01.10.10
Locked Out of Mono Blogs, by Silverlight
Summary: Mono blogs that require Mono (and Moonlight) for their content to be viewed – is this the future?
THE Mono club probably enjoys a share of privacy because the outside world is not a fan of Mono (neither users nor developers). Critics of Mono will probably be further obstructed by blog content not accessible for those without Silverlight (or Mono and Moonlight). Check this one out for example. A page on “open source” says the visitor should “Install Microsoft Silverlight”.
Can the Mono proponents not realise that they turn the World Wide Web into the Microsoft Web? Have they learned nothing from ActiveX or even DirectX?
“DirectX only exists in order to keep new games from reaching your platform and to move graphics off your platform,” told us a reader last night. “The only way you can fight back is to support applications that use OpenGL.”
“Continue using strong, reliable, open source languages like Java, Python, C++ and abandon these ‘experiments’ with Mono.”
–Anonymous readerHe continues: “Hmm. Now that puts into a very new light the maneuvers by the Mono crowd to remove the essential graphics tool, GIMP, out of the base distro for Ubuntu 10.04, Lucid Lynx. You have a push to inject defective, Microsoft-owned softare into the distro, and a push to remove working graphics from the distro. What’ll happen next? A push to inject a MS Mono-based, DirectX-using flop like MS Paint.Net?
“Put Gimp back into the distro. Continue using the standard OpenGL instead of lower quality, proprietary DirectX. Continue using strong, reliable, open source languages like Java, Python, C++ and abandon these ‘experiments’ with Mono.
“Jono’s experiment to allow Microsofters into the Ubuntu project may have been big hearted, but it was also foolish and ruins the usefulness of the finished product Ubuntu.”
Meanwhile, we also find that Novell asks customers to get “ready for Windows 7″ (Vista 7) and licences are being changed. Marcel Hilzinger reports:
License Change at Novell Adds Confusion
The recent mail from Novell titled “Upcoming maintenance requirement to access patches and service packs for select Novell products” only adds confusion for Linux customers. As it turns out, nothing much has changed.
Novell is probably a lost company as managers are fleeing and losses exceed $200,000,000 for the past year alone. Other GNU/Linux vendors, such as Canonical, should not be led to repeating Novell's mistake. █
your_friend said,
January 10, 2010 at 4:34 pm
Wow, that’s funny. Microsoft has always intended Silverlight to be a general document replacement for html and pdf and other media. They once said they would base their website on Silverlight but I don’t think they have been dumb enough to lock people out of it yet. Is mono that far ahead of the Microsoft crowd? Next thing you know, they will be running IIS on Windows, despite the terrible performance and security.
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 10, 2010 at 8:07 pm
Probably XPS actually.
your_friend Reply:
January 10th, 2010 at 11:59 pm
I was thinking of this, which I don’t think went anywhere. I can point newer versions of free browsers at http://www.microsoft.com and see the quick response that lots of gnu/linux caching money gives them. There’s strong irony to mono outdoing Microsoft in promoting Silverlight as a flash/web interface replacement.
Robotron 2084 said,
January 11, 2010 at 1:04 am
A reader gives us his insight on Direct X, but why should we listen? Who is this person? Are they an authority on APIs, programming, or Microsoft? A game developer? Anybody special at all? Are they fair, unbiased, and objective?
His credentials may be lacking, but at least he’s saying something Roy likes to hear. After all, isn’t that what’s really important? Quoth the reader, “DirectX only exists in order to keep new games from reaching your platform and to move graphics off your platform.” Ouch, sounds bad. But is it true?
No, not at all. DirectX actually exists to make it easier for developers to create applications for Windows using a unified API. Games in particular. Gone are the old days when programs had to be configured to directly access the sound card and only certain 3D cards were supported by some applications. As usual, many forget that DirectX includes not just 3D graphics, but 2D, sound, input, and networking. The whole nine. Microsoft wanted to make it easier to create games for Windows. They did just that.
DirectX was introduced in 1995 and has been in continual development ever since. Where was the open source solution? SDL, the closest equivalent, wasn’t released until 3 years later. Too little, too late, too bad. What to do when the “open standard” isn’t the leader? Around these parts it’s pretty clear. Just remember “SDL”. Slander, Defame, and Lie.
saulgoode said,
January 11, 2010 at 2:41 am
Microsoft’s implementation of DirectX was predated by OpenGL; and MS initially partnered with Silicon Graphics to standardize around it — in yet another episode amongst a litany wherein MS collaborated with “partners” developing standards, only to internally develop, and then deploy their own competing implementation.
Of course, that was the Old Microsoft; nowadays MS always plays fair with their partners or would never attempt to undermine standards.