Mono Coders Hack Linux Silverlight in 21 Days 409
Etrigoth writes "After the recent announcement of Silverlight by Microsoft at their Mix event in Vegas, Miguel de Icaza
galvanised his team of developers in the Mono group at Novell to create a Linux implementation, a so-called 'Moonlight'.
Remarkably, they achieved this in 21 Days.
Although they were first introduced to Silverlight at the Las Vegas Mix, de Icaza was invited by a representative of Microsoft France for a
10 minute demonstration at the Paris Re-Mix 07 keynote conference, should they have anything to show.
Joshua, a blogger for Microsoft has confirmed that the Mono team did not know anything about Silverlight 1.1 before its launch. Other members of this team have blogged about this incredible achievement, Moonlight hack-a-thon. It's worth noting from a developer perspective that Moonlight is not Mono and doesn't require Mono to work"
Joshua, a blogger for Microsoft has confirmed that the Mono team did not know anything about Silverlight 1.1 before its launch. Other members of this team have blogged about this incredible achievement, Moonlight hack-a-thon. It's worth noting from a developer perspective that Moonlight is not Mono and doesn't require Mono to work"
Why?! (Score:3, Insightful)
May I be the first... (Score:3, Insightful)
Gives an insight into what Open Source is capable of.
Y
Re:Wonderful (Score:3, Insightful)
As far as web software, adobe is the epitome of crap. MS takes 2nd place.
Re:And the novelty is... ? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Linux developers implement in two weeks the compatibility and usability features that Microsoft intentionally left out."
Re:Why?! (Score:1, Insightful)
swf is an open format so THAT obviously isn't the problem...
Re:And the novelty is... ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:May I be the first... (Score:4, Insightful)
Would Miguel's team not have been able to code this under a closed license? Was there significant public involvement that was critical to the project?
Also, what was accomplished? A 100% direct rip-off of a product already created and demonstrated by a closed-source development house? Impressive. Wow.
Re:ah, the free linux version of silverlight (Score:4, Insightful)
Cool, but ultimately pointless (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Cool, but ultimately pointless (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wonderful (Score:5, Insightful)
But that being said, Apple hasn't been bitchslapped or even investigated for the charges I read about from time to time, about early on how Jobs manufactured an iPod shortage to enrich Apple's margins. That kind of amazes me, because I'll read about that from time to time in articles that praise Jobs performance since he got back. I suspect that if that and the mandatory minimum pricing on the iPods isn't considered to be fodder for antitrust suits, I doubt that MS should be smacked for removing an insecure browser from the market. Even if it does harm the competition or consumer.
Re:Why?! (Score:5, Insightful)
From http://www.adobe.com/licensing/developer/ [adobe.com]
"This license does not permit the usage of the specification to create software which supports SWF file playback."
It's a bit like having a research library that permits you access to any book you want, as long as your paper doesn't cite one as a reference.
Re:Why?! (Score:4, Insightful)
But the problem with creating a FOSS version of Flash is that it's a matter of catch-up. With Silverlight, this team of coders is showing that they can keep up. Thus, instead of being behind in their implementation, they are showing that they can always deliver a feature-complete alternate (and FOSS) implementation.
Frankly I hope this displaces flash to some extent. Even if it gives MS's platform more exposure, it won't matter as long as there is also a feature-complete FOSS implementation. Creating marketplace competition is always good... and in this case we have competition to MS's Silverlight, and competition to Flash. This is good. I highly doubt that Microsoft expected or wanted this to happen. In fact, nothing could be worse for their longterm goals than for a FOSS equivalent to be as good (or maybe better?) than their implementation. Having a competing implementation, used by many people, will mean that they cannot "embrace and extend" and cannot lock people into their products. After all, if they try to change the Silverlight standard, who is to say whether the MS implementation or the FOSS implementation will become the defacto standard?
You Have to Put Silverlight in a Dominant Position (Score:3, Insightful)
Creating Moonlight assumes that there is going to be lots of web content made for Silverlight, and this assumes that Silverlight will be put in a fairly dominant position on the web in the not too distant future as a result. Silverlight is not a open web standard, nor is XAML, and its future development is always controlled by Microsoft.
I just don't think people think through what the ultimate aims, goals and endgames are for things like this regarding open source software.
Re:Why?! (Score:4, Insightful)
Congratulations (Score:4, Insightful)
But just preemptively want to explain why is the development timeframe difference between MS and Linux (because I see stupid uninformed posts coming, it's Slashdot after all).
What these guys did, is take Mono (for Linux), and make a standalone subset of it, Silverlight (for Linux). So there aren't huge surprises here.
