Moonlight soon to be released in beta
20 November 2008
by
Gunthy
Filed under
Linux
More good news in Linux-land. It seems that Moonlight, the open-source version of the Microsoft Silverlight platform, is soon going to be releasing a beta version of their 1.0 branch.
This is very good news indeed, as it will enable Linux users to run Silverlight websites natively. Since the development is sponsored by Novell, and they have a partnership with Microsoft, they were even able to throw in the official Microsoft codecs, meaning even more compatibility.
While I’m personally a bit sceptic about this Novell/M$ marriage, in this case it’s clearly proving to be a good step. Who would have thought not so long ago that Linux users would ever get free software with official Microsoft licensed codecs in it? Right, nobody 
.
I think a lot of Linux people are eargerly waiting for this one. Microsoft themselves promised some time ago a plugin for Silverlight on Linux, but so far I haven’t seen one bit of that promise. And since they are able to provide one for Mac OS X, I find it quite strange that they leave the Linux community out in the cold. Maybe I’m wrong on this one as I haven’t really followed up on it so well, so please, if you know more then me, don’t be shy and leave a comment 
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I can’t wait to check this thing out. Probably it won’t be working 100%, but hey it’s still a beta after all, and at least some compatibility is already appreciated. Big thanks to Novell & Microsoft for this one .
