02.27.08
eWeek: “Salesforce Says No to Silverlight”
Salesforce not interested in anti-Linux tools
As this new article suggests, companies do not trust Microsoft. The article’s headline is “Salesforce Says No to Silverlight”.
Pay attention to the following new bit of information which shows us just why Salesforce is right.
Some other products lose a little oomph, after SP1 installation. My favorite: New York Times Reader. This is the software that Microsoft has touted, like forever, as the showcase native Windows Presentation Foundation application. No longer—or at least not for awhile.
We explained before why Flash not “Silverlight from a different company”, despite the fact that Flash is adding DRM. Consider again this alarming reminder from Joe Wilcox (Microsoft Watch):
.Net versus the Net
While Adobe and Microsoft share similar goals, their development approaches and philosophies differ. For starters, Adobe isn’t a .Net shop. AIR strongly favors existing and popular Web and Web-to-desktop development technologies, such as AJAX, Flash, Flex and HTML. Microsoft leverages .Net Framework, Silverlight, Windows Media Video, Windows Presentation Foundation and XAML. While Microsoft’s development toolset also supports AJAX, HTML and even Flash, the greater emphasis is the company’s own technologies.
Avoid, avoid and avoid Silverlight by all means possible. If people complain loudly enough about the use of Silverlight, it won’t grow (especially not outside Microsoft’s ‘tutf’ of the World Wide Web, assuming it leaves Yahoo alone). █
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.