Light of Silverlight

Summary: Microsoft gives up on Silver Lie, but it stays around in one form or another because of Vista Phony 7 [sic] which depends on it. Bad design decisions continue to demonstrate the chain/domino effect in Microsoft's stack collapse.

"M

oon Lie" is a pet name of the Mono-based Moonlight, which endangers the Web as it puts a Microsoft dependency in it. What will be next for Moon Lie now that Microsoft drops Silver Lie for most practical purposes? Yes, Microsoft is calling a lot of it off because it failed badly, but the company starts spinning this as goodwill and commitment to web standards. Beware the PR and spin exercise, which amongst other things gets used to promote Internet Explorer 9 [1, 2, 3, 4].

It was not so long ago that Microsoft insiders spoke about the death of WPF, whose apparent death was bound to have a negative effect on Silver Lie [1, 2]. It appears as though we were right all along when claiming that Silver Lie was dying [1, 2, 3, 4]^*, at least based on this new report which says Silverlight is nearly dead for most purposes, so they redefine it in a way (rather than throw in the towel):

At Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC) this week, the future of Silverlight is one topic that has gotten short shrift. There have been no sessions about Silverlight 5 and only one mention of Silverlight in the kick-off keynote.

But there were plenty of mentions of HTML 5 and Microsoft’s commitment to that technology, not only in the next version of its Internet Explorer browser, but also as the glue “facilitating a level of independence and innovation between the back end and the front end” (as CEO Steve Ballmer said during an October 28 keynote address at the PDC).

There is a chain reaction here and it is one that we explained weeks ago. Microsoft's Vista Phony 7 [sic] may become the next "KIN" because the death of Silver Lie may mean end of Vista Phony 7 development; yes, with Silver Lie losing its main reason for R&D investments, Microsoft's mobile ambitions too are likely to suffer. Vista Phony 7 is dependent on it. Our reader Sternreise has just said: "better investigate status of moonlight as well (are they going to proceed with the implementation, etc)"; Our administrator Tracy has argued that "MS will never succeed in mobile. Apple/Google have them totally beat there.Windows as a platform is dying. They'll never recover from that"; Sternreise carries on by saying (in IRC): "well, ms dumping Iron* and drawing SL to their proprietary development alone tells something about Microsoft abandoning .net as "world domination" technology and focusing on keeping it as proprietary implementation tech... I guess it's good news for both MS and the rest of the world as well, i.e. MS can drive the technology according to their proprietary needs, instead of maintaining a pretense of being a "neutral" technology" (expect it to get more aggressive with software patents and lawsuits as it's the only way to possibly 'compete' now).

Glyn Moody, writing in Identi.ca, agrees that Silver Lie is going "gravewards, evidently" and Joab Jackson from IDG writes in Identi.ca that "Microsoft shifts Silverlight to being a Windows Phone development platform only"; he also links to Joe Wilcox' article that asks, "Why is Microsoft suddenly so hot for HTML5?"

Microsoft has quite aggressively touted HTML5 during PDC 2010, which wraps up today. It's seemingly inconsistent with Microsoft's revamped cloud strategy, which is very much about taking propriety software to the cloud. How then does Microsoft's platform-independent HTML5 approach reconcile with extending the proprietary Office-Windows-Windows Server applications stack into the cloud?

"Maybe because Silverblights sucks," is the reason our reader gnufreex gave for the failure of Silver Lie (in response to the above headline), but the huge blow to Vista Phony 7 [sic] is what we care about a lot more because Microsoft's future depends on adaptability as such. "Microsoft Giving Up On Silverlight, Joining HTML5 Party," says the headline from GigaOM which plays along with the spin that Microsoft shifts and drifts away from Silverlight because of HTML 5 and not due to its defeat in the face of Adobe Trash (Flash) ubiquity .

We now have further confirmation that Microsoft is giving up on its Silverlight rich Internet application platform. Bob Muglia, Microsoft’s president in charge of server and tools, told ZDNet that the company is “shifting away” from Silverlight as a cross-platform development framework, and pushing the HTML5 web standard instead.

Simon Phipps writes:

Very smart move (also covered at GigaOm) – Microsoft are trying to lead the race to the bottom with HTML 5, presumably in the hope of killing Adobe, rather than cascading money faster and faster into Silverlight in an attempt to fight the old way. They only place Silverlight is still strategic is on mobile, and honestly they probably realise HTML 5 is the future there too.

This suggests Microsoft are finally awakening to the power of community. Instead of trying to fight their competitors alone, they are teaming up with open standards – and increasingly open source – to achieve that effect. You can tell where they think they are strong – those are the places they are still fighting with communities and consequently about to lose their lead…

Ray Ozzie's departure [1, 2] could relate to this and some products like the Web version of Office were once envisioned as incorporating Silver Lie. All those puff piece about Ozzie's Azure (e.g. [1, 2]) bear no real substance and since Vista Phony 7 has only been money down the drain, new predictions of an "end" of today's Microsoft do make a lot of sense. Just watch this extensive list of dead Microsoft products. Silver Lie is candidate for addition now. ⬆ ____ ^* Months ago Techrights was cited by many sites as saying Silver Lie was nearly dead and we were attacked for showing early evidential proof.