Silverlight 2.0 release date looking like August

While it hasn't been announced yet (as far as I know), most people are expecting a Silverlight 2.0 beta at MIX and the beta should have a whole bunch of new features. However the big question has been when Silverlight 2.0 is actually going to ship. According to a source that I got last week it sounds like Silverlight 2.0's current internal ETA is in August of this year.

Now that I'm on the inside at Adobe I know how easy it is for schedules to change, so I'm not sure I would put too much stock in this. But I think the source is sound because it came about as a result of living in Seattle. I ran into someone who works on the Silverlight team and they were pretty open about the schedule (and other people at Microsoft gave me a "no comment" when I asked about the August schedule). There are a couple of interesting angles to this. One, I can't find any big event around August that Microsoft would use to promote Silverlight 2.0, so this may be in a vacuum. Secondly, the actual release will be after the Olympics which means everyone who goes to watch video on NBC will be installing a beta player. I'd assume they'll have the upgrade mechanism in a smooth state but it's interesting that the bulk of Silverlight 2.0 downloads could be on a beta player.

An August release date would make it a year and a half from Silverlight 1.0 to Silverlight 2.0 which is indicative of the fact that there are a lot of feature changes but it's still a big leap. Another tidbit is that with an August release date, doing the math for the Linux version (6 to 12 months lag) puts it in early to mid 2009.

If I hear more info, I'll let you know.