● 10.16.08
●● Silver Lie
Posted in Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, RAND at 9:03 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
THE “scam” that Silverlight had become in 'the media' was covered here two days ago. We included many examples to show how Microsoft fooled the world through journalists, striving to give the impression — no matter how bogus it is — that Silverlight has something to do with open source and is cross-platform (it’s neither).
This type of dishonesty has shown little or no signs of abatement as disinformation continues to be disseminated to deceive Web developers. Here, for instance, is an article from TechWorld which states:
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Also, a Linux version of Silverlight, dubbed ” Moonlight,” is being developed by a team of developers led by Miguel de Icaza at Novell, Microsoft officials noted.
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The illusion of cross-platform must end. There is no “Linux version of Silverlight.” Those “Microsoft officials” are lying. There is no “port” either, just to refute another wrong terminology used by other journalists. Moonlight and Silverlight are separate. The latter is the ‘real thing’, whereas the former is a Novell me-too project which strives only to cling to coattails [1, 2].
The same type of mistake, calling Moonlight “a version for Linux,” is being repeated in InformationWeek:
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Silverlight will run in Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer on Windows and Mac OS, and Novell is working on a version for Linux.
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That’s incorrect. Developers might get the impression that Silverlight targets GNU/Linux users. It does not. Let’s repeat this again: GNU/Linux has no Silverlight and Microsoft has no plan to change this strategy.
Gavin Clarke, disappointingly enough (yes, again), wrote this article in The Register where he covers Flash but gets totally distracted by his showering with kisses for XAML, which is is trying to describe using terms like “open source”. It’s a gentle form of disinformation.
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Microsoft wrapped the Silverlight 2.0 news with the announcement it’s funding a project at the open-source Eclipse Foundation to build open-source tools for Java. Also, Microsoft is releasing controls under its Open Source Initiative (OSI)-approved open-source license and releasing its XAML documentation under the company’s Open-Specification Promise (OSP).
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Oh, goodness! Not that OSP again [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. █
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