MS Silverlight a Step Back For Linux Users

mattb0611 writes "Just as it seemed that Linux users (especially 64-bit users) would finally be able to enjoy streaming content with a minimum of hassle, Microsoft's new Silverlight software promises to throw a monkey wrench in the works — as they have yet to suggest any sort of Linux platform support."

Surprise, surprise!

[Mostly a lurker]

Microsoft does not act to make desktop Linux more attractive.

Re:Surprise, surprise!

[pete.com]

Linux does not act to make desktop Linux more attractive

Re:Surprise, surprise!

[Anonymous Coward]

flamebait moderated improperly will gaurantee a flamewar.

Re:

[Guuge]

To be fair, I don't think anyone expects an operating system to automatically generate new features.

Re:Surprise, surprise!

[eno2001]

Interesting that... As I'm using it on the desktop on every machine I own (all 15 of them). I use it as a desktop at work. AND I use it in the server room too. The only people who say Linux isn't ready for the desktop, are people who themselves aren't ready for the desktop. ;P

Don't worry

[porkThreeWays]

I give Google a week before they buy another technology to snuff silver surfer (or whatever it's called) out.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is, do the people who encode their streaming content with sliverlight, know that others will not be able to decode it unless they are using the sliverlight, and consequently that their data is locked in a format that can only be used if they pay their MS tax?

Re:

[1lus10n]

No. On top of that asinine suggestion you (much like the ass who posted the article) fail to realize that microsoft only needs to be open (open != open source, a published spec or api would suffice) and standard in order for things like this to gain acceptance. As it stands someone will reverse engineer this and we will have an open source version shortly (far before anything of note uses it).

Aw, come on

[lukas84]

It supports BOTH platforms. Windows AND Mac. How much better can it get?

Re:

[kripkenstein]

It supports BOTH platforms. Windows AND Mac. How much better can it get?

;) Indeed.

This got me to thinking, though - they support Mac. Perhaps that could be leveraged into Linux support somehow? I mean, Macs have a BSD-like basis, and a neat set of well-documented Mac APIs on top of it (Cocoa, etc.). How hard would it be to take a Silverlight runtime and write a 'wrapper' (an emulation layer, perhaps like WINE but on a much smaller scale) to get it to work on Linux?

Something tells me the problems mig

Re:Aw, come on

[Anonymous Coward]

This got me to thinking, though - they support Mac. Perhaps that could be leveraged into Linux support somehow? I mean, Macs have a BSD-like basis, and a neat set of well-documented Mac APIs on top of it (Cocoa, etc.). How hard would it be to take a Silverlight runtime and write a 'wrapper' (an emulation layer, perhaps like WINE but on a much smaller scale) to get it to work on Linux?

Very, very hard. Forget the smaller scale than WINE - you're going to need large parts of the MacOS video infrastructure (CoreVideo, Quartz, likely QuickTime). If the mac client is not written in Cocoa, you'll need large parts of Carbon. (If it is in Cocoa, you could use GNUstep as a basis and avoid some work). You'ld be better off trying your luck with running the Windows version of Silverlight using WINE.

MacOS's BSD-like basis (and X11 support) means it is usually fairly simple to port Unix applications to MacOS (often just a recompile); the other direction is a lot more difficult.

Re:Aw, come on

[markdavis]

MacOS's BSD-like basis (and X11 support) means it is usually fairly simple to port Unix applications to MacOS (often just a recompile); the other direction is a lot more difficult.

To that I would say: That is probably the #1 reason Apple chose to shun/reject X and use their own, proprietary GUI.

As Compiz/Beryl now show, X (X11, of course) is quite capable of doing anything that Apple's GUI can do. Apple could have used X in MacOS 10 by adding/extending the 3D support, adding X extensions, and developing an Appley toolkit and window manager (they had to do that ANYWAY for their own propietary stuff). But if Apple HAD chosen to use X, then they would have made it FAR too easy for companies to port Apple MacOS software to Linux. Instead, they have an Xserver for the purpose of running non-native (read: all the GNU/BSD/Linux/Native Unix GUI) stuff in addition to their own apps.

Many people have to wake up and realize that Apple has very little altruism... they have no desire to have competition from Linux any more that Microsoft does. Apple is quite happy to take apps/technology/whatever from BSD, GNU, X, even Linux... but it unfortunately doesn't work the other way around.

