You’re looking at this backwards. For me, being a GNU/Linux user at home and at work, it would be hard or impossible to complain about sites that use Silverlight. They would claim that GNU/Linux is not excluded.

As Miles said above, how is this any different from current Flash sites?

s/Silverlight/Flash/ and you get exactly the same deal, but I don’t see you attacking Flash with the same tenacity as I see you attacking Moonlight which I find rather hypocritical seeing as how Moonlight, by any definition, is freer that Flash.

Are you really pro-Free Software, or just anti-Microsoft? Your actions speak louder than your words, and suggest you are the latter rather than the former.

How am I being hypocritical? I have nothing to do with Flash and I don’t defend it.

1. You post flash videos to your site all the time
2. You attack Moonlight as if it is somehow worse than Flash

Read the article again and remind yourself why the patent holder is the key issue.

You keep trying to convince yourself that the possibility of Microsoft having patents on Moonlight is somehow more harmful to Linux/FOSS than patent holders who aggressively enforce their patents.

This is simply not the case.

As much as you may hate Microsoft, it doesn’t make them evil – it just makes you full of hate.

Microsoft has never sued anyone over patents. Ever.

I know you like to claim they do it by proxy through Accacia (sp?) but considering your track record when it comes to you throwing out accusations left and right, I’m sorry, but I’m not going to take your word for it.

“Accacia employs ex-Microsoft employees” is not proof of anything, especially considering how large a company Microsoft is and how many employees have come and gone over the years. It’s really not surprising at all that a company might actually employ an ex-Microsoft employee. *Gasp*

Without proof, all you have is a baseless accusation (which is the only thing you are famous for, I might add). Time and time again, you make these accusations and time and time again you are shown to be wrong.

Give me solid evidence. I’m not the average sheep that takes everything you say as fact without question like some of the trolls on this site do.

For me, being a GNU/Linux user at home and at work, it would be hard or impossible to complain about sites that use Silverlight. They would claim that GNU/Linux is not excluded.

You might notice that the same would hold true for Flash sites, and Flash is hardly Free Software. So… how is this any different?

As Dan already pointed out, you’re being hypocritical.

Even if they did depend on Mono, that doesn’t make them wrong…

You, on the other hand, have been proven wrong on quite a few occasions and continue to be proven wrong time and time again. So if anyone “merely fight for what they (want to) believe in”, it would seem to be you, no?

If that statement about not caring about patents was directed at me, then I have to say you misread what I wrote.

They can pretend everything, assume everything. They even might say that the sky is green. But saying so doesn’t make it the truth.

I also “love” how all these trolls end their posts with something like this or a variant:

“I’m true Linux use but…”; “I only use Open Source so you know I’m not a Microsoft shill/troll”; “I hate/dislike/don’t trust Microsoft but I don’t see nothing wrong with Mono/Moonlight/pick your own”

In the more ridiculous statements like:

“I don’t care about patents, they don’t affect me, so all is truly well and Microsoft is great”

OR

“Flash isn’t open source, it’s covered by patents (the patents have nothing to do with flash but with the video codecs anyway, but do they care about the truth, NO….)”

You’re being it by “pros” now, no eets or Goldfarts.

You’ve graduated. Expect some “gifts” soon. Hahahahaha….

You won’t find a single website/developer.

The websites out there that use Flash are the same way, Linux support is an afterthought.

The web developers out there with any desire to create truly cross-platform websites will do it in HTML and javascript.

I fully support HTML5 and other truly open/cross-platform web technologies and hope they eliminate the need/usage of Flash and Silverlight, so don’t get me wrong.

But at least be honest, Roy, you only attack Moonlight because it’s a Novell product. If this was being written by the Gnash guys, you’d be praising it all over the place.

I can’t offer a very lengthy response at the moment (OOXML is a more urgent problem), but one point I would like to make is that it’s naive to accept Silverlight and assume that v2.0 features will always stay in the corner. The second point, which is related to the first, is that Moonlight gives people the illusion that the target audience for Silverlight is large. We’ve gone through this problem before, e g. here.

As a side note, it would be fruitful if you guys don’t descend to insults (I rarely/never do). It takes us nowhere. It makes neither of us look decent.

Silverlight 2.0 is scriptable from .NET and afaik, Moonlight plans to implement support for that – however, obviously you won’t require Mono unless you actually visit Silverlight 2.0 sites.

I believe I also read somewhere that Microsoft is releasing the source code to a bunch of their Silverlight 2.0 controls (the ones written in managed code) under the MS-PL (which is GPLv3 compatible, btw).

I’m not sure why you guys are in such a huff over Moonlight anyway…

IF Silverlight usage on the web becomes widespread (and that’s a big IF), Moonlight is just a way for Linux users to be able to view those sites if they choose to.

I double Silverlight will become even more widespread than Flash is now.

There are basically 3 groups of people on Linux when it comes to Flash:

1. Those who refuse to visit any flash-enabled sites… and if we take the word of the posters on Slashdot/LinuxToday/Digg/etc, who all claim to boycott Flash sites, then there must be quite a few of these. Silverlight won’t affect these people – if they find no reason to view Flash sites, what will make Silverlight more of a requirement? None that I can see.

2. Then you have another group of people who happily install Adobe’s proprietary Flash plugin to view their favorite Flash sites. Are these people going to be morally opposed to installing Moonlight? I somehow doubt it. Besides which, Moonlight is actually open source compared to Flash which is not, so it would actually be giving these people more freedoms.

3. Thirdly you have the people who install Gnash or Swfdec and who are not legally protected from any patent attacks over (at the very least) video codecs (and possibly attacks for any non-codec related infringements by Adobe or any other 3rd party which may own patents related to Flash). These people seem to have no qualms with breaking the law or putting themselves in a risky legal situation (at the very least), so what could possibly be their reason to avoid Moonlight? Clearly patents do not concern them.

I suspect Roy is in either group 2 or 3, especially since he posts Flash videos on his blog all the time – I assume he must actually view them (or maybe it’s like the articles he links to – posting without reading/viewing?). His hypocritical reasoning for being anti-Moonlight is that he thinks Microsoft is more likely to sue over patents.

If you think that Microsoft is more likely to sue over patent infringements than Adobe, you’d be wrong. Adobe has a history of attacking other companies over patents, Microsoft has none. Adobe has also already attacked at least one Free Software project.

Do the math.

“My conclusion now, after having reviewed it, is the same as I predicted. This is worthless and potentially harmful vapor-speak.”

Even if we cared about Mono “intruding”, how does using Moonlight help Mono?