Miguel de Icaza from Mono on Moonlight
Miguel de Icaza from the Mono project, tells us more about Moonlight, and where the Mono project is headed, at LugRadio Live USA 2008.
– shows us about Silverlight 1.1 (Moonlight is the Mono equivalent)
– works a charm in Firefox, but there’s issues with the implementation in IE (something JavaScript related)
– Demos the chess application
– Microsoft will provide a Media Pack (they will incur the licensing costs for the media codecs) for all Moonlight users on Linux. Microsoft will also provide regression test suites, and complete specifications for implementation. Novell will deliver a 100% compatible Moonlight and will support it on all major Linux distributions (contractually, only the top 3 Linux distributions – no mention of what the top 3 are). This is the Microsoft/Novell agreement, as of last September 2007.
– The codecs come with a restriction – you can’t use it outside Moonlight. Its only for the in-browser experience. If you use Totem, you’ll need to make use of gstreamer, etc…
– The MSPL is better than the X11 license. Miguel would like to change the Mono license to the MSPL, but everyone that hates him now, will hate him more because of the “Microsoft” substring! Why is the MSPL better? It has a patent clause, so that the code you use there, if covered by a patent, you will not be sued, ever. That in a way, is similar to the Apache license.
– Self-contained applications – traditional GNU software is spread out, quite unlike Mac OS X applications where you drag an application into the Applications folder, and everything is contained in one directory. Mono has an application guideline, where everything is also in one directory.
– Like all good demos, something broke. Miguel starts debugging on stage, and fixes the problem, and the demo works!
– “Programmers have no taste for design”
– “I have a roadmap, but I don’t think anyone gives a fuck, so lets just go to questions”
– How long will it take to get mixed-mode assembly working? If you are Chris Toshok, it will take 2 weeks. If you’re not, definitely longer. He spoke to Dan Kegel from the WINE project :) Patches are being accepted… The aim is to allow WINE to run Windows applications on a fully open source stack
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