On the Microsoft side of the story, it's different: they had to first sit down and figure out what the subset will be. Then they had to count the bytes (literally) of every feature they include, since for proper mainstream deployment, the plugin should be as small as possible (I won't be surprised if Moonlight is not something like twice the size of Silverlight or more).
Then they had to make it work on Mac, where they didn't have a port of
Re:May I be the first... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Wonderful (Score:5, Insightful)
I just watched the video. I saw nothing that Flash couldn't do, much less anything that Shockwave couldn't do.
The reason why Flash is popular isn't because you can create complicated applications with it. (You can, but nobody uses them.) The reason why it's popular is because it's small, fast, and has a very large, cross-platform installed base. Silverlight isn't any of those three.
Re:Wonderful (Score:5, Insightful)
Court: "Microsoft, you've been found guilty of anti-competitive and monopolistic practices. What do you have to say for yourself?"
Microsoft looks at the floor, hands in pockets, mumbles "Sorry...."
Court: "Well, don't let it happen again!"
Re:Wonderful (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wonderful (Score:5, Insightful)
And why did YouTube decide on Flash as their standard? Because Flash plugins were mature and reliable, worked well with all leading browsers and OS platforms, and even came pre-installed with many browser distros. Because it allowed them to avoid the game of "Select your poison: Windows Media, Real, or QuickTime?" that users at previous video sites had to play. Because tools for generating and publishing Flash content were not onerously expensive.
Is Silverlight any of these things yet?
Re:May I be the first... (Score:3, Insightful)
We already knew that Open Source devs are capable of cloning the work of others.
Re:Wonderful (Score:4, Insightful)
All they have to do is yank iexplore32 and Firefox wins overnight.
There, fixed that for you.
One has to wonder (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wonderful (Score:5, Insightful)
Miguel has not taken anything away from Linux, everything he's done has added to the choices we have. I would rather have an open-source implementation of Silverlight for Linux than have no implementation or a closed-source implementation. If you don't like Silverlight, don't install Moonlight, but don't presume to tell me if I should or should not use it.
If anything, Miguel has just proven that even if Microsoft keeps changing the API, the Mono team can keep up.
Re:Not good enough! (Score:5, Insightful)
The opcodes of the machine are documented on the standard ECMA 335.
The standard libaries and browser APIs are available from http://msdn2.microsoft.com/ [microsoft.com] a lot of the documentation is still under development for Silverlight 1.1 (1.0 is much more complete) so for a few things that are new in 1.1, you have to guess what they are, or look it up in the WPF docs (which is where stuff ultimately came from).
The format of the Silverlight compiled scripts is documented in ECMA 335 as well.
Re:Flash is Cross Platform? I beg to differ? (Score:3, Insightful)
Did you really just compare Adobe to Microsoft in terms of poor Linux support? If Silverlight becomes workable on Linux, it'll be because a group of hackers reverse-engineered and re-implemented it, not because MS gives a shit about Linux. If you're going to judge these techs by their third-party open-source implementations, then you should be talking about the several free flash players that are currently much more functional than Moonlight.
Re:The MS teams (Score:2, Insightful)
Silverlight? Moonlight? (Score:1, Insightful)
The developers of Moonlight make the same assumption. I see no explanation on the Moonlight developer web site.
From Microsoft: "Microsoft® Silverlight(TM) [silverlight.net] is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of
Most of that seems to be written by a marketing man who doesn't understand the product, but wants write about it anyway. What are "... the next generation of
What is "delivering
What kind of "experiences"? Does someone ring your doorbell, and when you answer it, pour water on your shoes?
How is Silverlight "fast"? Isn't the speed limited by the user's internet connection?
What does "on the Mac OS or Windows" mean? Does Microsoft intend to exclude Linux?
Re:Wonderful (Score:3, Insightful)
Flash videos are just incredibly annoying. Inevitably I just figure out the url for the flv file and download it so that it can be played with mplayer.
Video shouldn't require a plug-in to work. And if it does they could at least make it more widely available...
Re:Already better tools for Silverlight (Score:4, Insightful)
This is not supposed to be an "fulfill my unreasonable demands or else!1" flame, but really, Adobe has set a certain standard for interoperability and if Silverlight doesn't live up to that standard it's yet another Windows-only technology that no sane web developer will use because Flash does the same on more platforms. After all, ActiveX has done what Silverlight does now for quite a while, if the user was ready to accept the security issues.
(By the way, a codec developer who uses the term "video experience" to describe a container format/video codec? Microsoft's PR department must make some really good Kool-Aid!)