Moonlight a Second-class Citizen in a WindowSilverLight Wide Web

Dr. Roy Schestowitz

2007-09-18 22:38:24 UTC
Modified: 2007-09-18 23:20:55 UTC

A new article from Microsoft's own press ought to remind us why Moonlight was a bad idea, just like Novell's attempted support for OOXML.

Rather than step up and produce a Linux version of Silverlight, Microsoft is taking a halfway step. It will provide technical guidance -- and even support -- to Miguel de Icaza and the rest of the Novell-hosted Mono team as they work to create Silverlight on Unix....

But as smart as the developers on the Mono team are, and they are very bright, it's hard to see how Silverlight on Linux will avoid the fate of COM on Unix-lagging behind the Windows version.

Yet again, Novell is giving Microsoft the pleasure of saying that their technologies (e.g. Silverlight, OOXML) are widely supported (never mind the disturbing notion of "licensed") and include Linux, but:

The implementations are poor
The implementations depends on a single company
The implementations can be obtained from a single company (Novell)
The rules can change at any time (for example, elements can be added with a Draconian licence bound to them)
The implementations give developers false expectations about compatibility (e.g. Windows-only DRM)
The implementations assist a hijack of de facto standards, which can and will be extended

There are more issues to think about, but the take-home message is that when a burglar approaches the window, you don't invite the burglar to enter the house. You don't offer the burglar some tea and cookies, either.

Real Life Should be Offline, Not Online, and It Requires Free Software: Resistance means having the guts to say "no!", even in the face of great societal burden and peer pressure
IBM Took a Man’s Voice, Pitting Him Against His Own Work, While Companies Profit from Low-Effort Garbage Generated by Bots and “Self-Service”: Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Links 26/09/2023: KDE, Programming, and More: Links for the day
Mozilla Promotes the Closed Web and Proprietary Webapps That Are Security and Privacy Hazards: This is just another reminder that the people who run Mozilla don't know the history of Firefox, don't understand the Web, and are beholden to "GAFAM", not to Firefox users
Debian More Like an Exploitative Sweatshop Than a Family: Wiltshire is riding a high horse in the UK, talking down to Indians who are "low-level" volunteers in his kingdom of authoritarians, guarded by an army of British lawyers who bully bloggers
Small Computers in Large Numbers: A Pipeline of Open Hardware: They guard and prioritise their "premiums", causing severe price hikes due to supply/demand disparities.
Microsoft Deserves a Medal for Being Worst at Security (the Media Deserves a Medal for Cover-up): There are still corruptible/bribed publishers that quote Microsoft staff like they're security gurus
10 Reasons to Permanently Export or Liberate Your Site From WordPress, Drupal, and Other Bloatware: There are certainly more more advantages, but 10 should suffice for now
About 200,000 Objects in Techrights Web Site: This hopefully helps demonstrate just how colossal the migration actually is
Good Teachers Would Tell Kids to Quit Social Control Media Rather Than Participate in It (Teaching Means Education, Not Misinformation): Insist that classrooms offer education to children rather than offer children to corporations
Twitter: From Walled Gardens to Paywalls and/or Amplifiers of Fascism: There's moreover a push to promote politicians who are as scummy as Twitter's owner
The World Wide Web is Being Confiscated From Us (Like Syndication Was Withdrawn About a Decade Ago) and We Need to Fight Back: We're worse off when fewer people promote RSS feeds and instead outsource to social control media (censorship, surveillance, manipulation)
Next Up: Restoring IRC Log Pipelines, Bulletins/Full Text RSS, Wiki (Archived, Static), and Pipelines for Daily Links: There are still many tasks left ahead of us, but we've progressed a lot
An Era of Rotting Technology, Migration Crises, and Cliffhanging: We've covered examples from IBM, resembling the Microsoft world
First Iteration of Techrights as 100% Static Pages Web Site: We want to champion another decade or two of positive impact and opinionated analysis
Links 25/09/2023: Patent News and Coding: some remaining links for today
Steam Deck is Mostly Good in the Sense That It Weakens Microsoft's Dominance (Windows): The Steam Deck is mostly a DRM appliance
SUSE is Just Another Black Cat Working for Proprietary Giants/Monopolies: SUSE's relationship with firms such as these generally means that SUSE works for authority, not for community, and when it comes to cryptography it just follows guidelines from the US government
IBM is Selling Complexity, Not GNU/Linux: It's not about the clients, it's about money
Birthday of Techrights in 6 Weeks (Tux Machines and Techrights Reach Combined Age of 40 in 2025): We've already begun the migration to static
Linux Foundation: We Came, We Saw, We Plundered: Linux Foundation staff uses neither Linux nor Open Source. They're essentially using, exploiting, piggybacking goodwill gestures (altruism of volunteers) while paying themselves 6-figure salaries.
Security Isn't the Goal of Today's Software and Hardware Products: Any newly-added layer represents more attack surface
Linux Too Big to Be Properly Maintained When There's an Incentive to Sell More and More Things (Complexity and Narrow Support Window): They want your money, not your peace of mind. That's a problem.
Modern Web Means Proprietary Trash: Mozilla is financially beholden to Google and thus we cannot expect any pushback or for Firefox to "reclaims the Web" a second time around
Godot 4.2 is Approaching, But After What Happened to Unity All Game Developers Should be Careful: We hope Unity will burn in a massive fire and, as for Godot, we hope it'll get rid of Microsoft
GNU/Linux Has Conquered the World, But Users' Freedom Has Not (Impediments Remain in Hardware): Installing one's system of choice on a device is very hard, sometimes impossible
Another Copyright Lawsuit Against Microsoft (or its Proxy) for Misuse of Large Works by Chatbot: Some people mocked us for saying this day would come; chatbots are a huge disappointment and they're on very shaky legal ground
Privacy is Not a Crime, Reporting Hidden Facts Is Not a Crime Either: the powerful companies/governments/societies get to know everything about everybody, but if anyone out there discovers or shares dark secrets about those powerful companies/governments/societies, that's a "crime"
United Workforce Always Better for the Workers: In the case of technology, it is possible that a lack of collective action is because of relatively high salaries and less physically-demanding jobs
Purge of Software Freedom and Its Voices: Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
GNOME and GTK Taking Freedom Away From Users: Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer

Moonlight a Second-class Citizen in a WindowSilverLight Wide Web

Recent Techrights' Posts