State of open source

There has been many articles floating about the internets (thanks Senator Stevens) lately about the sad state of open source. One of which today I feel the need to discuss. Hey this is my blog, and I can do what I want so sit back and listen.

Microsoft's new browser plug-in called Silverlight is supposed to deliver rich media and interactive apps from within web pages. Which for those who don't know is what adobe's flash does. I am not a microsoft fanboy by any measure of the word, but I don't think this is a bad thing.


For years flash has been the web standard for this type of content. We linux users were at the mercy of adobe to write linux versions, and often we were waiting many, many months before it would be released. Now with the cooperation between ms and novell, the development of silverlight for linux is going strong.

I don't like the fact that this is proprietary software any more than any other FOSS advocate. However the fact that we penguins are already stuck with one proprietary web standard makes the argument for healthy competition valid in my opinion. What I hope for is that Adobe will recognize the Linux user base is constantly growing, and they stand to loose those users to Silverlight if they don't put Linux development in a higher priority.

Now if we can just convince everyone that the periodic threats issued by MS via Steve Ballmer are just scare tactics to sway business' from making the move to open source. But that is for another post.....