Re:Aw, come on

[Anonymous Coward]

MS has a bad habit of dropping cross platform support for their products:
1) IE for the mac
2) WMP for the mac
3) Degraded MS Office functionality in Office 12 (scripting support for the mac).

They did announce that there might be support for Linux. If there is it won't last.
Step 1: Create cross platform product
Step 2: Get everyone to use cross platform product
Step 3: Drop support for every product that doesn't run Windows
Step 4: Profit (get customers to switch back to Windows)

Re:

[demon]

Which was just IE for Windows built against a (huge, fat, slovenly) Win32 API compat library for Solaris. Why anyone would want to run it (with its reputation as a system crashing app) is beyond me. :)

Re:Aw, come on

[Bert64]

They shouldnt, but they should support open standards so that other people are able to support other platforms themselves.
As it stands, they keep things proprietary and don't support any platforms other than their own, in an effort to force people to use their other products.

Re:

[mackyrae]

I'm confused. Did you just say Linux should support other platforms? Are suggesting yanking the NT kernel out of Windows and putting the Linux kernel in its place? If you mean architectures, Linux already supports a whole ton of them, while OSX supports 2 (PPC & x86) and Windows supports 1 (x86) or maybe 2 if the PDAs have a different processor. The most sense I can make out of what you said is that maybe you're confusing Linux with Free Software in general. If THAT's the case, then you should look

Re:

[illeism]

It supports BOTH platforms. Windows AND Mac

I am so watching the Blues Brothers tonight (the good one with John Belushi)

Re:Aw, come on

[Fujisawa Sensei]

Shouldn't that be BOTH platforms: Vista and XP?

Re:

[asninn]

"Oh, we got both kinds. We got country *and* western." [wikipedia.org]. :)

News?

[solevita]

Is anyone surprised by this? After all, a few stories down from this on the front page is news of the Microsoft Firefox plugin [slashdot.org] that works "only on Vista and XP". Who would have ever imagined that this would be any different?

Re:

[solevita]

Ignore my previous comment, I see what this is all about now. Summary should be renamed to "Submitter pushes traffic to own site, ad revenue follows".

just as i was being bashed by people in the other

[unity100]

thread about microsoft's development tools.

"one needs to 'experience' new products before drawing them off the list" they said.

"this is anti ms rant" they said.

and i said "ms has a bad track record when it comes to hidden motives and reliability".

and voila, now this.

Whatever - Flamebait Story

[N8F8]

I'm as much a Linux fan as the next guy but I HATE when I see this crap where MS is supposed to wipe the penguin's ass. Time for hte Open Source folks to innovate or get out of the way. Adobe(Macromedia) Flash has been around for a LONG time and I have yet to see anyone attempt to come up with a serious Open Source alternative.

Re:Whatever - Flamebait Story

[Anonymous Coward]

While I agree with the gist of your argument, creating an open source replacement for an existing proprietary software application is not innovation, it's imitation. If the imitation is better than the original, you could call it refinement.

Re:Whatever - Flamebait Story

[Realistic_Dragon]

That is highly unrealistic. The biggest reason is that as soon as Microsoft pushes Starlight as a 'critical update' (as they did for IE 7) its market share will take a massive jump to over 60%. The best Linux/OSS could manage in an initial stage would be 10% and that is a WILDLY OPTIMISTIC estimate.

If I were a media manager, considering the current penetration of Flash, I might think about targeting a platform with a 60% share in addition to Flash, 10% would be extremely unlikely. So, a new OSS rich media format wouldn't work not because of the player but because of the content producers.

Re:

[N8F8]

Or look at it from MS's perspective. Flash on one side, Google Office on another side and XUL in FF 3.0 on another. Either add their own version of Browser-As-Platform or they sit back and lose the market.

Re:

[Just Some Guy]

The best Linux/OSS could manage in an initial stage would be 10% and that is a WILDLY OPTIMISTIC estimate.

Know who I want to see enter the fray? Apple. I could easily imagine them releasing a slick little web plugin that's open source and well-hyped. After all, whether you like them or not, nobody makes mundane things seem sexy and must-have like Apple. I bet they could get much higher market penetration than 10%, especially if they talked the Firefox team into including it by default.

Re:

[oyenstikker]

You'd be more likely to see it from Sun or IBM. Apple writes software to push their own hardware.

Re:

[Oktober Sunset]

The don't even need to make a new thingy, they could just make it part of the quicktime plugin.

