Blaming the 'Community'

In a recent column on ZDNet Jason Perlow lamented that he could not use Moonlight on Linux to stream the Olympics. Mr. Perlow then cites the lack of community involvement in helping Miguel de Icaza make Moonlight compatible with Silverlight 2.0 content. In short, Mr. Perlow blames the community.

There are several rather obvious problems with Mr. Perlow's assertions. Let's start with NBC. They could have chosen to steam the events via Adobe's Flash. Although not free software (for the purists) Flash is compatible with Linux. To be clear, NBC has a right to use whatever technology they choose to stream the Olympics. They chose to use a relatively new Microsoft technology which is not as widely supported as Flash is.

Despite Mr. Perlow's assertion about the 'community', not all FOSS developers think it's productive or even wise to clone all things Microsoft. Many in the 'community' see Mono, and by extension Moonlight as a potential patent trap. Consider the following quote from Brian Goldfarb in a recent ZDNet posting;

"That is false. Moonlight is usable for anyone on any distribution of Linux (redhat, ubuntu, etc.) -- it is not limited just to Novell as Mono is."

As the lead Silverlight developer, Mr. Goldfarb is surely familiar with Moonlight and Mono. When we examine his statements here it is clear that Microsoft believes Mono to be infringing on their patents. The point Mr. Goldfarb was trying to make is that all downstream recipients of Moonlight are protected by a blanket patent covenant. So while Mono is infringing, Moonlight is safe right? Not so fast. What is confusing and even possibly disingenuous here is the fact that Moonlight depends on Mono libraries which creates another potential patent trap. For clarification let's take a look at a portion of the patent covenant for Moonlight.

"Microsoft, on behalf of itself and its Subsidiaries, hereby covenants not to sue Downstream Recipients of Novell and its Subsidiaries for infringement under Necessary Claims of Microsoft on account of such Downstream Recipients' use of Moonlight Implementations to the extent originally provided by Novell during the Term and, if applicable, the Extension or Post-Extension Period, but only to the extent such Moonlight Implementations are used to provide Plug-In Functionality."

Well now, this isn't so clear after all if you are operating outside of the Novell umbrella. The point here is that the 'community' have legitimate reasons for not whole-heartedly supporting Moonlight. To blame the 'community' rather than the broadcaster who chose to use Silverlight is unreasonable at best.