May 6th, 2009
Moonlight assumes subordinate position for Microsoft Silverlight
How should open source feel about the release of a new Microsoft Silverlight Linux port?
Really, really good, writes Miguel de Icaza, noting that a preview of Version 2.0 is now ready to roll.
It’s so good our Microsoft blogger, Mary Jo Foley, gushes over it over at ZDNet’s All About Microsoft. The Version 2.0 Moonlight will preview just months before Microsoft releases Version 3.0 of Silverlight, she writes.
Which is all you really need to know. This is not open source closing the gap on Microsoft. This is open source assuming the subordinate position.
It’s the kind of open source success story Microsoft wants publicized. Microsoft innovates, open source copies.
It’s not the kind of open source story open source needs, however.
What open source needs is real innovation, created by teams who may or may not represent Microsoft’s fierce competitors. This can be hard to deliver, and Microsoft would like us all to know resistance in this case is futile.
Even the name Moonlight assumes the subordinate position. The Moon has no light of its own. It merely reflects light from a nearby star. In this case, Microsoft.
But is it? Which consumer open source projects do you think are doing the most innovation right now?
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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| 05/06/09