Re:Whatever - Flamebait Story

[mormop]

"That is highly unrealistic. The biggest reason is that as soon as Microsoft pushes Starlight as a 'critical update' (as they did for IE 7) its market share will take a massive jump to over 60%. The best Linux/OSS could manage in an initial stage would be 10% and that is a WILDLY OPTIMISTIC estimate."

Sounds like using an existing monopoly to leverage your way into another market to me. Can't wait to see what the EU does with this one.

Re:

[demon]

Try to fine Microsoft, then cue the US government complaining to them about how un-capitalistic and unfair it is to restrain the business of a fine corporate citizen like Microsoft. I think we all know where that's going.

Re:Whatever - Flamebait Story

[alexhs]

Wow, a copy of an OS News flame post [osnews.com] :) (same team of astroturfers ?)

Seriously, there is none so deaf as he who will not hear.

What about all these fine standards made available by the W3C [w3.org] ? SMIL [w3.org] maybe ?

Wait, nobody uses it because MSIE, used by 80% of people, doesn't implement it. Who's at fault ?
From the Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], implementation have been made mainly for handheld and mobile devices... where MSIE doesn't rule.

Re:

[N8F8]

No, actually I was trying to make the same point to another commenter. In this case the person was implying that the W3C standard was a valid alternative that MS could have chosen to adopt instead.

Re:

[morgan_greywolf]

Actually, I've been batting around ideas lately for a cross-platform, independent, free/open source format and browser plugins (not necessarily compatible with anything like Flash or Sliverlick) for video and other interactive media, with support for open standards like Theora-based video, Vorbis-based sound, SVG-based graphics, JavaScript, XML and even GTK. The idea is to come up with something that allows Web developers to do fancy things with video and interactive media that hasn't been done before -- f

Re:

[N8F8]

Actually, I don't believe there is much that would prevent someone from writing an extension to Mono that supports Silverlight (WPF/E) applications. Silverlight is basically XAML + C# running as a browser add-in.

Re:

[N8F8]

Silverlight is based on C# (a reduced subset) which is a public standard that is already being implemented for Linux in the Mono project and the DotGNU project. It's a matter of effort, little else. And you same arguments hold true when you turn this on it;s head and say that Firefox 3.0 features for building XUL applications will make it hard for IE users and developers.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem isn't the .NET framework aspects of Silverlight. The Linux community could develop a compatible implementation, and you're absolutely right that the burden is on them to do so. The problem is the VC1 video CODEC, which is encumbered by many patents. The Linux community can certainly come up with their own VC1 implementation, but anybody who distributes it is going to be open to a lawsuit.

Re:

[N8F8]

It's up to content producers to decide what video codec they use. MPEG-4 is a valid alternative and the market seems to lean toward non-proprietary media codes.

Re:

[ThaReetLad]

There is already an OSS VC1 implementation, and you're free to use it in any country that does not allow software patents. You can hardly blame Microsoft when they have an obligation to their shareholders to take advantage of any opportunity that the law allows. If it's anyone's fault, its the fault of those who elect governments that allow software patents.

Re:

[Timesprout]

No its a frequent refrain round here about how badly Flash sucks, all the smart people have it disabled, cant be arsed looking at sites which require it, etc. MS start to develop a competing technology and suddenly it's the end of the web? Get real.

Re:

[Zonk (troll)]

And unless IE supports it out of the box (like Flash and soon Silverlight), most developers won't use it.

Re:

[TobascoKid]

how happy do you think Adobe would be with us engineering a tool to work with their precious format?

Well, there's gnash [gnu.org]

Unnecessary technology

[Werrismys]

We already have java for real stuff and flash for multimedia whatnot. They are ubiquitous and well understood, tested technologies. Silverwind is already dead.

Huh?

[aurelian]

Does that mean every technology or product released by anybody not supporting Linux is a 'step back for Linux'?

What did you expect?

[QuietLagoon]

they have yet to suggest any sort of Linux platform support.

That is one of the main goals behind Silverlight, to take control of the active media web content delivery mechanisms, so that Microsoft can provide support only for "friendly" operating systems.

Do you really think that Microsoft would do anything to promote the Linux platform on the desktop?

Re:

[LaughingCoder]

so that Microsoft can provide support only for "friendly" operating systems.

Oh please ... then why is Mac included? My take is, if Linux wasn't fragmented into dozens of viable distributions MS would have supported Linux as well.

