From internetnews.com:
“Microsoft’s technology evangelist is offering “friendly” suggestions to Mozilla open source browser groups and calling for more discussion about how the two sides can benefit from upcoming enhancements in Longhorn, the next version of Windows.” Read more at internetnews.com. Here’s a really interesting excerpt from Robert Scoble’s blog.
Longhorn to Mozilla: Can’t We All Get Along?
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>> Scoble told internetnews.com that he is a user of Mozilla’s next generation FireFox browser and thinks it’s great, but could also be so much better.
Is he REALLY a user of Firefox or just giving lip service to seem “friendlier”? Will he complain internally (Scoble works for MS) when he has to access IE sites? Will he say “Hey lets make our applications cross-browser and standard’s compliant”? Answer NOT LIKELY!
The reason why I use FireFox or Thunderbird is because it is a good application and cross platform. I use three platforms (Windows, OSX, and Linux) and on each platform the same mail files or bookmarks will work!
This is what Microsoft does (Yes, I’ve been reading Proudly Serving my Corporte Masters): Evangelism. They’re now doing it with open source developers. Users aren’t the most important market. What’s important is convincing developers to write software for their operating system so Microsoft can convince OEMs to ship it with their computers.
“You don’t take advantage of WinFS. These things are not threats to you. They are platform-level investments we’re making for you to use. If you don’t use them, I’m sure some other browser will (Opera?) and I’ll switch to that.”. So, he wants Mozilla to break its cross-platform ability? I’d bet on this. Or should he help Linux/MacOS X/etc folks properly implement Avalon/WinFS/other Microsoft propieratary technologies ? I doubt. Is he getting scared of ongoing OSS components integration ? Maybe. That’d explain why did he publish his ‘friendly’ suggestions AFTER Mozilla and GNOME joint announcements.
You have a good point. Part of what Makes Mozilla/Firefox great is that you can use it on multiple operating systems. If they were to implement WinFS, Avalon, and the whole 9 yards, I don’t think that would be possible anymore, or at least the Linux/Mac versions would probably be missing that functionality.
On the plus side though, if other browsers can implement these technologies, then at least us Windows users won’t get stuck having to use IE
I’m sure that the two sides can benefit from upcoming enhancements in Mozilla’s products.
Their track history alone makes any actions such as this suspect. I don’t trust them.
Nor do I want to don a tin hat either. I can only hope this will bring good for everyone and not just good for the microsofties pocketbooks. But I have a feeling MS is waking up to the fact that when Mozilla and Firefox are finished, IE will take a tremendous effort to bring it up to par.
And as it is, if you are still using IE for browsing, you have no idea what you’re missing. At least use Avant Browser. It has most of the features and a decent default setup, but it’s no where as customizable, and especially in the case of Firefox, have nearly as many plugins.
But I degress… don’t trust MS, don’t know if this is a good thing, but rather think it’s a bad thing, hope Mozilla keeps it together so everyone benefits from relationship to Longhorn and is not something to promote lock-in.
Microsoft is giving browser development tips to Mozilla?
Ha…
Muahahhahhahahhahahahha.
What’s next? Telling Linux developers how to develop a secure OS? I needed a good laugh today. Thanks.
Microsoft should be thankful that, for a number of people, Mozilla, Gaim and OpenOffice.org make life with Windows almost bearable.
I believe he’s really trying to “help” the mozilla foundation — or rather helping MS by helping MF. You see, imagine mozilla worked REALLY REALLY better on Longhorn than, say, Linux. Like, who gives a damn if IE isn’t used by anyone, as long as Windows is? IE is (well, in a way) Free as in Beer, and only pays itself indirectly. He probably thinks that people would rather switch OSes than browsers, but i doubt that.
As a Opera user, i really hope Opera doesn’t get in this Longhorn fever as well — that’d be the day i’d switch.
Is this the beginning of the end for Longhorn?
I am sure that some enterprising young developer will start a Longhornized Firefox soon after the developer releases of the final product are given away.
that is what Camino is all about.
Uhoh, Wolf in Sheeps Clothing! Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing!
It is obvious, MS is a little nervous about the market share the Moz browsers are getting. They don’t care about developers, though. This is obvious because they are adding support for popup blocking and tabs to IE for XP SP2, but they aren’t fixing the bugs developers have harped at them to fix for 3+ years.
