Comments on: Silverlight on Linux? We're in, says Mono founder

The Mono open-source project plans to create a version of Silverlight that will run on Linux, says Miguel de Icaza, the head of the project.

[rbanffy]

I just love...

...when Microsoft controls the requirements of an open source project... They can make the developers run in circles and enter dead-ends as they please.

As an added benefit, this will help Microsoft in its attempts to create another de-facto standard in the market.

And not to end on this, it should also fuel Ballmer's FUD about Microsoft patents that many free/open-source projects allegedly infringe.

Way to go...

[mr. cynical]

Free for everyone

That's right. All software should be free and all software companies should be non-profit. Any company that tries to make money should be banished from the planet.

/sarcasm off

[jatos]

If they do...

It would be a very good move if it worked on Linux, for obvious reasons.

[ethana2]

What _I_ like is the idea of

Adobe's proprietary flash "standard" getting mowed over like a... I'll spare you the vivid images.

But I'm glad to see another proprietary standard die. It's high time it did. We know it's given our poor devs over at gnash enough trouble.

[KRowe_]

Umm...hate to burst your bunnle

Flash getting replaced by Silverlight is just one proprietary software replacing another. BTW, I wouldn't put flash out of the game yet either. Nearly every commercial website on the planet uses some kind of flash banner it will be a long time before A) Silverlight is actually BETTER than flash B) Flash devs learn Silverlight C) Flash is actually replaced by Silverlight on most sites (which may never happen; still way too early to tell).

Personally, as a professional web developer, I wouldn't even consider using something like Silverlight for any serious work until it gets somewhere near the market penetration as flash currently has. Don't forget, even today, there are still plenty of Win 9x machines out there which will not run Silverlight. Linux, BSS, Solaris, Unix all run flash already as well (not to mention PDAs, Cellphones, etc..) so until Silverlight is actually something that that ~8% of the market which doesn't use Windows or Mac. Microsoft likes to claim that Silverlight is cross-platform compatible but the truth is it is only compatible with Win XP, Vista and Mac running on a standard x86 or PPC (with plenty of power).

Heres a full list of what it works on:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Silverlight#Compatibility

Even if everything goes as MS plans; I wouldn't expect to see it in common use for at least 3-5 more years.

But the WPF big brother to silver light is a whole different ball of wax. Since it is meant to be integrated into applications. For applications it isn't nearly as important that they be x-platform compatible. In fact, I can see WPF being the Windows equivalent to Karbon for KDE (which just happens to be one of the coolest things to come to a desktop GUI since the taskbar, IMHO). If Microsoft keeps it up they might just have a desktop as cool as KDE is now in 4-5 years. :)