Re:

[ajs318]

The thing is, it shouldn't matter which Linux distribution you're using -- or, for that matter, if you're using Solaris, one of the BSDs or even -- the ultimate exercise in teaching a gerbil to bark -- Cygwin. When you type ./configure, the magic pixies should sort everything out for you.

As long as the OS conforms (more or less) to the "Portable Operating Systems Interface (eXtended)" specification and includes an ANSI C compiler (with or without the GCC extensions, which are in themselves almost a de

Re:

[mgblst]

Ha, you sure made me laugh coder boy.

Re:What did you expect?

[Waffle Iron]

then why is Mac included?

The Mac is Microsoft's antitrust insurance card. It only costs them ~5% lower market share to keep the government mostly off their backs. That's why MS bailed out Apple with a big cash transfusion and commitments for Mac versions of Office about 10 years ago.

Microsoft knows that with Apple's hardware lockin business model, there's little chance of their computer market share ever increasing by a significant amount, so this is a safe move for MS. Linux, OTOH, is a more dangerous unknown quantity. With an alien business model and dozens of companies involved with it, the ultimate impact on Microsoft's market share is unpredictable.

Of course

[dctoastman]

This is only a step back if people actually use Silverlight to develop content. And we all know Microsoft will, but unless they bundle it and make it the default with Visual Studio, then there probably won't be that large of an adoption.

Re:Of course

[Trigun]

Good going, ass. Why not give them a few more pointers?

Re:

[Nuffsaid]

Very true, and the outcome is not written yet. After one year, I don't see lots of Windows Media Photo [com.com] format images around. The same can't be said about Windows Media Video, unfortunately.

Alternativly...

[FrostedWheat]

The web community had yet to suggest any sort of Silverlight platform support.

Re:

[markjo]

Nope, no platform support at all. Well, except for maybe these guys.

From the press release:

Leading media companies and solution providers have announced support for Silverlight including Akamai Technologies, Brightcove, Eyeblaster, Limelight Networks, Major League Baseball, NaviSite Inc., Netflix, Pinnacle Systems Inc., Rhozet Corp., Skinkers, Sonic Solutions, Tarari Inc., Telestream Inc. and Winnov. All have indicated plans to deliver Silverlight-based experiences for their viewers and customers.

Give Them A Break ...

[WrongSizeGlass]

... they just finished the Media Player plugin for Firefox after toiling on it for years. They should have Linux support for Silverlight in ... let's see ... carry the one ... divide by zero ...

It's safe to say they will announce Silverlight for Linux at the next Mars landing.

Re:Give Them A Break ...

[vivaoporto]

Come on, this is Slashdot, speak adequately. It is safe to say they will announce Silverlight for Linux in time for the Duke Nukem Forever II teaser trailer.

.NET

[dhasenan]

It's based on .NET, so unless there are specific OS checks in the binaries, it should be possible to run the Firefox plugin with Mono (probably with modifications to Mono, since it doesn't have any .NET 3 support yet). And since there's a Mac version, we can be reasonably certain that things like UNIX-style paths are supported.

This is actually better for Linux users than MS's traditional behavior.

Re:

[Anon E. Muss]

The problem isn't .NET. The problem is the VC1 video CODEC, which is patented.

The solution

[mwvdlee]

The solution is; don't use it.

The problem is that many people will complain about this sort of tech, then use it anyway.

Re:The solution

[LarsWestergren]

The solution is; don't use it.

Amen. It's going to be a new DRM infested attempt to get a monopoly in the media distribution market anyway - why the heck are you people outraged that it probably won't come to your platform? I'd be happy if it came to as few as possible.

Why would MS support Linux?

[ChaoticCoyote]

It's an honest question: Why would Microsoft release software to enhance Linux?

Linux users do not pay for software; that's the nature of the beast. I've been running Linux full-time since the early 1.x versions, and I've never purchased a single piece of software for it. So I don't see what the incentive is for Microsoft to support Linux.

Much as I love Linux and free software, it is self-defeating and unrealistic to demand that Microsoft (and other companies) support Linux. Perhaps the much-vaunted free software community should produce its own solutions that are better then the closed-source competition? Instead of complaining about what other people do, take responsibility for your own needs and write the software you want.

Isn't free software up to the challenge?

Re:Why would MS support Linux?

[ausoleil]

Linux users do not pay for software; that's the nature of the beast.