To me, it seems they wanted to let the web stagnate for a few years since they have so much market share. Then, introduce all these new technologies that will only work in Windows and with IE. It will kill two birds with one stone: alternate OSs and alternate browsers.
But, something happened that they didn’t expect: Joe User started to use Mozilla. Although, it isn’t a large % (to me large is 10-15% and rising) of users, it could be by the time Longhorn rolls around. If this happens then MS’s plans to lock out alternate OSs will be shot because developers won’t use their technology since too many people won’t have it.
Instead, they are now anticipating that greater market share and trying to get the Moz developers to use the Longhorn based technologies. Essentially, concede some on the browser front, but still try to get platform lock in.
There’s MS blood in the water, and the Mozilla sharks are circling.
Mozilla has the opportunity to position itself as a way to transition away from the MS lock in. But, this is only true if they play their cards right.
The point that Scoble is missing is that:
1) Mozilla is an open source project, and thus by definition should favor open standards/implementations/projects. Thus trying to tie it into Loghorn would not necceserally be in it’s best interest.
2) Scoble is focusing purly on underlying implementation
issues (Avalon? Who cares who draws the GUI, so XUL could use Avalon to do the drawing if anybody really cared), and completly ignores what Mozilla is considering a threat: XAML. Notice how Scoble didn’t mention that once. Not because of any conspiracy theories, but because it really is a closed implementation and it really is a threat for mozilla and non-MS browsers.
3) If you read his comments he seems to think that Window is where Mozilla should focus most of its development towards. Mozilla wanting to promote linux (or other open OSs) is a good thing for OSS but not for him.
“it allows you to do completely new things that are not possible in any platform today.”
Really? What does XALM do that can’t be done on any other platform? That’s a bold statement and actually untrue afaik.
He fails to give any real examples of what Mozilla would be able to do with these technologies. And if it was to do such great things then why do they want mozilla to do it and not keep it to themselves?
This whole thing makes absolutely no sense. There are things available on other platforms that isn’t available on Windows, should mozilla make itself depend on those techs as well?
Microsoft realizes there is a good application out there and they want to make sure that it works well with Longhorn. And the problem is? I’m sorry but the Mozilla team should be smart enough to at least hear what Microsoft has to say even if it is for their own selfish reasons. They are after all the major os currently out there. And who knows just maybe the mozilla team can use a couple of their ideas and suggestions.
Do you honestly believe that microsoft hasn’t done the same with other development teams? Get real.
Lot of conspiracy theories going on around here. Scoble has and does use Firfox and he’s passed on alot of questions and concerns from the community in general to the lead developers of the IE rendering and features engine. He’s probably doing more than anyone else to change opinion of Microsoft among the weblog world. Obviously, you guys missed that train.
Mozilla would gain alot of advantages by developing features that work inside of Microsoft Windows. Do you think development for IE will have stopped in the interm period? Do you really think Microsoft will let it slip that far when Mozilla is clearly pushing? No, they’ll attempt to develop but Mozilla is already much more in the general vacinitiy of what we look for in a browser now than IE is. Mozilla already has technology thats similar in respects to XMAL.
Really, I don’t think any of Scoble’s suggestions are out of line. To not make use of features that are available on a platform is stupid. Especially if it won’t cost you anything. Zeolotry has a purpose but this isn’t it.
I may be missing something but why would Mozilla/Firebird not be able to leverage Winfs without breaking its ability to be cross platform? It already works with FAT, NTFS, e2fs, reiser, etc…
As you look at internet explorer, it isn’t developed under the hood for years. Besides resolving some security issues. Adding a pop-up blocker is just an add-on, hell even google bar blocks pop-ups now.
What I think, the real question is, is the following.
Is microsoft looking for an IE replacement?
IE has aged, firefox and opera, invested a lot of resources in making a new start, Microsoft did that with windows. Now they know they also need a better browsers. Whey spend resources on a gap, which can take years, if you can get it for free nextdoor.
OSNews: You can do whatever you want in your posts, but here’s some advice: never call anything Robet Scoble says “interesting.”
He is about the least informed technologist armed with a blog the world has ever seen. It really is surprising he works for Microsoft. I know they recruit smart people, but Scoble must have slipped through luckily. Please don’t link to his blog ever again. It’s pure nonsense.
That is all.
I might be dumb but it seems to me that one approach that might be possible for mozilla to use to handle XAML + Avalon would be to build a parser that would work with XUL + SVG to emulate the functionality and eye candy of Avalon and would still remain cross platform. But then maybe not. Anyway no one really knows yet what Avalon will do.
