Flashback to the pact that is to hold up the fortunes of Novell with MS money. Fast forward to the announcement one of their outcomes. Guess what? I just installed that on my Fedora 10 environment and tried to visit the sites that supposedly support Moonlight/Sliverlight, and viola, that Moonlight stuff is version 1 while Silverlight is version 2. So, just as the Mono project is always on the catchup treadmill, this Moonlight deal is the same. Time to uninstall.
Are the version supposed to equate? For instance swfdec or gnash don’t have the same version number as Flash Player. Is Moonlight 1 only equivalent to Silverlight 1 ? I don’t think so.
The more worrying thing is not MS IP, it’s that Adobe recognise Linux as an OS to support. MS just want to kill Adobe. If Silverlight replaces Flash then we’ll be left with no Linux (or Mac) Silverlight support in a few years.
I don’t think it is as simple as just version numbers. The fact is that Novell is promoting moonshine 1.0 as a milestone of sorts. That implies that it is doing something. When you install, then choose the site linked from the installation page, it does not work asking that you install software to support version 2.
Yes, I will not use moonlight and stick with flash for it is pervasive and atleast is open and published. While it is tempting to continue with the ABM mode, I think it goes beyond that state of mind. To keep freedom, one has to be perpetually vigilant.
Flash != freedom
Flash is not much better from a freedom perspective, Gnash and swfdec cannot play all Flash stuff (just some), and video is also patent-encumbered (Flash doesn’t support patent-free codecs such as Theora at all).
Re: Flash != freedom
Agreed that flash != freedom. We are rapidly moving in that direction and frankly, it is the ABM consideration that is giving flash a chance.