Please, tell me how much the Flash plug-in for Internet Explorer costs. I forget.

I don't see what the incentive is for Microsoft to support Linux.

Another view is that they should support their paying customers who develop Silverlight content for their websites who may not give a hoot about Microsoft v. Linux and simply want the people viewing the sites they create to see all of their content no matter the OS platform they are using.

Of course, this could backfire on Microsoft too -- without all of the pertinent platforms supported, I won't migrate from Creative Studio to Microsoft products because I am not going to go to my customers and say that my preferred development platform is going to reduce their potential viewers.

Because it increases revenue ...

[bmcage]

Let's see, Microsoft as an OS company has no need to support Linux, they only need someinteroperability.

Microsoft as a company in the market to provide content streaming systems has a lot of reasons to support linux: serving content from linux machines which is cheaper for businesses, accessing as much people as possible, marketing as a multiplatform system, possible revenue of people licensing this for use in mobile phones/pda/... running linux, ... It would increase revenue for this specific bussines.

Re:Why would MS support Linux?

[mgiuca]

Why would Microsoft support Linux?

Hmm... I don't know. Five months ago they signed a deal with Novell in the interest of enhancing interoperability between Linux and Windows [microsoft.com]. Remember that?

Are you telling me that was all a sham??? :O

They are selling the server

[shis-ka-bob]

I can come up with two reasons they should provide user tools for Linux.

1. They make money by selling the new "Expression Studio" which sounds like Visual Studio for multimedia. They are giving the client away.
2. It would allow Microsoft to state that they have turned over a new leaf, which may help them to establish more good will. They are in a very high stakes game getting OOXML approved by the ISO, if they could use Silverlight to reduce fears of 'global domination' it might help get OOXML approved. That

Re:

[kosmosik]

Isn't free software up to the challenge?

We've done it already. By *we* I mean not only Free/Open Software Community but entire community that got together and works for better STANDARDS (like vendors, commitees and so on).

There are alternatives such as XUL (Firefox/Mozilla does it), SVG (Fx, Opera do it). For streaming media we have Ogg Theora and upcoming tag for HTML (Opera does it). All is here.

Problem with these alternatives it is not that they are technically worse or smth. - they are open (means litt

Re:

[CastrTroy]

I don't have a problem paying for software. However, I do have a problem paying too much for software. What is too much? Well, that's really a hard question, but it's basically defined by what I'm willing to pay. Take MS Office for example. It costs $CDN 180 for the "Home and Student" version and $CDN 497 for the "Standard" version. However, for my home needs, OpenOffice fulfills all my needs for $0. So why wouldn't I choose it? I really don't think that an office suite is worth $180, or even worse $5

Re:

[div_2n]

Linux users do not have to pay for software

There, I fixed your purposeful omission it for you.

take responsibility for your own needs and write the software you want.

Isn't free software up to the challenge?

Where [vorbis.com] have [osflash.org] you [mplayerhq.hu] been [firefox.com] for [ubuntu.com] the [winehq.com] past [kernel.org] twenty years [sourceforge.net]?

Re:

[LWATCDR]

Okay here is a chicken and egg for you.
What software for Linux can you buy?
I would buy Quicken for Linux tomorrow, I would buy TaxCut or TurboTax next year. My wife would buy Photoshop elements tomorrow she is already pretty good with GIMP but GIMP can not do everything that Elements can. And I bought XPlane which does have a Linux version included.
I don't buy much Windows software ether. I a few games but I would buy them for Linux in a heartbeat if I could.
I don't mind paying for software for Linux IF I

Re:

[NullProg]

Linux users do not pay for software;

Speak for yourself. I have several boxed versions of SuSE, RedHat, and Mandrake. I have purchased plenty of games over at http://www.tuxgames.com/ [tuxgames.com]. I could have downloaded everything for free. I choose to pay for it because I'm too busy/lazy to contribute.

The big difference between Linux and Windows is I don't have Linus searching my computer during updates to see if its Genuine

Enjoy,

Re:

[swillden]

Linux users do not pay for software; that's the nature of the beast. I've been running Linux full-time since the early 1.x versions, and I've never purchased a single piece of software for it.

First point: How is that relevant to software that MS is giving away for free?

