Comments on: New Moonlight Covenant Coming? http://www.the-source.com/2009/12/new-moonlight-covenant-coming/ Free and Open Source Software News and Opinion Sat, 31 Jul 2010 01:09:24 +0200 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 By: saulgoode http://www.the-source.com/2009/12/new-moonlight-covenant-coming/comment-page-1/#comment-84 saulgoode Fri, 18 Dec 2009 09:49:27 +0000 http://www.the-source.com/?p=351#comment-84 While I was fully expecting an updated Moonlight "promise" sometime within the coming months, I was not expecting it to address the Novell exclusivity issue to the extent that Mr de Icaza anticipates. Nor does the reason such an updated promise is unsurprising appear amongst the issues covered by his pronouncement. The problem that remains to be addressed is that the original promise provides coverage only for "browser plug-ins" -- a rather sobering limitation for those who would promote Moonlight as a substitute GUI framework and incorporate it into "non-browser" programs such as Banshee. So I would add as a fourth prediction that the browser-only limitation will be lifted from the next version of the "promise". If not, then it is probably safe for Mr de Icaza to retire his drool-sopped kerchief and abandon his dreams of redefining the GNU/Linux desktop interface (perhaps to seek employment with Google where their Chrome OS would fall under the mantle of Microsoft's promises). While I was fully expecting an updated Moonlight “promise” sometime within the coming months, I was not expecting it to address the Novell exclusivity issue to the extent that Mr de Icaza anticipates. Nor does the reason such an updated promise is unsurprising appear amongst the issues covered by his pronouncement.

The problem that remains to be addressed is that the original promise provides coverage only for “browser plug-ins” — a rather sobering limitation for those who would promote Moonlight as a substitute GUI framework and incorporate it into “non-browser” programs such as Banshee.

So I would add as a fourth prediction that the browser-only limitation will be lifted from the next version of the “promise”. If not, then it is probably safe for Mr de Icaza to retire his drool-sopped kerchief and abandon his dreams of redefining the GNU/Linux desktop interface (perhaps to seek employment with Google where their Chrome OS would fall under the mantle of Microsoft’s promises).

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