Feel the light of Silverlight

Summary: On Silverlight bribing its way into case studies and more potential deception about openness

THIS post raises two important issues. The first is Microsoft's "bribery as a business model", which it has already engaged in elsewhere, e.g. in search (and it failed). The second issue is Microsoft wanting to associate its GNU/Linux- and FOSS-hostile Web plague with something that is all about love and openness.

Silverlight is not working. The New York Times has just dumped it and it just generally fails to gain ground with the exception of cases where Microsoft opens its chequebook or -- as the following person put it yesterday -- cases where Silverlight's market share is being purchased.

Adobe can't go around paying companies/organizations to use Flash while Microsoft can and is doing that. So spreading Flash as far as possible is the only option they have left because we know, nearly everyone has a price and Microsoft has the money and desire to spread Silverlight far and wide.

It's the same situation as in sub-notebooks. Dumping is not a sustainable business plan. Another new observation worth passing forth is this about Microsoft using Big Buck Bunny to demonstrate an enemy of openness and Freedom.

I was highly amused by the irony of Microsoft, demonstrating new Silverlight 3.0 features, and using Big Buck Bunny as the demonstration footage. Could they not afford to license footage from elsewhere for their big screens? A small dose of irony in my day.

Is Microsoft exploiting Blender again? The company was already lying about cross-platform (Silverlight is Mac- and Windows-only) and it would not be the first time that Microsoft harnesses programming languages or various efforts to have Silverlight associated with "open source" fraudulently. ⬆