Een Oostenrijkse website heeft een interview gepubliceerd met Miquel de Icaza van Novell. Bij Novell is hij Vice President van Developer platform. Hij leidt met name het Mono project. Dit team implementeert .NET en Silverlight op Linux. Hij gaat in dit interview wat meer in op de status, de deployment modellen en de relatie tussen Moonlight en Mono.
Een aantal interessante aanhalingen uit het artikel:
derStandard.at: The last time we talked you were in favor of enhancing the partnership with Microsoft, is that stuff progressing?
de Icaza: Yes. For instance last September Microsoft signed an agreement which results in Microsoft endorsing Moonlight - our own free implementation of Silverlight. So they are providing us with specifications, they are providing us with tech contacts, so whenever any specification is not clear, we have access to their engineers. Also one thing that is very unique: Microsoft is going to be distributing an add-on to Moonlight called the "media pack". And that add-on contains all the media codecs that Silverlight uses, so it contains the MP3 decoder, the VC1 decoder, WMV and all that stuff. We are going to provide Moonlight and they are adding the codec parts - and this is going to be totally legal, it's something that they are actually encouraging - that's pretty sweet.
derStandard.at: They are going to provide that for every distribution or just for openSUSE?
de Icaza: For every distribution, also x86, x86_64 and PowerPC. In fact we are going to provide binaries for BSDs, for Solaris - both on SPARC and Intel.
...
derStandard.at: Coming back to the licensing of codecs from Microsoft. As far as I understand, that's only valid for applications running in the web browser, is that correct?
de Icaza: Yes, that is true. Basically Microsofts position is that they are willing to redistribute the codecs towards the goal of making Silverlight universal, but they are not willing to pay the bill for every Linux user's desktop, as they have to pay MPEG LA and such groups for the licenses.
derStandard.at: And it's going to be a separate package?
de Icaza: Yes, we'll be making it as easy as possible to install, but it is a Microsoft product and it is going to come from the Microsoft web site.
Het interview is gepubliceerd op 3 augustus 2008. Het volledige interview is te lezen op http://derstandard.at/?url=/?id=1216918402134