Microsoft and Obama Join Hands and Attack Web Standards,...

[greggh]

...Exclude GNU/Linux Users

http://boycottnovell.com/2009/01/16/oba ... gnu-linux/

Obama votes for Microsoft XAML

OBAMA IS DOING IT AGAIN (using Silverlight). He did this before and he did not learn any lessons from the big backlash. Microsoft was accused by Adobe for paying to achieve this, but then again, we also know that Obama and Microsoft are not all that distant, so incentives may not be needed. In fact, Microsoft’s money is already polluting this game.

Microsoft uses the choice to brag about some sort of presidential endorsement and here is some early coverage.

Microsoft announced today that the presidential inauguration team has chosen Microsoft’s Silverlight browser extension application to play host for streamed online content of inaugural events.

This presidential inauguration is partly funded by Microsoft, too. The more things “Change”, the more they stay the same.

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/pres ... ghtPR.mspx

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/41061/122/

The presidential inauguration will be carried via Silverlight for streaming video. Browsers will need to have the Silverlight plugin to see the feed.

Obama's team has previous experience using Microsoft's Silverlight, as it was also the content enabler of choice for the August 2008 Democratic National Convention.

[Tsuroerusu]

While I agree with the essence of what greggh said, I would just like to point out that the title of this thread is misleading, as there currently are no "web standards" for video. That's coming in HTML5, but currently, the most common thing is all sorts of ugly hacks for embedding video on a page or using Flash. Neither of which I feel is really all that much better than nothing at all.

Having said that, just out of curiosity, didn't Novell produce Silverlight support for GNU/Linux?

[greggh]

Having said that, just out of curiosity, didn't Novell produce Silverlight support for GNU/Linux?

I think you are talking about Moonlight. Moonlight didn't work to watch the Olympics which were streamed with Silverlight. I remember Pat talking a lot about that. I'm not optimistic it will work here.

[dann]

That is a big bummer. There is no way I will be installing moonlight on any of my systems to even begin to check this out.

Man that MS has fingers everywhere. I suspect this is going to be a bit of a pr disaster for people who want to watch via the web.

I was on the inauguration site and I could not find an easy way to contact them and issue my complaint at their choice of streaming technology.

[dann]

well after some digging around it appears that all links lead to the whitehouse.gov site and submitting a comment to comments@whitehouse.gov. I sent this:

I just wanted to let you know that when I heard the Inauguration video was going to be streamed via Silverlight technologies I was very disappointed. Silverlight has proven time and again to be a poor choice due to the lack of wide adoption and difficulty the technology has across platforms. As a GNU/Linux user I choose to stay away from Microsoft technology as it comes with the burden of patent threats from a convicted monopolist. While I have no love for Adobe's Flash technology, I feel it would have been a far better choice in this case. Flash is widely adopted and has better cross platform support.

I strongly supported Obama throughout the election process. I feel a bit let down at your choice of streaming technology. I hope this trend does not continue.

Who know what kind of impact it will make. Probably naught, if I am the only one.

[Claudio]

Dann, that was very well said. I doubt that you're the only one that's made this known, considering the number of GNU/Linux users out there (probably not a lot in comparison to OS X or Windows, but still a large number of constituents that it would matter).

[eddie]

convicted monopolist

How about "adjudicated monopoly" I want to see Mr. bill in jail also.
[rant]
Dear Democratic President Elect:
It highly disappoints me that you choose a technology aka (Silverlight) that has proven to be less than robust by most of the Intelligent IT community for the inauguration. Using such technology, you put millions of taxpayer computers allegedly at risk for computer viruses/spyware and subject these same taxpayers to legal entanglements from possible intellectual property violations. . The maker of this technology has been described by the our own U.S. Department of Justice as a "Monopoly". This same corporation was allegedly adjudicated a monopoly by the U.S. Court system. This same corporation is also under fire for monopolistic practices also By many of the governments around the world (i.e. E.U.). This same said monopoly according to new reports is allegedly about to lay off 17 percent of its workers. Is this what you call change? Our U.S. Military as I understand it is dumping Microsoft software from every system it can. Oh, I guess you care for change for the big monopolies only? The open source community for the most part may not be watching you this inauguration. You have lost me as a supporter before you have even taken office yet. Now that is a travesty. Any president that supports a proven monopoly should be an impeachable offense. That is just my uneducated opinion. Tell your good buddy Billy Gates hello. Have you seen the movie "The Net". If you have not, you should because in some ways, it is prophetic. We have dumped Microsoft software from all our systems. It is overpriced and under performing compared to open source. "NO SILVERLIGHT" for us.
Just another unimportant taxpayer.
[/rant]
My two cents.

Have to go there are some men in black at the door.......

[karst]

I think I'll try livestation tomorrow. I hear they are running streams of foreign broadcasters coverage of the events and they do seem to have a linux client.

[Patrick]

Sounds like Miguel and company made a bunch of last minute patches to Moonlight to insure that Linux users can watch the inauguration:
http://www.go-mono.com/moonlight/

I don't run Mono or plan to watch the inauguration but wanted to pass this information to those of you that care.

[Tsuroerusu]

To add a little bit to what Pat said, here's a few more details: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20 ... light.html

[dann]

Some critics of Mono and Moonlight doubt Microsoft's commitment to interoperability, argue that Microsoft's technology in this area isn't dominant enough to justify replication, and believe that the open source implementations will never be able to achieve sufficient compatibility to provide practical value. Monday night's collaborative effort by Microsoft and Novell on defies the assessments of these critics and provides some compelling evidence of the need for an open source Silverlight implementation.

So what was this big collaboration between MS and Novell to get Moonlight to work with the inaugaration?

Microsoft assisted the Moonlight developers by providing them with access to a test stream and by facilitating communication with iStreamPlanet.

So MS played the middle man to allow a test stream for the mono-developers. And why did they need to do this? Why isn't Moonlight compatible with Silverlight 2.0? Could it be because:

using managed code in the player leaves out Linux users of the Moonlight 1.0 beta, as well as PowerPC Mac users.

Now granted, it's nice for MS to step in and help facilitate this. In the past they would have just thumbed their nose at developers. I guess that MS/Novell agreement is good for something. Then again, look at it this way. None of this was going to happen without MS holding the keys to the kingdom.

If MS was truly concerned about interoperability how come they are not forth coming with the code necessary to make Moonlight compatible with Silverlight 2.0?

[eddie]

That is a good observation. I wonder if had Vista had been doing better whether MS would have gone to such lengths. I should applaud Mikey (aka Miguel) for all the work he has done to bring a msvisual environment to linux to aid in software development for both platforms. I might relent and try mono again. I hate to let all the old code go to waste. I understand that Redhat intends to make rh10 or rh11 specifically oriented towards allowing ms development on linux as one of their goals. I wonder if that was part of the secret ms-rh meetings.

[Tsuroerusu]

I understand that Redhat intends to make rh10 or rh11 specifically oriented towards allowing ms development on linux as one of their goals. I wonder if that was part of the secret ms-rh meetings.

I assume you mean Novell, Red Hat hasn't done any deals with MS, and today is going on the offensive with regards to software patents in a federal appeals court.

[eddie]

I would have possibly thought so also at first. I should have included the links.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/11/FeatureList
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/ ... s_compiler

[doublejoon]

Does Obama himself actually know what silverlight is? I doubt it