Second point: Software I've purchased for Linux includes:

• Moneydance
• VMWare Workstation
• Codeweavers Crossover Office
• Bibble Labs BibblePro
• Mathematica
• Trolltech Qt SDK (well, my employer bought it)

And I'm sure there are others which I don't recall at the moment. Excluding Qt, which I didn't buy, and counting multiple versions of VMWare and Moneydance, I've spent over $2000 on Linux software. Am I unique? Apparently n

Sure it's cross platform compatable

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure it's cross platform compatable

It supports both XP and Vista!

Catch up

[pr0nbot]

Until open standards are the norm, Linux and the Open Source world will always be playing a game of catch-up as far as proprietary technologies are concerned. In many cases, we'll probably never see a functioning OSS alternative.

Unfortunately, I expect patents are a major barrier to the community developing its own standards independently of those with an interest in restricting technologies. Perhaps the best hope is the public sector, e.g. the BBC's Dirac codec.

Re:

[zappepcs]

Unfortunately, I expect patents are a major barrier to the community developing its own standards independently of those with an interest in restricting technologies. Perhaps the best hope is the public sector, e.g. the BBC's Dirac codec.

(emphasis mine)

Now that was an insight. Doesn't seem that many caught that. Why would anyone really want the latest DRM scheme in Linux?? I don't think that MS can force this down the collective throats of the entire Internet population. What becomes popular will be what can be used successfully. If pr0n content providers find that they don't have many users that use this latest from MS, it won't become very popular and will die out. If it only works in Vista it's already off to a bad start.

In other news..

[EveryNickIsTaken]

McDonald's causes great hassle for Burger King as they refuse to release the recipe for the Big Mac's secret sauce. Sadly, this will only be available at McDonald's for the time being. There are no plans for cross-restaurant release.

Re:

[TheThiefMaster]

I thought it was tomato ketchup, mayo and finely chopped pickle?

Re:

[danpsmith]

McDonald's causes great hassle for Burger King as they refuse to release the recipe for the Big Mac's secret sauce. Sadly, this will only be available at McDonald's for the time being. There are no plans for cross-restaurant release.

I call BS on this analogy, everyone knows that McDonald's "secret sauce" is just probably one part Russian dressing one part mayo or something. Burger King came out with a big mac imitator that tasted just like the Big Mac, but I don't even know if it's available anymore becau

Re:

[muftak]

Yugo have refused to release an engine that is compatible with Ferrari cars. Sadly everyone wanting the power of a Yugo engine will have to drive a Yugo car.

Isn't it obvious?

[GFree]

If it becomes too prevalent to avoid, just reverse-engineer the damn thing. Or wrap it in some WINE-doohickey or something, I dunno.

We've dealt with getting propriety stuff working in Linux, we can do it again.

Re:

[kosmosik]

> If it becomes too prevalent to avoid, just reverse-engineer the
> damn thing. Or wrap it in some WINE-doohickey or something, I
> dunno. We've dealt with getting propriety stuff working in Linux,
> we can do it again.

Such hacked (and probably illegal in some countries) method would probably work for geek systems in their parents basements. But who cares. Lack of support for such technologies (if f.e. Linux was lacking PDF support) effectively stops Linux adoption in companies and such. And for su

Excuse me

[also-rr]

I posted this exact same conspiracy theory [slashdot.org] yesterday! I should have posted it to an add laden blog so Slashdot would whore it for me ;).

Anyway, It's not just 64 bit platform users who are benefitting, the open source flash efforts are now working on PPC [slashdot.org] which makes a nice change. My old powerbook is now much more useful for web browsing than before.

Silverlight is a subset of XAML

[The Mysterious X]

XAML is part of the .NET framework...

So what is to stop mono adding support for it?

The opensource have reimplemented SMB, Flash (mostly), Java (almost). Hell they reimplemented unix in about a hundred different ways, so tell me again why this is a step back for linux?

The only way it could be a step back is if linux had a hard time keeping up with new technologies, is this really the case?

Re:

[The Mysterious X]

Yeah... Y'all know what I meant :)

Re:

[Zonk (troll)]

So what is to stop mono adding support for it?

Most likely Silverlight is patent infested. Microsoft certainly doesn't want another Samba.

"DOS ain't done 'til Lotus won't run!"

[redelm]

... what did you expect? Complaince with the spirit of court orders? MSFT won't even comply with the letter! And they're not shy of using their monopoly position to leverage other monopolies (highly illegal).

For inexplicable reasons, people persistantly think of MSFT as a benevolent technically-oriented company which is profitable because it serves the market and gives people what they want.

