Will Silverlight Control Pack kill the component ecosystem?
As part of the Silverlight 2 announcement, Scott Guthrie also wrote:
Today we are also announcing the “Silverlight Control Pack” – which will deliver dozens of more controls that you can use with Silverlight 2. We will continually add new controls to the control pack over the next few months (we expect to ultimately have more than 100 controls total). The first release of the control pack will include controls like TreeView, DockPanel, WrapPanel, ViewBox, Expander, NumericUpDown, AutoComplete and more. All controls will ship with full source, and with a OSI license that allows you to modify and use the source for any purpose.
Will this kill the component market? Of course not! It will raise the bar of innovation for control vendors. We’ll have to do a lot more than come up with interesting widgets. The good news for Silverlight developers is that we’ll see a wide range of new components from third party vendors. These will go much beyond what we’ve seen in regular component UI widget suits, and help you get more done in less time. It’s an exciting time to be a Windows developer.
Publishing these controls with a very non-restrictive OSI license is a very wise decision on Microsoft’s part. I’m really impressed with the way Microsoft is embracing open source nowadays. I think they’re finally understanding the benefits and finding their place in this brave new world.