Bug#501190: ITP: moonlight -- open source implementation of Microsoft Silverlight

[Robert Millan <rmh@aybabtu.com>]

On Sun, Oct 05, 2008 at 01:07:16PM +0100, Jo Shields wrote:
> Package: wnpp
> Severity: wishlist
> Owner: Jo Shields <directhex@apebox.org>
> 
> 
> * Package name    : moon
>   Version         : 0.8.1
>   Upstream Author : Everaldo Canuto <ecanuto@novell.com> and others
> * URL             : http://www.mono-project.com/Moonlight
> * License         : LGPL-2, Ms-PL, Expat
>   Programming Lang: C, C#
>   Description     : open source implementation of Microsoft Silverlight
> 
>  [...]

Hi,

The description is misleading.  This is (AFAICT) not an implementation of a
standard but a clone product, like wine, and much like wine it lags behind to
the real one.  Please make that clear in the description to avoid leading users
(and specially web developers) to believe Silverlight is cross-platform.  For
example, the wine description reads:

  "This is still a work in progress and many applications may still not work."


Also, this program depends heavily on codecs, and you didn't specify which ones
you plan to use:

  - If those are the binary codecs from Microsoft, make it clear you plan to
    upload to contrib (not Debian).

  - If you want to use ffmpeg, please clarify the legal situation wrt license
    incompatibility mentioned by Moonlight's authors in:

      http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2007/Sep-05.html

    which appears to have prevented them from using ffmpeg, and forced them
    into licensing blobs from Microsoft.  Unfortunately they aren't very
    explicit about what the problem is, but it is certain there is one, so
    please find that out, and have it discussed in debian-legal.

Thanks

-- 
Robert Millan

  The DRM opt-in fallacy: "Your data belongs to us. We will decide when (and
  how) you may access your data; but nobody's threatening your freedom: we
  still allow you to remove your data and not access it at all."