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.Net has a standard library, that's why.

And a 200mb installer.

Silverlight's installer is 4MBish...

And the .Net installer? If you're using the .Net standard library, it's reasonable to assume .Net is a prerequisite.

Looks this has now been addressed with .Net 4.0. It's back down to 48MB.

Silverlight contains a large subset of the .Net Framework in that 5Mb install. You don't need (and it can't use) the full .Net Framework.

Didn't know that, thanks! 5mb is indeed quite reasonable.