Still a cross platform “emulation” would really stymie MS.
I may be missing something but why would Mozilla/Firebird not be able to leverage Winfs without breaking its ability to be cross platform? It already works with FAT, NTFS, e2fs, reiser, etc…
Because WinFS is not a filesytem.
well then why not just replace ie’s HTML engine with mozilla’s?
that would make sense.
“well then why not just replace ie’s HTML engine with mozilla’s?
that would make sense.”
Because Microsoft would have to admit failure as well as admitting that an open source product is better than their own. Microsoft has a completely anti-open source stance. They want to see open source come to an end…not enncourage it by admitting that an open source web browser is better than theirs (which it is).
As you look at internet explorer, it isn’t developed under the hood for years. Besides resolving some security issues. Adding a pop-up blocker is just an add-on, hell even google bar blocks pop-ups now.
What I think, the real question is, is the following.
Is microsoft looking for an IE replacement?
Longhorn pretty much is IE 7, among other things. Development on IE is not stagnant.
by Microsoft doesn’t work with anybody else ?
Do they fear that customers will use that to not jump on the bandwagon as soon as they (MS) want ? 🙂
Something has changed, really…
So let me get this straight, Firefox should not take advantage of Longhorn because Linux can’t keep up? Great strategy.
NEWSFLASH: XP-SP2 is just around the corner. That’s half a dozen less reasons for IE users to switch to Firefox.
So let me get this straight, Firefox should not take advantage of Longhorn because Linux can’t keep up? Great strategy.
No, because it’s cross platform. There are technologies in linux, OSX and BeOS that doesn’t exist for Windows (BFS for example). Should Mozilla take advantage of those as well? How far would you take it? Perhaps we should make a fork for every platform. Yay.
Nothing will stop you from using gecko in a more native browser. But Firefox should remain as platform independant as possible.
NEWSFLASH: XP-SP2 is just around the corner. That’s half a dozen less reasons for IE users to switch to Firefox.
True.
I am not a conspiracy theorist. I just think people like Scoble approach these discussions from a completely oblique angle to people interested in open source and cross-platform functionality. He doesn’t understand that no matter how good Avalon & friends might be, if Mozilla commits to them, that immediately means Mozilla is relegating other platforms to second-class citizenry. That is unless those technologies are open standards that can be implemented elsewhere. (Again, who knows… maybe that is even possible, but its a dicey proposition)
But, when Scoble says XAML “allows you to do completely new things that are not possible in any platform today.”, I have to really stand up and protest. That is exactly the same claim that could be made of Mozilla/XUL. Except that those things are possible on many platforms, not just one.
Really, though… a dose of reality here: XUL and XAML are simply XML DTDs describe GUI elements. By themselves they are nothing, really. They are not programming languages, but simply markup languages. As such, when a XUL or XAML document is rendered by the runtime interpreter, that simply represents the beginning state of those GUI elements, which can then be scripted or manipulated by various means. There’s no magic here. The only reason XUL is special is precisely because the same elements can be rendered on… yes: multiple platforms. So the real magic to that is the Mozilla Gecko rendering engine, and the power of [a good implementation of] Javascript, plus the fact that any other language can be “plugged in” to that scripting system.
So, if there is something that can be done with XAML that cannot be done with Mozilla/XUL, what is it? I suspect that Scoble really means WinFS, because that is the only thing being talked about here that represents a real paradigm change. But if WinFS is really a relational DBMS with a filesystem front-end, again, where’s the magic? Something like that could be done with PostgreSQL, for example. In fact, I really wish I had the time and talent to do precisely that, but I hope other OS developers take note
.
Anyone with more knowledge of Avalon/WinFS/XAML care to explain what else about it might be so “impossible” to do on other platforms? (Scoble, if you’re reading this, I welcome your comments directly ;-))
“So let me get this straight, Firefox should not take advantage of Longhorn because Linux can’t keep up? Great strategy.”
Woah. Mozilla may use some features of the new MS OS, but they aren’t pressed. It seems that MS are trying to press them, which is funny at least. I for one am expecting anxiously the killer MS OS after Longhorn is released… lol.
“So let me get this straight, Firefox should not take advantage of Longhorn because Linux can’t keep up? Great strategy.”
Should? Who decides that? Robert Scoble must have a serious problem obtaining the Mozilla Firefox source. I suggest we help him, so he can start coding what he suggests.
