Silverlight Reaches the Terrible Twos

Today, Microsoft officially released Silverlight 2.0 to manufacturing. Scott Guthrie, Microsoft's corporate vice president of the .NET Developer division, made the announcement during a noon EDT conference call.

As I explained on Oct. 1, Microsoft has embarked on a month of developer announcements, released piecemeal ahead of the Professional Developers Conference, which commences on Oct. 27. It's a PR tactic that allows Microsoft to drum up daily press ahead of PDC and offers the company a lot more control over the messaging.

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Scott said Silverlight 2.0 and updates for Expression Studio 2.0 and Visual Studio 2008 would be available for download tomorrow, Oct. 14. The Silverlight 2.0 download will be about 4.5MB. Silverlight 1.0 or 2.0 Beta will automatically be updated—looks like whether or not users want it—"over the next couple of weeks," Scott said.

Microsoft also made some pseudo-open-source announcements that are anything but open. Skip to subhead "Not So Open as It Seems" for more on that.

I had to laugh. In a longstanding—and unbelievably bizarre—Microsoft marketing tactic, Scott denigrated the previous version. Why diminish Version X to promote Version Y? Scott described Silverlight 1.0 as a "basic media plug-in." Really? I wouldn't have guessed from last year's gussied-up Silverlight 1.0 marketing.

Today's Silverlight RTM was expected. It's the pace of development that's surprising. Microsoft announced Silverlight on April 16, 2007, in a crafty rebranding of Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere. The media and developers embraced Silverlight like it was something new, which WPF/E was not. Suddenly Silverlight was a beta. Silverlight Version 1.0 was released on Sept. 5, 2007. Microsoft announced Silverlight 2.0 Beta 2 in early June.

Silverlight Bundles Up
Silverlight is intended to compete with Flash, on the Web, for starters, and eventually on mobile devices. As I explained 18 months ago, Silverlight is part of a renewed Microsoft digital content/media bundling strategy. The big digital content bundling comes from VC-1, the standards-approved version of Windows Media Video.

Silverlight is heavily dependent on Windows Media Video, including VC-1. Developers can fairly easily take WMV formats into Silverlight. Microsoft's response to Flash video is the WMV content producers already have. Microsoft can go to content producers and suggest that they create video in one format, VC-1, for any kind of broadcast—television, Web or portable devices like cell phones. Silverlight 2.0 adds digital rights management, using Microsoft's PlayReady technology.

"Adobe's still pretty entrenched with Flash, but Microsoft keeps tying Silverlight to other portfolio elements like Live and content like the Olympics," said Roger Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies. "Redmond is likely to give San Jose a run for its money."

During this morning's conference call, Scott said NBC streamed 70 million Olympics videos in Silverlight 2.0 and that the average Web site visitor stayed 27 minutes. New Silverlight customers include AOL (for mail), Blockbuster, Home Shopping Network, Toyota and Yahoo Japan.

"One in four consumers now [has] access to a machine with Silverlight installed," Scott asserted. In some countries, the number is closer to 50 percent, he said. What's Flash now? Eight or nine out of 10? That's how U.S. consumer adoption looked in 2006, when I was a trade analyst, according to JupiterResearch (now Forrester Research) surveys.

Digital media/content bundling is just one aspect of Microsoft's integration approach. Silverlight also ties to development tools and, more importantly, to .NET. Microsoft has started moving its highly trafficked Web properties to Silverlight, compelling visitors to download the plug-ins to view some products. Heck, Silverlight installs with Mac Office 2008.

"The Microsoft juggernaut is just going to keep on coming on improving Silverlight and making it a necessary component of more and more of Microsoft's advanced capabilities," Roger emphasized. "You wanna see the show? Get Silverlight! It's right out of the hallowed Redmond playbook."

Not So Open as It Seems
During the conference call, Scott asserted that because of expanded .NET Framework support, Silverlight 2.0 gives developers "the ability to use any programming language that you want," including C#, IronPython, IronRuby, JavaScript and Visual Basic. We'll see about that. Scott claimed that .NET isn't required on the server, but it sure is for the client. Microsoft's .NET is core to Silverlight.

Flash-Silverlight competition isn't just about software but development platforms and philosophies. Adobe isn't a .NET developer. Microsoft is trying to trump Adobe through .NET integration and ties to its other technologies. Today's companion announcements wrongly suggest increased openness and interoperability, which would be a competitive problem for Adobe. There is none, if open source is the measure.

Microsoft will provide funds to France-based IT solutions provider and Eclipse Foundation member Soyatec to lead a project integrating advanced Silverlight development capabilities into the Eclipse IDE (integrated development environment). During today's conference call, Brian Goldfarb, Microsoft's director of developer platforms, said that "final bits will ship second half of next year." The project will be submitted to the Eclipse Foundation as an open Eclipse project and be released under the Eclipse Public License Version 1.0.

Initial support will be for Windows, Brian said. Other platforms will come later. Interpretation: Eclipse IDE support's first beneficiary is Microsoft.

Microsoft also announced the Silverlight Control Pack and plans to publish technical specifications for Silverlight XAML (Extensible Application Markup Language). Microsoft will release the goodies under the Microsoft Permissive License/Microsoft Public License.

I sometimes wonder how much these Microsoft executives sit around and brainstorm messaging. Brian decidedly referred to the Microsoft Permissive License/Microsoft Public License only as the MPL. He strongly insinuated openness in his description of the licensing release. But it was the use of MPL that got me, because of the GPL, or General Public License, covering open source. The connotations of GPL are all about openness. The "M" before the PL picks up some of those connotations, particularly in context of how Brian described the openness of the licensing. By the way, Microsoft's official literature refers to "Ms-PL" not MPL. Ms-PL is nothing like GPL.

Silverlight Goes Immobile
Where Silverlight makes the most sense is on mobile devices. Flash is more widely adopted on mobile devices than is Silverlight, which hasn't yet been adopted much of anywhere.

"We are committed to bringing Silverlight to mobile devices," Scott said during today's conference call. "We will be jointly porting Silverlight to Symbian." He referred to an announcement that Microsoft and Nokia made in March for the S60. But Flash already is available for S60 mobiles. Microsoft will play catchup with Adobe.

"Right now, we're in private testing with a number of partners," Scott emphasized. "It is something we're working on."

Flash makes the most sense on smart phones, which, according to Gartner, Nokia and Research In Motion, are the market-share leaders. But it's my expectation that when third-quarter shipment data is released, Apple will have snatched second place from RIM. Flash isn't available for the iPhone, although about two weeks ago Adobe indicated the software was ready and waiting Apple's approval.

For all Microsoft's big talk today, Silverlight isn't yet where it eventually needs to be most—mobile phones. Cell phone manufacturers ship more mobiles in one year than the entire install base of Windows PCs. RIAs (rich Internet applications) on PCs are today, but mobile applications are tomorrow. Scott promises mobile Silverlight, but promises are cheap.

What's that Talking Heads lyric? "We're on a road to nowhere."

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