Novell's Mono team continues to improve its "Microsoft Silverlight on Linux" story, now with the release of Moonlight 1.0, an open-source implementation of Microsoft's Silverlight rich media technology for the Web, as CNET reports. It's a major upgrade to Moonlight and brings it closer to parity with Microsoft's Silverlight. Novell's Miguel de Icaza, the developer behind Mono and Moonlight, relied heavily on working in partnership with Microsoft to deliver the upgrade.
Therein lies both the promise and the peril of Moonlight. Well, one of them. For one thing, due to Microsoft-imposed restrictions, Moonlight still doesn't work with a great deal of the Silverlight content on the Web, a fact pointed out by Computerworld.
An even bigger problem, however, is the fact that Microsoft Silverlight is still far behind Adobe Flash in terms of market share. Microsoft, for its part, claims Silverlight is "not dead yet," but Adobe is probably right to stifle a yawn at its efforts to date. Flash has long worked with Linux because Adobe hasn't had the same anti-Linux fetish that has long plagued Microsoft's Jekyll-and-Hyde attempts to be both a platform company and an application company, with the former competing with Linux but the latter (should be) embracing it.
But the biggest problem is the patent encumbrance that comes with Microsoft-blessed Moonlight and Mono. As Mike Schroepfer, formerly the vice president of Engineering at Mozilla (and now serving that role for Facebook), pointed out at Mix'08 and reported by The Industry Standard:
During the discussion, de Icaza explained that while anyone who downloaded Moonlight from Novell was protected by the company's licensing of Silverlight codecs from Microsoft through the company's own cross-licensing agreement....Schroepfer...then raised the question that if he downloads and then distributes the code for Moonlight, would he get the patent protection?
"There is a patent covenant for anyone that downloads [Moonlight] from Novell," answered de Icaza, who then acknowledged that "as to extending the patents to third parties -- you have to talk to Microsoft."
This answer led Schroepfer to point out the inconsistency between having products that are called open source but are "patent-encumbered."
I don't fault Novell/de Icaza for this, but Microsoft can and must do better. If it actually cares about having Silverlight run on Linux through the Moonlight project - and, frankly, I don't think it does - then it should allow Novell to release Moonlight in a patent-unencumbered manner.
Microsoft's current policy puts Linux users in an uncomfortable position if they actually want to exercise their development rights under Moonlight. The only way to safely do so is under Microsoft's watchful eye/patent covenant.
Microsoft continues to struggle with how to interoperate with open source, but it's larger stumbling block is interoperating with the openness of the Web. Moonlight and the patent encumbrances thereto serve as a constant reminder that Microsoft really doesn't grok the Web, which is about freedom of access and open protocols.
Perhaps Microsoft should read more Lessig [PDF], and less Ballmer.
Follow me on Twitter at mjasay.
I'm closing up my quarter today (Not sure who said open source is easy, but.... :-), but wanted to highlight a few of the more interesting stories I read today.
- Despite my vain imaginings to the contrary, it turns out that Silicon Valley really is the center of the universe. Who knew? Well, except for you Silicon Valley smugsters? Actually, the real news in CNET's article is how much R&D is moving away from the Valley.
- Red Hat is revealed as the driving force behind The Simpsons, whose writer and co-producer (Joel Cohen) credits Red Hat Enterprise Linux by suggesting that "the volume and speed of material that was created for the movie could never have been done without that Red Hat-fueled system. Cohen also shows a true understanding of innovation by declaring his own inspiration comes from "shamelessly ripping off other people's ideas."
- TechCrunch's Erick Schonfeld takes a fascinating look at the growth of YouTube relative to Google, but questions its seeming inability to turn popularity into cash: "Either YouTube is unable to make money from a large portion of its user-generated video inventory....Or YouTube just hasn't turned on the money-gushing hose yet." (Sounds like an open-source quandary, no?)
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It's my end of quarter, and I can't blog at the volume that you deserve. Only seven posts today....I have failed you! :-)
There were a string of posts, however, that deserve to be noted, even if I lack the time to comment on them in detail. Here they are:
- Dana Blankenhorn has one of his best posts yet, this time comparing Novell to a "lead pony" in horse racing. I'm glad to see Novell doing well with some areas of its business, but I agree with Dana that I'd rather see Novell doing this as a real contender, rather than as Microsoft's sidekick (On Novell's Moonlight, Dana writes "...to say [Moonlight] is open source is like calling a lead pony a thoroughbred").
- Gordon Haff calls out the "natural" dynamics of markets that limit monopolies beyond a generation or two. In Microsoft's case, "shifting an entire product foundation is enormously challenging and past skill sets and ecosystem don't necessarily travel well from one generation to another." Bingo.
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Before you read this, you should read this. I regretted this post shortly after posting it.
I think Miguel de Icaza is an exceptional developer. He's also a fantastically effective community leader. And, though he's never displayed his best side to me, personally, I understand that he's a quality person that people like to be around.
For these reasons I can't help but wonder why he's squandering his talents on writing largely irrelevant code (Mono, Moonlight) that appeals to himself, Novell, Microsoft, and no one else.
It's not that Microsoft is a bad company. It's that Miguel could be doing so much more for the industry if he stopped cloning the Microsoft experience on Linux and instead drove forward the Linux/open source experience. Sam Varghese writes:
For a long time de Icaza, who is now on the staff of Novell, appears to have been trying to please the people at Redmond. First it was with Mono, his implementation of Microsoft's .NET development environment.
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I'm all for interoperability. But I have to wonder at Novell's and Microsoft's apparent definition of the term. Miguel de Icaza rightly took me to task for blanketing Novell with criticism yet, as was pointed out today, there is good reason for criticism of Moonlight/Silverlight:
To the extent that it requires Microsoft patent approval to be effective (and it does, by Miguel's own admission), it is shackled in its potential. Interoperability is to Microsoft what prostitution is to a pimp: a great source of control and income.
Jason Matusow (a great friend and Microsoft employee) crows about what a great example Moonlight is of Microsoft's interop work. But Jason, you have actually only succeeded in proving the point of Microsoft's critics: Microsoft can't seem to engage in interop except on its own, very closed terms. This isn't interoperability.
In other contexts, this is called extortion.
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