– In the last few years, Mozilla’s new products have gained less than one percent market share from IE. In fact, Netscape has continuted to LOSE market share to IE.
– IE development is certainly not stagnant. A new version will be out anytime soon now in XP SP 2.
– Microsoft still doesn’t care about fixing IE’s CSS flaws. Sigh.
“[…]. Something like that could be done with PostgreSQL, for example. In fact, I really wish I had the time and talent to do precisely that, but I hope other OS developers take note
.”
ReiserFS4 will have (or already has) this great, innovating feature…
Every new feature in IE only or Win XP has be available for mozilla and other browsers for several years. i have been using Mozilla since .9 and found it to be a better overall browser than IE since that time. MS is playing catchup with IE. These features should of been added a long time ago.
As for marketshare the whole notion is screwed up. Do you count computers, or users. Do you count installations or the number of people who use each instalation. Under the true multi user OS’s(linux, unix, freeBSD) Mozilla can be used concurrently by multiple people logged into one server. One installation used by a dozen people only counts as one in MS world unless they by a license for each person.
Confused yet?
dpi: “Should? Who decides that? Robert Scoble must have a serious problem obtaining the Mozilla Firefox source. I suggest we help him, so he can start coding what he suggests.”
Or better yet a subfurtive campaign to accidentally get Microsoft engineers to look at Open Source code so that it pollutes their knowledge… oh hang on that only works in reverse!
WinFS has no features that mozilla could use,
XAML and avalon are for windows only, and are useless to other platforms since Microsoft has and is patenting the every line of code to “protect” their IP. So the whole thing will be useless because Open Source won’t be able to use any item that MS Patents.
So I ask what’s the point???
Open Source has never stolen propertiery code. If you are refering to SCO well SCO is now down to saying some functions that are part of the Open Standard that is Unix works the same way. They have yet to show one line of directly infringing code.
Now Propertiery Companies are using Open Source code to take shortcuts on their own projects. That my friend is stealing.
In answer to the Microsoft minion’s first question:
Q: Can’t We All Get Along?
A: According to history, you screwed Apple, SUN, and Netscape. Lets not talk about screwing your customers with these outrageous pricing schemes. So no, the answer is a big fat NO!
Secondly, who is this m0r0n to be giving advice?! First off, secure your own OS and software. When you get that done son and establish REAL trust between your company and the rest of the world, than come back to the Mozilla open source community and talk. Until than, keep thy blog/mouth shut.
XAML and avalon are for windows only, and are useless to other platforms since Microsoft has and is patenting the every line of code to “protect” their IP. So the whole thing will be useless because Open Source won’t be able to use any item that MS Patents.
So I ask what’s the point???
The point is to get Mozilla using patented technology so that they can be sued for patent infringement in a few years to eliminate them as competition. It’s a standard tactic for Microsoft. Just because they aren’t collecting royalties on the patents now doesn’t mean it will stay that way forever. That’s one of the nasty things about patents – you can change your mind about royalties and infringement at any time. You can wait a few years and then go after infringers. It’s one of the reasons software patents must be eliminated.
“If you don’t use them, I’m sure some other browser will (Opera?) and I’ll switch to that.”
Is that a threat? That means Mozilla would lose all of that revenue from this well poisoner.
They should show some legally binding documents about the status of mono WRT software patents etc.
It would really help the adoption of .NET if the relevant ECMA specs were really RAND *and* royalty free. So confirming this would be in their own interest.
But the OSS community won’t rely on a promise some microsoft emloyee has given miguel d’icasa on a mailing list.
You people amaze me. “We won’t be fooled again”, “It won’t cost anything more”, “Offering real advice”, etc, etc.
Funny how the Microsoft zealots rag on the OSS zealots. News flash people, a zealot is a zealot regardless of which side of the fence they homestead.
Funnier still is the fact that none of this changes some simple but very true facts:
Microsoft is a convicted monopolist.
Developer mind-share _IS_ moving away from Microsoft. (This concept I think will elude and be missed by quiet a few of you people around here – It _IS_ a major problem for a monopolist in the technology business)
Doing business with Microsoft is costly. This cost is directly proportional to the amount of business they can take from you.
Microsoft’s only obligation is to its shareholders. Unless you are one; you are simply a revenue channel for them – nothing more.
Microsoft has a much higher failure rate for innovation than success.
Microsoft has much higher success for stifling innovation than failure.
