Microsoft introduced Silverlight awhile ago and it is getting some buzz, but personally I am not impressed. When a company says their product is cross browser and cross platform that implies it should be just that. So where is a Linux plugin?

Silverlight doesn't have a plug-in for some browsers either, including Opera and I do believe Shiira. I bet Microsoft will use free developers to build plugins for anything outside of the commercial arena. I can dig making free software because you enjoy it, but making free software for a billion dollar company to push their profits up higher is plain dumb. This trend is building with many companies, like Adobe and Sun, these days and I think it will eventually destroy the whole true open source ideal.

Some Linux advocates hate the porting of open applications to Windows and I agree somewhat. If Windows comes preinstalled and I can install open source software Linux get's less users and Linux really is a better OS in many respects.

Anyway, Silverlight has the potentual to destroy Flash and this is the point. Microsoft has tried for years to take the web and failed, this is yet another attempt. If Adobe were smart thay would open source the Flash plugin and port Flash to Linux asap and drop the price by a few hundred dollars for the Flash studio. Between Java, Javascript/Ajax, Silverlight, and a few other technologies Flash is pretty much going to just slowly fade into oblivion anyway if they don't. Giving away a Flex compiler and making a Linux Flash plugin just isn't enough and they have major compitition now.

Personally .Net and Silverlight are not interesting to me, Python is. Python is open, Python is powerful, Python is easy and poetic, Python is truely cross platform, and can access other technologies including .NET, Java, and C without the developer becoming dependent on any one technology. I can build simple, or even complicated framework based, web-sites with Python and can even use Python in ASP and JSP, GUI apps that will run anywhere, even DOS if I cared to do so. Python in the web browser would be something I would love to see become reality. Here are some things that show just how powerful Python really is and visit the Python Cheeseshop for about anything you could imagine.

Open source should be innovating not using commercial software to build on regardless of the company opening peices parts. If the open source community would have created something like Silverlight rather than trying to build around corporate software the world would be a better place. Basically Linux will always follow in the footsteps of big business and will never become it's own powerhouse - over time this will prove to be a disaster for Linux.

If you give all your energy to Microsoft they will slowly destroy you in the name of capitalism and they will use you to destroy their corporate compitition in the process. Just wait and see... If you are building .Net applications on Linux you are as guilty as Microsoft when it comes to the complaint that Microsoft uses open source code. Difference is, you have the choice to do bigger and better things without Microsoft. Corporations will continue to use what everyone else is using, period! If the bosses use Linux and staff use Linux the company will eventually use Linux. This will not happen if open source becomes tied to Windows, .Net, IIS, etc...

If don't understand the power of Python you really should take a look at it! It's installed on Linux and OS X by default and even Microsoft added Python to Visual Studio and .Net . Adobe added Python support to Photoshop . Python is the best of the best, hands down!