I can't help it, I read EULAs. - DeWitt Clinton

Interesting that the Beta 2 EULA stipulates that "you may not offer Silverlight applications on a commercial basis, such as under a paid subscription or on ad-funded web pages" and that "We may change it for the final, commercial version. We also may not release a commercial version." However, it also states that it the EULA is amended with the terms here: http://www.microsoft.com/silverl... - DeWitt Clinton

And those additional terms state that "Notwithstanding the non-commercial use restrictions in the License Terms, you may deploy your Silverlight applications (as defined in the License Terms) for commercial purposes under the following conditions:" ... Those conditions are entirely benign, mostly just requiring you to stop using Beta 2 within 7 days after the final release comes out, and therefore switch over to the final licensing terms. - DeWitt Clinton

All this makes me very curious as to what Microsoft will do with Silverlight in the end... Will separate commercial-use licenses be required? Will open source implementations of the runtime be allowed? Will open source *applications* written on Silverlight be allowed? Too soon to speculate further, though. - DeWitt Clinton

Okay, one last note. The Silverlight Beta 2 license specifically *prohibits* building open source applications on top of it today. From the link above, "You may also use the software to design, develop and test sample code and programs that you (i) make available to other designers and developers in source code form as examples of how to use Microsoft Silverlight or (ii) deploy to end users for non-commercial purposes. " - DeWitt Clinton

The "non-commercial purposes" clause is a restriction of use, which is incompatible with any open source license. So if you write a Silverlight application using the Beta 2, you are prohibited from allowing it to be commercially used, except under the amended license linked terms to above, and thus you can *not* release your code under an open source license (which by definition, can not contain such a restriction of use). - DeWitt Clinton

Posted about this here: http://blog.unto.net/opensou... - DeWitt Clinton