Miguel de Icaza has spoken on The Future of Moonlight, and it is revealing.
We could use Silverlight to build the next wave of cross-platform desktop applications.
Really? We can use closed-source Silverlight to build cross-platform desktop applications? I’ve often said that a significant side effect of all the Team Mono propaganda is promoting Microsoft, and statements like this are exactly what I mean.
Here we have a clear endorsement for a closed-source, proprietary Microsoft technology with whom only Novell has any sort of “covenant” as the future for cross-platform development. In what FLOSS circles is that an acceptable proposal?
At least pretend you’re trying to promote Open Source and say “use Moonlight to build cross-platform desktop applications”.
For example, we are hard at work to make Silverlight run on the native PlayStation 3 and the Wii.
Now tell me here: is Mr. de Icaza saying that he is working directly on Silverlight for Microsoft? Or is the seperation between Moonlight and Silverlight so insignificant that it hardly matters? Or is it a Freudian typo? A point I try to make is that for all intents and purposes Team Mono is working-by-proxy for Microsoft. The Chief Sharecropper of Team Moonlight saying he is hard at work on Silverlight is provocative indeed.
This also touches on the point I make that Team Mono / Moonlight is making no great strides for Linux. They spend a ton of effort on iPhone, Unity engine, and now PS3 and Wii? You might recall a long-winded apologetic where the argument on how beneficial Mono would be to Linux was the major selling point. Somewhere along the line that whole argument got shifted to how beneficial Mono would be to .NET developers.
I think of the Moonlight relationship to Silverlight as the Firefox relationship to IE four years ago. It is a chance to try out new ideas in the Silverlight-o-sphere, we can try those ideas out, and if the ideas have merit, they could become part of the official Silverlight.
I do not consider Mr. de Icaza a moron, so I can scarcely comprehend why he would use a moronic analogy. Yet he did.
Firefox – as envisoned by Mozilla developers – has never been a “test bed” for IE. Not four years ago, not today. For another thing, Firefox was focused on supporting open and universal standards; things that have no role whatsoever in Silverlight, and a limited role in .NET.
The whole concept of Firefox being some “knock off test bed” for the “genuine advantage” of IE is disgusting, but speaks powerfully in support of the notion that Mr. de Icaza is enamored of Microsoft technologies and products.
The analogy has some other problems to: it puts a lie to the argument that Mono/Moonlight are “independent” of .NET/Silverlight – a once-common, but increasingly lesser argued defense; and further supports the position that Mono/Moonlight are promotional in nature for Microsoft.
Finally, Team Moonlight continues to remain mum on the word that Microsoft is already bringing real-deal genuine advantage Silverlight to Linux and can certainly do the same to any other platform it choses, including PS3 and the Wii.
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