It is not and has never been. MSFT is a commercial marketing enterprise with considerable talents both as marketers and in contractual/legal arrangements. Their technical talents are very meagre. Most software they have bought from others or essentially contracted (even if inhouse).

They are also an adjudged monopolist (only the remedies were thrown out on appeal, _not_ the findings!) who have been entirely predatory "red-in-tooth-and-claw" and unfairly successful.

Why will people select this over flash?

[jonwil]

Flash has wider support (I think some phone makers even put Flash or a cut-down "Mobile Flash" on their phones) and its installed on many computers already. And, as we have seen with YouTube and other sites, Flash is already in wide use for streaming video and for so-called "interactive applications" (think of all the Flash games and such you see out there)

What makes this Microsoft thing (which has NO installed base at all) good enough that websites other than those who are joined at the hip to MS will swit

It's their new(ish) strategy

[unapersson]

1) Entrench the proprietry platforms and make sure Linux is always seen as an outsider. The Mac is fine as its part of the club.

2) Promote Windows as the place to be for open source software. So they can say Windows runs proprietry software and open source software. Hence the Windows & Mac plugins for Firefox create gaps between the capabilities of a piece of open source software on a proprietry platform and the same piece of software on an open platform.

Of course 2) could backfire by undermining some o

Attention Flashblock author

[Rik Sweeney]

I've got a new project for you...

In the end it's a business decision

[rmcd]

The critical issue will be the response of businesses who maintain web sites, not Microsoft. It will come down to dollars and cents for the business. If a web site is inaccessible to you because it's using a non-standard technology, complain about it. If there are enough complaints from the right customers, the businesses running the sites will change or microsoft will help the businesses reach linux users.

Perhaps the Novell deal will give Microsoft an incentive to support Linux.

Do you think OS X users are saved?

[Ilgaz]

People think when OS X plugin ships, it will always stay up to date and won't be abandoned when it really takes off. Here is what would happen

1)They release OS X plugin just to trick websites asking about the multiplatform and considerably larger userbase of Mac and get rid of OS lockdown

2) Apple doesn't stay at current OS version (of course) and at some point, plugin has problems even effecting the OS default installed browser.

3) They offload the plugin to some third party, third party knows how to code (b

Why Linux?

[E-Sabbath]

People who are dismissing Linux support for this seem to be missing a critical point. This is not about running the application on an Apache server. This is about viewing the streaming media in a web browser. That's what Microsoft is trying to sell, and that's what they're not delivering. If Microsoft wants people to buy their new product, compared to a standard like Flash, then they should make it as attractive as possible. As things stand, IT departments are going to have to verify and roll out a new plug

Overreacting.

[Jartan]

I'll be the first in line to call down MS for yet again trying to create a stupid proprietary format as a means of extending market share but surprisingly I don't think it matters this time. Ultimately google alone will decide which streaming format is the dominant one.

Sure there will be some sites that use whatever MS has and it'll be annoying but most users will have whatever google video and youtube use and thus most sites will use whatever google uses. I can't see google picking MS's streaming format so it will probably work out fine in the end. In fact such a move will only show that MS no longer has the ability to force things on the market in such a way.

had the word "solution" in it

[tomstdenis]

stopped reading once I hit the word "solution." it's a fucking product, or project. Not a solution. Solution is like x = 7, that's a solution. Some software does something is a product. Because frankly it's not really "solving" the problem, it's just addressing it. If it "solved" the problem it would work on any platform, any browser, etc...

Also who gives a flying shit anyways? There is more to this Internet thingy than watching annoying adverts that people splash on pages and/or youtube quality shit

Anything that isn't MPEG-4 is a step backward

[gig]

Even if you use a Microsoft or Real streaming server, the content is ultimately stored in QuickTime. MPEG-4 is the open standardization of the QuickTime file format, and using the standard H.264 video codec and AAC audio codec you can make a movie that plays everywhere. Not just on a personal computer, but also on iPod or PlayStation. This kind of movie is the successor to the DVD, whether you play it off a next-generation optical disc format such as Blu-Ray or not. The MPEG-4 container this movie is wrapped in is identical to the QuickTime file format and can hold any kind of media QuickTime can hold, including Flash and Java. So there is no question how you can include multimedia content in the media players of today and the future. These standards are years old.

