Silverlight is an interesting technology, and the name itself gives even more evidence of the backwards nature this technology will provide from Microsoft.
Before Silverlight was officially named the technology was referred to as WPF/E or Windows Presentation Foundation / Everywhere. This is very interesting since it seems like Microsoft would have had a code-name of Silverlight and an official name of WPF/E, like how Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) was code named Indigo (which sounds a lot better) or Windows Presentation Foundation was code named Avalon again this seems like a new Microsoft.
Another backwards thing about Silverlight is that it will run on Fire Fox, and Apple computers. This is amazing and shows some backpedaling of yesteryear, and you must wonder if Google or Firefox didn’t exist if this would ever have happened. It seems like checks and balances are a good thing and keep capitalism in check with morality and community values.
The .NET frameworks new DLR (Dynamic Language Run-time) will embrace popular open source languages (Ruby, Python as IronRuby and IronPython) which validates what they are doing in the OSS world, it shows Microsoft is dynamic and can change.