When a major worm/virus/exploit takes place it seems to bring down the worlds computers that are connected with one exception: The backbone that builds the infrastructure*. Any coincidence that the technologies in place are almost anything _BUT_ Microsoft products?
Based on the above facts that can _NOT_ be refuted, why should anybody competent listen to anything Microsoft has to say at this point?
While I am amazed at the daftness of some people I am sure some will just ignore my thoughts and write me off as on OSS zealot…A zealot is a zealot after all.
*HINT: For any CIO’s & up or any other non-IT competent people that may be reading, corporate headquarters, hubs, and call centers are not the infrastructure in this context; it’s the “things” that connect “all yours” with “all theirs” and “those others out there”.
Best comment ever, but unfortunatelly you should post it on his blog.
Firefox is the shiznit… I use it on all my windows machines, I even changed the icons to the IE icon on my parents PC and downloaded the luna skin so they have no clue.
The best scenario I say would be that a variant of firefox be longhorn enhanced (like camino on MacOS X). I doubt the internet will change that much so people will have to use that browser on their windows boxes but it would at least give them a choice to take advantage of the features. Mozilla should have asked MS to stop making up their own standards so other browsers aren’t locked out of certain places.
“According to history, you screwed Apple, SUN, and Netscape. Lets not talk about screwing your customers with these outrageous pricing schemes. So no, the answer is a big fat NO!”
apple was bigger and generally regarded to have a better product than ms but yet ms won in the end: answer, consumers chose ms based on better pricing.
Sun was bigger and had a more powerful network os and server solutions compared to ms yet ms is winning in the end: answer, ms provides a product at better pricing and businesses chose to buy it.
outrageous pricing schemes: last time i checked ms solutions cost less than apple, sun unix, ibm unix, hp unix, etc. and consumers of all stripes chose to buy ms.
the market actually seems to love ms. the only people that don’t like them are their competitors that lose to them (so they sue) and zealots.
the market speaks everyday: ms sales of desktop and server oses keep going up. until the zealots can convince the market otherwise, the pricing scheme will stay in place (i can charge what the market will bear and until something comes along that is better or cheaper or whatever i have no obligation to alter what the market is willingly buying.)
that ends in a voice over saying ” It’s good to play together”
The problem is that “playing together” is something that
MS’s corporate DNA does not allow.
To everyone ranting about Mozilla being cross-platform and so not being interested in anything platform specific, I say to you:
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/camino/
Surely the same can be done for Longhorn.
The very fact that MS is even acknowledging a non-IE browser is huge. Maybe its a fallout of antitrust. Like it or not MS is here to stay. Like it or not Longhorn is the future of OSes on the Windows platform. Not taking advantage of Longhorn-specific features would make the mozilla browser family “crippled”, and unable to take advantage of things like WinFS, the new display subsystem, etc. etc. in the best way possible. Granted there are a lot of 95/98/NT/2k/XP boxes out there that will still continue to run for a long time, but sooner or later they will meet the fate of Win 95/Me. Making optimizations might break compatibility, but if it can help foster increased use of Mozilla/Firefox, I see no reason why they shouldn’t go the extra mile of creating a longhorn-tailored implementation of the browsers. How about creating two code-bases?
“To everyone ranting about Mozilla being cross-platform and so not being interested in anything platform specific, I say to you:”
That’s not a related comparison. We are not talking about how_the Mozilla interface is implemented, but about exactly what Gecko itself will be used to render. Embedding the Gecko engine inside Cocoa still doesn’t change the fact that Gecko itself is a cross-platform HTML and XUL renderer, and it also doesn’t change the fact that the GUI elements rendered by Gecko (whether expressed as XUL or dynamically generated in XPCOM) are cross-platform.
To be clear, the Mozilla GUI elements that can be rendered cross-platform are still implemented (internally) in some native form on each platform. There’s no reason that the Gecko engine for Mac couldn’t even use Cocoa for that matter. The whole point is that Mozilla framework users don’t need to concern themselves with the platform implementation.
“Still a cross platform “emulation” would really stymie MS.”
As Macromedia would say “RIA’s” ( http://www.macromedia.com/software/flex/ ) are were things are headed. I’ve especially been looking at this ( http://www.laszlosystems.com/demos/ ). It currently spits out SWF, but there’s nothing stopping them from having it spit out XUL, or a mixture (CSS, Javascript, applets, etc). There’s one thing that an alternative will need to do, as someone else pointed out. Interoperability. Currently you can move data from one app to another in Windows. I don’t know if current RIA’s will be “islands” when it comes to communicating with each other, but that will be necessary, if they are going to be the new replacements.
