Microsoft Shines Open Source Initiative on Silverlight

The authoring tools for Microsoft's Silverlight, the new rich-media Web plug-in,  will soon be available for those working on Macs and on open source programs.  The software giant hopes to accelerate the use of Silverlight on different operating systems through the funding of a project to be undertaken by Soyatec, a France-based IT solutions provider and Eclipse Foundation member.  The announcement was made today.

Currently, Silverlight authoring tools are largely done PC's, which is surely a limitation to its use as so many in the video production field use Macs.

The company also announced today the release of Silverlight 2.0.  Here's the take on the news by Mary Jo Foley at ZDNet.

Last month at MIT, I interviewed Craig Mundie, Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer  He spoke about developments with Silverlight. We have posted the video above.

On Friday, I interviewed Brian Goldfarb, Group Product Manager for Silverlight about today's news.  I interviewed him via Skype (me in NY Brian in Redmond) and the results was not as good as we would like. Sorry about that.  But, it's great to catch up with Brian on all the developments with Silverlight.  He says the program now resides on computers reaching one in four consumers worldwide.  His interview is posted below:

-- Andy Plesser, Executive Producer