From the 'Linux has it all' files:
It wasn't all that long ago that Moonlight 1.0 was released providing Linux users with a way to run Microsoft Silverlight media on their screens. Now Novell is out with the Moonlight 2.0 preview, including expanded functionality and compatibility with Microsoft's media framework.
While Moonlight 1.0 includes some Silverlight 2.0 functionality, Moonlight 2.0 is even more closely aligned with what Microsoft is currently providing and has a few new items too.
"The biggest single point I think is this - we're finally comfortable releasing a browser plugin containing the Mono VM," Chris Toshok's Moonlight team lead blogged. "This is pretty huge, and the runtime guys deserve a lot of credit for making it possible. This means we've invested enough time and effort into fleshing out the infrastructure (CoreCLR, as well as our metadata and IL verifier), and getting it to a point where we're not totally embarrassed to share our work."Having the VM inside of the browser plugin is a key step, but at this point it's also not secure (yet). Toshok noted that,".. a full security audit has not happened, and that by visiting Silverlight sites you are downloading code that will execute on your system." However, on Linux of course, most users don't run as root (SUDO doesn't auto-execute either) so the damage would be limited to the access of the user.
One of the things that I'm always been keen on asking Novell about in reference to their Microsoft related efforts is how close they are tracking the current leading edge of Microsoft's development. Since Silverlight itself is not being developed in the open, Novell is essentially following Microsoft's development lead in making Moonlight compatable. It's a fact that Novell is aware of and they are trying to keep the gap as minimal as they can.
"Since we started working on Moonlight 2.0, Microsoft has released a beta of Silverlight 3.0,"Toshok explained. "The differences between 2.0 and 3.0 are much, much smaller than the differences between 1.0 and 2.0, and we've been keeping the 3.0 in mind when completing work on various 2.0 features."Yes there is still a debate about the media codecs themselves which are still proprietary, even though Microsoft is making them freely available via Novell. Questions about Free Software purity aside, Moonlight is about enabling Linux users with the ability to view the same content as Windows users. With Moonlight in play, Microsoft can rightfully claim that Silverlight isn't just for Windows.
