04.08.09
The Role of Mono and Moonlight Revisited
“I would love to see all open source innovation happen on top of Windows.”
–Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO
Yesterday we wrote about Tomboy being ported to C++ and analyses suggest that Mono is mostly advanced at the behest of Novell (and its ally, Microsoft).
It’s time certain pro-MONOpolists faced the fact that Mono only exists to serve Microsoft. Take away Novell employees’ contractual obligation to follow the company’s agenda, and suddenly Mono becomes redundant.
It is interesting to find that a company seeking to port from .NET has actually needed to liaise with Novell, according to this article.
Telerik has partnered with Novell to certify that its RadControls ASP.NET AJAX component suite supports the open-source Mono runtime environment, permitting developers to build .NET applications in a Linux environment.
The Novell connection can also be seen in the press release (see more here and here). Has Novell become some sort of a .NET PR department, whose aim is to spread .NET in GNU/Linux at the expense of better software? To bring .NET applications to GNU/Linux is to ask for legal trouble if the TomTom case is anything to go by. Microsoft is suing to ‘defend’ its so-called ‘innovations’ (usually ripoffs, e.g. of Java) despite promises not to sue. But first, it waits for it to spread.
This is not just a SUSE problem. Novell is spreading this problem to sibling distributions which do not enjoy the same limited ‘protection’ which Novell claims to have acquired from Microsoft. Yesterday we found this new video of a Ubuntu user putting Novell/Microsoft software on his/her computer. It’s called Moonlight and it mimics software which, much like music DRM, is dying anyway. A couple of days ago, explanation about the reasons for its failures were given by those who had rejected it after bad experiences.
The other major issue was that baseball considered Silverlight too unstable. There were some high-profile glitches, including last year’s opening day, which saw many MLB.com subscribers struggling to log in and others who were unable to watch games. The malfunctions lasted several days.
For a lot of Silverlight deployments, Microsoft is practically paying (bribing). That’s just how the company ‘competes’; it makes the illusion of success and hopes this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Novell helps it. █
SteveO said,
April 8, 2009 at 8:12 am
Microsoft Implements Telerik Controls in MSDN, TechNet and CodePlex ..
http://www.telerik.com/company/press-center/company-news/microsoft-implements-telerik-controls-in-msdn-technet-and-codeplex.aspx
“Telerik Announces Support for their ASP.NET controls on Mono!”
pollute engulf and devour …
Sense Hofstede said,
April 10, 2009 at 4:00 am
Even though SchoolMaster (.nl) says that their software is — thanks to the great Silverlight — compatible with all (is BSD supported by Moonlight?) operating systems, it uses Silverlight 2.0.
If my school direction gets its way, against the advice of some teachers who know what they’re talking about, but following the advice of the well-informed and experienced salesperson from SchoolMaster, I won’t be able to use the website of our school anymore, because the website, named after the BMW M5 for its speed — don’t make me laugh — isn’t supported by Moonlight.
Fortunately the public broadcasting company, subsidized by tax payers money, does support Silverlight 1…
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
April 10th, 2009 at 4:06 am
This is part of Microsoft’s plan, which is to ensure the Web is not a commodity. Lots of antitrust exhibits show how Microsoft does this systematically.