Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft's Latest: Want Olympics on Linux? Get Mono (and Pay 'Patent Tax')

"We’re disheartened because Microsoft helped W3C develop the very standards that they’ve failed to implement in their browser. We’re also dismayed to see Microsoft continue adding proprietary extensions to these standards when support for the essentials remains unfinished."

--George Olsen, Web Standards Project



Do you enjoy watching the Olympic games? Got Silverlight? No? Then you may be out of luck after Microsoft's partnership in the 2008 games.

Tuning In to Microsoft Silverlight for Olympic Gold



[...]

It's also serving notice that Microsoft wants to be one of the major "channels" for Internet television.


The main problem with this, as we have stressed many times before, is that only Novell customers receive so-called 'protection' for the use of Mono (and therefore Moonlight, which is incomplete anyway). This protection expires less than 5 years from now.

By accepting Silverlight on the Web, Linux users put themselves in a position where Microsoft can claim that every Linux user owes Microsoft money and even demand and receive that money. Are all Linux developers even aware of the fact that Microsoft already makes money from their own voluntary work? Complacency is very dangerous here.

Novell has a role in this because it supports Silverlight, just like it supports OOXML (and other things from Microsoft). If users accept this, then they accept an ambush. When OOXML and Silverlight dependency is increased, Microsoft's patent wrath will mount. Don't let Novell turn Linux into what Microsoft plans to extract money from.

Bad Silverlight

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