Silverlight, Apollo... Lock In?

a summary of mark pilgrim's silly season

mark pilgrim goes on a characteristically cynical rant against new vendor-specific 'ria' platforms (silverlight from microsoft, and apollo from adobe). (ria means 'rich internet application')

Although it's quite a short rant, who has time for prose? Here's the cartoon version:

(i may have left out some of his points)

(p.s. personally, i'm not too worried about 'lock-in'. Should I be?)

'Voice of reason' on Fri, 04 May 2007 04:14:26 GMT, sez:

Of course you should be worried. Open standards is the basis of having a competetive market and in extent a free world.

'Binaryjam' on Fri, 04 May 2007 06:30:06 GMT, sez:

No I don't think so, you start a project pick a technology and off you go, whether thats provided by a vendor or Open source you've made a commitment and money is invested.

Considering how often the web is redesigned chances are your project will be re-done in anything from 6 months to two years anyway.

'Zooba' on Fri, 04 May 2007 08:33:45 GMT, sez:

"Open standards is the basis of having a competetive market and in extent a free world."

Since when? Different products each with their own pros and cons is what creates a competitive market. When everything works identically there's no competition. Whether the standards are open or closed is irrelevant.

'Witwe Bolte' on Fri, 04 May 2007 09:57:22 GMT, sez:

Open standards make it easier for competitive products. The goal of user lock-in is to eliminate competition by creating a barrier that a different vendor cannot overcome. As long as Silverlight is just another browser plugin there should be no need to worry.

'Shog9' on Fri, 04 May 2007 12:26:44 GMT, sez:

Should you be worried about lock-in? Depends.
Code is cheap. Well, maybe not cheap, but like Binaryjam states, redesigns happen often enough that you can probably move away from a bad technology once you realize that it's a dead-end. Of course, if you're designing something you *know* won't be touched again for years, then hitching it to a new, proprietary tech is probably a bad idea - think of all the crummy intranet sites still forcing the installation of dodgy ActiveX controls.

However, your data is not cheap. If your platform of choice is going to lock you into a particular means of storing your data (or especially *your users' data*), then you want to think long and hard about it. And i'm not just talking about the stuff that lives in a database - form / report designs are something that you'll probably invest a lot of time and money in getting right, and if they're stuck in a format that can only be used by a single platform then you are in trouble. If Silverfish dies a lonely death a year from now, do you *really* want to be stuck supporting it?

'Toby' on Fri, 29 Aug 2008 00:05:33 GMT, sez:

Oh, how can the whole world miss the point?

SILVERLIGHT IS LOCK-IN. That's ALL it is. That's its whole reason for being.

What is not lock-in? Open standards. That's how your 2008 browser can view a site from 1991.

Use Silverlight and you have to pass the Microsoft toll gate, now and forever. Plus, their stuff just isn't very good. They've been irrelevant for years. Use open standards. Have a life.

'lb' on Fri, 29 Aug 2008 01:43:22 GMT, sez:

@Toby:

>Use Silverlight and you have to pass the
>Microsoft toll gate, now and forever

Not quite true.

Moonlight is built on mono, which is open source.

Microsoft have opened up all of the standards they use for composing silverlight.

The microsoft silverlight plugins are just one implementation of an open standard.

lb

name


website (optional)


enter the word:
 

comment (HTML not allowed)

All viewpoints welcome. But the right to delete any post for any reason is reserved. Don't make me do it. Aim for constructiveness. Comments may be republished, emailed to your loved ones or printed and used as toilet paper. Also, I get particularly nasty on comment spam. It's not worth even trying to post comment spam here -- your html is escaped, and your links are given a rel='nofollow'. By attempting to post a comment, you understand that if the comment is considered spam, at my absolute discretion, your IP address may be used as the target of a prolonged distributed denial of service attack. Your electricity might suddenly stop working. Your car tyres will go mysteriously flat. You will suffer permanent hairloss. Your dreams will be filled with terrifying monsters. And in any case I reserve the right to record and publish your IP address.

 

TimeSnapper_{Know thyself!}

TimeSnapper is a life analysis system that stores and plays-back your computer use. It makes timesheet recording a breeze, helps you recover lost work and shows you how to sharpen your act.

 

NimbleText is a Powerful FREE Tool

Use it for:

• extracting data from text
• manipulating text
• generating code

It makes you look awesome. Use it right now! Go on! Hurry! Don't walk, run!