Silverlight Found its Ways in Linux

Silverlight  is one of the many development tools developed by Microsoft for Ajax technology. The .NET version is particularly popular as it goes from platform to platform with this. The framework combining with the power of Silverlight has generated followers.The possibilities of using Ajax technologies in this framework are endless. The only concern though is its inability to transfer to an open source Operating System.

Even though the sites that use Ajax can still be accessed, it’s quite impossible for any web developer to run Silverlight on Linux. As a product of Microsoft, it has to be on their operating system. For big companies it just doesn’t make sense to proceed with a program that will be used in an Operating System that is not from Microsoft.

However, this will have to change as project Moonlight, led by developer Miguel de Icaza, successfully hacked the program and made it possible for Silverlight to be used in Linux. As he writes in his blog, “The past 21 days have been some of the most intense hacking days that I have ever had and the same goes for my team that worked 12 to 16 hours per day every single day --including weekends-- to implement Silverlight for Linux in record time.

We call this effort Moonlight.” Miguel is a Mono developer – he develops series of projects based on Mono with the help of his team. This development so far has put them in the lightlight in Ajax technology. It’s his fascination of the program Silverlight that led him to work on this project day in and day out.

“Needless to say, we believe that Silverlight is a fantastic development platform, and its .NET-based version is incredibly interesting and as Linux/Unix users we wanted to both get access to content produced with it and to use Linux as our developer platform for Silverlight-powered web sites."

It could mean good news and bad news for Microsoft’s Silverlight. The good news is that as the project Moonlight launches the newer version of Silverlight, it will now be available for developers who don’t have windows as their operating system. The toolkit will become even more powerful with this launched.

Since it’s an open system, it will also be open to any development for any developers. On the other hand, the bad news will be that the program will no longer be beneficial for Microsoft as it will open new doors to possibilities one of them is the departure from Windows operating system. That eliminates the possibility of earning from the tools being implemented by Microsoft.

Whether bad or good news for Microsoft; the creation of Silverlight for Linux is a welcome addition to the Ajax developers. It’s one form of technology for Ajax as all the developers come to converge on the things that they can do. No corporate middlemen will be able to stop the brilliant minds when the come and collaborate on what they can do. You can check his writings about his Silverlight hack in this blog.

Reference:
http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/ 
http://silverlight.net/learn/whitepapers.aspx 
http://silverlight.net/quickstarts/