Microsoft only produces the Silverlight runtime for Windows and OS X, leaving Linux support to Novell's Mono project, which produces Moonlight. Mono developers argue that Mono is not chasing tail lights, but in the case of Moonlight it very clearly is.

Moonlight 3.0, which puts Microsoft's Silverlight rich Internet plug-in software on Linux and Unix platforms, is now being offered in an alpha release, according to Web pages from the Mono project, which has jurisdiction over Moonlight. The release features infrastructural capabilities designed to move Moonlight closer to the capabilities of Silverlight 3, said Novell, which sponsors Mono.

The Novell-backed Moonlight project announced a beta of Moonlight 2.0, an open source Linux/Unix clone of Microsoft's Silverlight media framework. Moonlight 2.0 offers improved media streaming enabling media codecs like Ogg Vorbis, Ogg Theora, and BBC Dirac, via a runtime for its sister project, .NET clone Mono.

If you're like me, you don't like proprietary video and audio codecs. Be that as it may, some sites, like NBC's Olympics site, use Microsoft's proprietary Silverlight streaming technology. Until recently, if you were using Linux that meant you couldn't watch videos from these sites at all. Until now.

While betas of Microsoft's Silverlight 3 platform have been available for a number of months after being announced in the last half of 2008, their free software implementation of Silverlight, which is known as Moonlight and developed largely by Novell with the Mono developers, has lagged behind.

Mono defence and advocacy in social networks, courtesy of Novell/Mono staff

ECMA is seemingly unable to offer answers regarding Microsoft Moonlight and Mono

The other day, Novell's Mono Project, announced the beta release of Moonlight 2. IN theory, this enables Linux users to watch Microsoft Silverlight encoded content. Of course, that begs the question: "What Silverlight content?"

Mono blogs that require Mono (and Moonlight) for their content to be viewed - is this the future?