Silverlight Goes Linux

Silverlight, Microsoft’s platform for interactive Web applications, will be supported for Linux clients by a planned browser plug-in. Developed by Novell, the plug-in will help Microsoft’s Silverlight platform match the platform-independence of Adobe’s Flash, which in turn could help Silverlight compete for mindshare with Web developers. The move suggests that Microsoft considers Flash a serious enough threat to abandon its traditional reluctance to develop any software for the Linux platform.

Silverlight is based on the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and is Microsoft’s platform for Rich Internet Applications (RIAs)—Web applications that have features and functionality traditionally associated with desktop applications but run locally in a Web browser through a browser plug-in. Like Flash, Silverlight is cross-platform, and Microsoft has already developed a version of the browser plug-in for the Macintosh. However, Microsoft had not announced any support for Linux. The planned plug-in, known as Moonlight, will be developed and supported by the Mono team at Novell, a group of developers who previously independently developed a Linux version of the .NET Common Language Runtime.