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Microsoft seems very keen to make Silverlight ubiquitous

Story: Nine Months Later: Mono 2.6 and MonoDevelop 2.2

Total Replies: 6

Author	Content
tracyanne Dec 17, 2009 6:34 PM EDT	They have even gne so far as to extend the Patent covenent such that Moonlight can be used distributed, modified by distributors other than Novell http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reports/6932/1/ Quoting: The new patent covenant extension is only for Moonlight and does not extend to the full Mono project, which is Novell's implementation of Microsoft's .NET framework. Novell updated Mono to version 2.6 this week. As a result, the agreement covers only the subset of Mono that comes as a part of Moonlight. "This patent covenant only applies to Moonlight and the version of Mono that ships with Moonlight," Goldfarb said. Still, he said the agreement's structure provides a good deal of flexibility for Linux stakeholders. "Now whether Red Hat or Ubuntu want to include Moonlight ... they can include Moonlight in the paid or unpaid versions of their distributions," he said. Miguel De Icaza, Novell Moonlight's project leader, added that the new deal also extends beyond just the Moonlight application binaries but also enables the open source community to modify it as well. "They can take the source, do any patches they need to do to make sure it integrates with their system, and redistribute the binaries," De Icaza told InternetNews.com. "Anyone can take Moonlight and run it on any platform that they want and they can even modify it without Novell involvement and without the fear that Microsoft might not like that." Note: the new patent covenent only covers those parts of Mono that directly affect Moonlight.
Sander_Marechal Dec 17, 2009 8:17 PM EDT	Quoting:Note: the new patent covenent only covers those parts of Mono that directly affect Moonlight. Just to make things more complicated. Again. If MS were serious they would release any and all parents covering any aspect of .Net under something akin to OIN. I.e. make it usable and redistributable for anyone and anything as long as those who do so, do not file a patent suit. Anything less is just playing pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey.
hkwint Dec 17, 2009 8:42 PM EDT	If they were serious they'd deliver Silverlight for Linux themselves, I guess. This tells me they are a bit desperate that Silverlight is not picking up in the rate which they'd like. This could be because it's hard for them to use IE as a vehicle to force it on their own customers, and market share of FF surpasses that of IE in several countries.
tracyanne Dec 17, 2009 10:44 PM EDT	It really is game playing.
Steven_Rosenber Dec 17, 2009 10:51 PM EDT	I agree with hkwint - If MS is serious about Silverlight, they need to release the player for Linux directly. Not that I'm in favor of yet another closed video format, because I'm not. But some have said that Silverlight has prompted Adobe to cozy up to the open-source community that much more. I hope both Silverlight and Flash fade away as soon as possible. That said, I have done a bit of work with Silverlight, presenting a video feed on our Web site. It works OK in Windows, of course. I've heard that it's dodgy on Mac, especially with PowerPC, where I don't think it works much at all. I had Moonlight on my Ubuntu box for maybe 20 minutes before I deleted the entire thing; too broken to bother with (at least with the video I am running). I have no idea why the vendor I'm dealing with is using Silverlight instead of Flash. If I find out, I'll let y'all know.
tracyanne Dec 17, 2009 11:00 PM EDT	For media play Moonlight works grea on Linux in FF. As an application container it a bit of a flop. I've just finishged testing it with the Silverlight Media and applications on the http://www.ptonthenet.com website the company I work for built
mortenalver Dec 18, 2009 9:32 AM EDT	I recently had some trouble watching a show on the web-TV of the Norwegian national broadcaster. The system had worked earlier using Mplayer-plugin, but this time it wouldn't run. It's been on and off for years for Linux users. Howerver, I discovered that you could choose to use Silverlight instead of streaming Windows Media. I installed Moonlight and tried it again. Amazingly, it worked perfectly, and quality was good. They actually aim to support Linux users (as they should, since a couple of years ago they ran a documentary about how poor Mac/Linux support the other broadcasters in Norway had), so I believe they have tested their solution against Moonlight on Linux. They claim that in the longer term they will use H.264 and Flash.

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