08.18.09
Novell Fails with Moonlight
“Every line of code that is written to our standards is a small victory; every line of code that is written to any other standard, is a small defeat.”
–James Plamondon, Microsoft Technical Evangelist. From Exhibit 3096; Comes v. Microsoft litigation [PDF]
Summary: Moonlight is neither ready for reliable use, nor is it ready for non-Novell customers to safely use
MOONLIGHT is quite clearly a case of spreading Microsoft formats and Microsoft codecs, which are also riddled with Microsoft patents and are therefore not free. Fortunately, given the difficulties of running this software, it is unlikely to ever gain serious traction. Based on the latest experiences of SJVN, Moonlight is still messy. Earlier today he wrote:
Moonlight 2 arrives and falls flat on its face
[...]
Specifically, Novell claims that “The Moonlight 2 beta offers Linux users improved functionality compared to Moonlight 1, including support for adaptive streaming of video and audio playback. This feature allows for better streaming of multimedia content based on the quality of the user’s connections.”
Better? I don’t think so. It failed for me much more often than not.
It ought to be mentioned that SJVN is usually a proponent of Novell’s products.
There’s more right here in terms of reactions to Moonlight. “Thanks but no thanks Novell, Moonlight is something I’m sure I can do without,” writes MWC. It is relieving to know that SIlverlight is failing in terms of adoption [1, 2]. Hopefully it is a passing fad.
Joining the early coverage from pro-Microsoft reporters, we now find some coverage about the beta from the more agnostic news Web sites but only one from a Linux site, namely Phoronix.
Moonlight is beneficial to Microsoft. This amounts to some kind of an ActiveX 2.0 which advances Windows and MSIE. On that particular topic, one reader wrote to us this afternoon:
Here’s a good picture to paste in some articles, it’s been circulating since 2005 at the latest. It’s the apparent source of Microsoft new marketing campaign to distract the public from quality browsers like Opera, Firefox, Chrome and Safari:
Chrome
Safari
Firefox
Opera
KonquerorMSIE has to be at least 10 years behind Konqueror in design. MSIE is such an ongoing embarrassment and legal hassle, what reasons are there *not* to have it completely removed from the OS as the EU wishes and as the US tried to request? Oh, yeah. Lock-in. Probably the best way to get rid of MSIE is to upgrade the whole system straight to Ubuntu.
Hadn’t Opera had tabbed browsing for a decade before MSIE caught up? Hadn’t Firefox always beaten MSIE in speed?
Konqueror has been beating MSIE for over a decade in modularity, being largely a shell for KHTML and other components. They all beat MSIE in standards support. Even Safari has MSIE beat in cross-platform support.
In order to open up the Web, we share the responsibility of spreading standards-compliant Web browsers and the rejection of “binary/proprietary Web pages”, rendered with Microsoft Silverlight or the inferior Microsoft Moonlight. █
Will said,
August 18, 2009 at 9:41 pm
Here’s an interesting article to accompany this post:
“If Moonlight is so hot, why isn’t Novell using it?”
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/27061/1090/
Needs Sunlight said,
August 26, 2009 at 9:49 am
Moonlight is a wannabee copy of Flash. It’s weaker in every way except maybe vendor lock-in.
Flash is lame for animations and lame for movies. For movies, use Quicktime, MPEG, or even Ogg. SVG + Javascript can do any animation that Flash is used for.
Challenge: publish the definitive Web 2.0 master work, “Badger! Badger! Badger!” as SVG + Javascript. B3 is the alpha and omega of Web 2.0 and once the PHB’s see B3 in SVG + Javascript, they’ll want it in their own web 2.0.
Roy Schestowitz Reply:
August 26th, 2009 at 10:03 am
I wrote this post just before I read your comment. SVG is coming.