able to run Flash or AIR on their device free of charge.”
http://www.techtree.com/India/News/Adobe_Drives_Open_Screen_Project…
“Adobe Systems has announced a project dedicated to driving Web and video experiences live and on-demand across televisions, computers, mobiles, and consumer electronics. The “Open Screen Project”, as it is called, is aimed at using Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR to remove barriers for developers and designers as they publish content and applications across desktops and devices. Towards this, Adobe has also announced a royalty-free license of its next major release of Adobe Flash Player.”
http://www.adobe.com/openscreenproject/
“The Open Screen Project is dedicated to driving consistent rich Internet experiences across televisions, personal computers, mobile devices, and consumer electronics. The Open Screen Project is supported by technology leaders, including Adobe, ARM, Chunghwa Telecom, Cisco, Intel, LG Electronics Inc., Marvell, Motorola, Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, Qualcomm, Samsung Electronics Co., Sony Ericsson, Toshiba and Verizon Wireless, and leading content providers, including BBC, MTV Networks, and NBC Universal, who want to deliver rich Web and video experiences, live and on-demand across a variety of devices.”
“The Open Screen Project is working to enable a consistent runtime environment – taking advantage of Adobe® Flash® Player and, in the future, Adobe AIRâ„¢ — that will remove barriers for developers and designers as they publish content and applications across desktops and consumer devices, including phones, mobile internet devices (MIDs), and set top boxes. The Open Screen Project will address potential technology fragmentation by allowing the runtime technology to be updated seamlessly over the air on mobile devices. The consistent runtime environment will provide optimal performance across a variety of operating systems and devices, and ultimately provide the best experience to consumers.
Specifically, this work will include:
* Removing restrictions on use of the SWF and FLV/F4V specifications
* Publishing the device porting layer APIs for Adobe Flash Player
* Publishing the Adobe Flash Cast protocol and the AMF protocol for robust data services
* Removing licensing fees – making next major releases of Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR for devices free”
As for this bit:
Binary codecs.
Hidden parts of specifications.
Hidden parts of the API.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonlight_%28runtime%29
(refer to text following the heading “Microsoft support”)
Haven’t you read the thread?
“That’s where the double standard comment came from above, and you failed miserably to address it.”
Pffft. Try again. So far, you are not even close to a point.
Also, jstedfast posted this:
Actually, jstedfast, given the above, I think it is you who needs to check what they are claiming.
Edited 2008-05-17 17:15 UTC
As someone who has Flex applications in production and has looked at code examples of silverfish, I gotta tell you moonlight could come with free pixie dust and I wouldn’t use it. Way too much code required to get a simple application up and running and underneath it seems to depend on DLLs. Remember those? Remember “DLL Hell”? Been there, done that and I’m too fat to fit in the t-shirt anymore. So when OSS people talk about projects like mono and moonlight, I think, that’s nice but why bother? If someone really wants to use those products aren’t they most likely going to be using them on Windows? True I started using the free Linux SDK before I moved to Flex Builder on windows, but if Adobe ever offers a complete version of the IDE on Linux, I’ll be at the head of the line with my platinum card in hand.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=2445
“That’s Mono’s purpose, not to produce competitors but lead ponies. Moonlight isn’t a Silverlight competitor. It’s a companion program. If you have a Linux machine, it will let you run Silverlight files. Maybe. Someday. Sort of. Why don’t you just get a Windows box?
And here’s the point. You don’t build a community around a program like Moonlight, any more than you go to the betting window and bet a lead pony. The source may be open, but to say such a program is open source is like calling a lead pony a thoroughbred.”
Pretty much spot on, I would say.
Oh … Moonlight isn’t really open source … binary codecs, remember? A vital bit (without which the whole kit & kaboodle is useless) is dependent on Microsoft considering you to not be a competitive threat, and then condescending to give you a binary blob codec.