The problem with Silverlight is if it only plays on a personal computer it is already obsolete. Even if it played on Windows, Mac and Linux personal computers, still no good. There are too many phones and iPods and various other devices that have the ability to play audio and video (not to mention TV's), and these devices all have H.264/AAC decoders in them. There is no room for multiple codecs and no general purpose CPU to decode them. These are DVD players which are data-storage agnostic.

People say why doesn't AppleTV let you watch YouTube in addition to streaming movie trailers from Apple.com? Because the AppleTV decodes H.264 video in its GPU and YouTube is not H.264. The CPU in the AppleTV is under clocked to stay cool, it would have to run all the time to decode YouTube and it would have to be 2-3x the speed also. YouTube is not iPod-ready, not handheld-ready, not living room -ready by any stretch. It's very PC-oriented.

If MS can't sell WMA then how can they sell Silverlight? It is foolish. Even if every iPod user didn't already have QuickTime on their Mac or PC it would be a really hard sell to content creators to be bothered with multimedia content that is personal computer only. There are two billion phones that all need to be replaced in the next two years and the iPhone is kicking off the true handheld Web by reading actual Web pages plus MPEG-4 audio video. It is way too late for you if you are talking about what format audio and video is going to be stored and streamed in. It is also way too late for MS to get a fair chance with content creators when their greatest contribution so far has been to fuck with QuickTime at every chance they get.

Re:

[jrumney]

img is deprecated, and certainly shouldn't be overridden to apply to video as well. Use an object tag instead:

<object data="foo.mp4" type="video/mp4" width="352" height="288"> Put alternative for old browsers and search engines here... </object>

I think you also need a commented out object tag with a classid specifying an appropriate ActiveX control for IE as well - at least to support IE6 and earlier, not sure if IE7 follows the standard now. There are special comments that IE treats as co

And this is news how?

[Qbertino]

WTF? Even with Adobemedia I have allways been extra sceptic about their supposed trueness to Linux and Open Source (I'm a full-scale professional Multimedia Designer with 7 years of Flash experience under my belt). Flash Player 9 seems to have done away with the glitches and hopefully Linux developement will be in line with other Plattforms from here on. After the next two iterations have passed and Linux is not lagging behind again by two years in the Adobe line of plugins then it will be safe to say that we have a true x-plattform multimedia RIA kit from Adobe. If not, any professional RIA developer worth his rates will be away from Flash again.
From a professional standpoint this MS Silverthingie isn't even worth mentioning - even if you are a MS user.
There's Flash, then a large gap, then Java, then another large gap and then come XUL, the Laszlo Generator and tons of Ajax Kits. Somewhere down further down the way you'll find Wild Tangent, Curl, Director and some other older plattorms, along with an abandoned Blender plugin codebase.
MS new PR stunt Multimedia tool isn't even on the radar of professionals. And it would take a complete instant 180 turn of MS policiy and 5 years of quality developement from MS for that to change. And we all know how likely that is. It's actually more likely that Java Multimedia will pick up, now that Java is GPLd.

Bottom line:
Silverlight is absolutely nothing more than the usual MS semi-vaporware combined with marketing bullshit as a toping. I don't expect it to get any more attention than Curl.

Don't worry about the government sites...

[StressGuy]

So far, for me Konqueror works just fine. Sometimes you have to tell it to identify as IE or Mozilla, but so far, it's always worked. Opera doesn't do too bad either.

Re:

[dhasenan]

More importantly, you'll only be able to use it with IIS, until Mono provides full support for .NET 3 and assuming that it can make up for any platform-specific code such as hard-coded paths in Windows format. So that locks out 60% of all web sites easily.

Still, I think Mono will become a more popular platform for web development. You can use MS's dev tools, which are pretty good, and then host your site on a stable, secure Apache server. And I haven't seen an open-source equivalent to ASP.NET, which would

Re:

[Zonk (troll)]

Still, I think Mono will become a more popular platform for web development.

And the minute it starts to hurt the monopoly, Microsoft will pull out some patents and start with lawsuits.

Re:Firefox support----?Huh?

[HappyHead]

That's easy - first they make the plugin so that people will say "Oh, it's supported everywhere! I'll use this new technology!" and then once everyone's using it, they steadily downgrade the quality of the plugin for the competition's browsers and OSes in future releases (bug fixes and security updates! Really!) until it only _really_ works in IE on Windows Vista. When people complain, they answer with "Well, that's what you get for using that free crap. You should use IE and Vista, it's a better browser and OS! That's why you're having problems."