Silverlight's official launch

A couple weeks ago I tried to install Silverlight in Opera to no avail. Little did I know that the official launch hadn't occured yet. I see that today was the Official launch of Silverlight from Microsoft. The cool news is that there are plans for a linux version of Silverlight. The bad news, it still doesn't work in Opera. ...

Okay, so by cross browser compatible they mean that there is support for the main browsers that compete with them on Mac and PC. The ( currently ) tertiary competitor still doesn't work, let alone have support.

Thinking this might have been a version thing I tried to install it in the Alpha version of Opera 9.5, codenamed Kestrel. Faster browser :), same results.

Beyond the world of creating rich internet applications for work I am also an avid wrestling fan. I have constantly thought on the idea of a flash/flex based player for the WWE pay-per-views and weekly programming. Low and behold, the silverlight page has WWE right there as one of the examples. I obviously couldn't check it out in Opera so I had to hit my view in firefox button and check out WWE's silverlight launch page. Honestly, I saw this coming. Hopefully it will work better than having to watch a pay per view in the Windows Media Player ( upgrading if you haven't in a long time and missing hours of the show to technical issues :irked: ).

It will be interesting to see what happens with Silverlight. With Microsoft, it obviously has a whole lot of weight behind it. Do we really need another entrant into the field of rich media/rich application development? Will this crush flash( which works fine in Opera )? I'm amazed at some of the people putting their large eggs into the Silverlight basket. That will make a big difference in the short term.

Silverlight license

Working for a company that creates content playable in the flash player, I've been interested in seeing what comes of Microsoft's competing Silverlight. As of yet I haven't found any reason to install it. Nothing I have looked at requires silverlight. However today, lifehacker.com had a posting about Tafiti. Tafiti is a new search engine from Microsoft based on Silverlight. Once I went to the website it said

By clicking Get Microsoft Silverlight you accept the Silverlight license agreement.

Since the license was so prominent I decided to click on it. ...

The first thing I noticed as I read was this statement:

INSTALLATION AND USE RIGHTS. You may install and use any number of copies of the software only with the browser and operating system software named above.

If you look, Opera is not one of the software named above. Neither is Safari, yet safari is listed in the Mac license agreement which also doesn't have Opera listed.

The next thing I saw that was pretty humorous, even though it is probably standard, was:

You may not work around any technical limitations in the software;

So when it has limitations ( which all software does ) we should just sit tight and wait for Microsoft to improve it. Somehow I don't think people will follow this, they don't seem to do it anywhere else.

Then in the license came their difference on updating their player.

This software contains an Automatic Update feature that is on by default. Microsoft may change or cancel it at any time. For more information about this feature, see http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=87026. You may turn off this feature while the software is running (“opt-out”).

Classic Microsoft automatic update type of mechanism. Probably a good thing for many lay people out there who don't want to interact any way with there computer but I find it annoying. I prefer the Flash express update method better, as I can choose to install the update as needed if necessary ( of course I always have the latest player because of work ).

Even though this software is as-is and really doesn't have any sort of guarantee or warranty they let you know that you do have some recourse

You can recover from Microsoft and its suppliers only direct damages up to U.S. $5.00. You cannot recover any other damages, including consequential, lost profits, special, indirect or incidental damages.

That's right, you can get $5.00 in direct damages. That's awesome. You can buy your lawyer a value meal, but you can't super size it.

Anyway, this is the first license agreement I have actually read through in its entirety ( it is pretty short ), and I thought other people might find these things interesting. I'm just wondering if I should live on the edge and attempt to install silverlight in Opera or on a linux system. That's about all the sticking it to the man I think I can come up with ( other than not installing it at all ).

Silverlight Windows license agreement
Silverlight Mac License agreement
Since silverlight does not run on linux there is no linux license.