Mozilla is already tied into whatever OS they happen to target. All that matter is whether whatever Longhorn features they integrate Mozilla can co-habitate peacefully with the platform independent code that is already there.
If the code can be abstracted out and remain maintainable then it’s stupid not too use OS features. Because they already are!
Guys, keep in mind, this is a DEVELOPER at Microsoft, not “Microsoft the corporate entity.” There is a difference. Most developers at MS don’t care about the corporate strategy, nor do they know everything about every other project at MS. There are ~70 buildings on the Redmond campus alone, and who knows how many teams within each building.
Thus this is not “Microsoft” giving tips on how to build browsers, this is a guy who knows about longhorn suggesting that some of the applications he likes preemptively leverage the platform’s capabilties. You’d be surprised to know most devs at MS hate IE. They know it sucks, it’s not like somehow people at Redmond are blind to quality software. He even uses FireFox (as do many MS people, and it _does_ work on the corporate intranet, albeit with some display problems), so get off his case about IE. The IE team are the ones to complain about “MS browser” considerations.
Guys, keep in mind, this is a DEVELOPER at Microsoft, not “Microsoft the corporate entity.” There is a difference. Most developers at MS don’t care about the corporate strategy, nor do they know everything about every other project at MS.
Fat chance few here will listen to you, Phil..It’s a waste of time.
“Fat chance few here will listen to you, Phil..It’s a waste of time.”
speak for yourself stray. you are not the spokensperson here for the rest of us
“Guys, keep in mind, this is a DEVELOPER at Microsoft, not “Microsoft the corporate entity.” There is a difference. ”
Yes there’s a difference, but ignoring the messenger for a second. What is there in his message that should turn our NAY’s to YEAY’s? And even if it’s the lone voice speaking? These are MS “The Corporation’s” technologies we are speaking about.
“Why is it that MS zealots ALWAYS rely on the sad idea, “if MS is so bad, how come everyone is buying their products?” They think this answers everything… that all the criticism is just soar grapes from people whose products aren’t being sold.
They just can’t grasp the idea behind monopolies and their tactics to put other companies out of business. Microsoft has been convicted in a court of law more than once of being a monopoly and using illegal tactics to prevent competitors from competing in the marketplace. It all comes back to that – Microsoft is a convicted felon and doesn’t play by the rules. EVERYTHING they do MUST be scrutinized under a microscope to be sure it’s not just more dirty tricks.”
why is it that the first thing you do is resort to calling people names such as zealot as soon as you see something you disagree with?
first off, ms has been sued by select individuals, corporations, and govts. Not everyone agrees with those suits. Politics have anything to do with it? George Bush was elected president does that mean it is something all agree with? Note that the US Govt’s position changed in a hurry when one political party left and another took over.
I would say kinda like our two main parties in the USA, people are divided about the behavior of MS. A lot think it fully normal biz practice, and many believe it to be predatory.
Personally, I do not believe MS is an evil monopolist. At every stage of their development as a corporation they faced competitors bigger than them and with greater resources (ibm, apple, sun, novell, etc.) yet they beat them at their own game.
What is the end result for the consumer? Over the history of MS we have seen the technology they sell grow steadily less expensive yet more powerful. Over their entire history, their competitors have had viable products that lost in the market by end users purchase decisions.
Did you know that MS has the 5th highest brand reputation in the world? The highest of all technology companies?
i bet you didnt because you are secure in your position
see http://www.harrisinteractive.com/solutions/horizontal_reputation.as…
and learn what many people admire….despite their faults, their problems with security, despite all of the lawsuits, MS remains the most highly regarded technology company.
so as i alluded to earlier, ms is a victim of politics. they cant win it all i guess.
As to Microsoft, you guys should talk with us. We’re working underneath on the foundation. Mozilla let’s you make a new awesome browser that’d blow away what you’re doing today. Here’s a hint: I’m using not Internet Explorer 6 on Microsoft Windows XP. Works tolerably! But it COULD BE so much better! You don’t take advantage of cross platform compatibility. You don’t take advantage of XUL. You don’t take advantage of W3C standards. You don’t take advantage of open-source. You don’t take advantage of download managers, or tabbed browsing. You don’t take advantage of a whole-helluva-lotta-things. These things are not threats to you. They are cross-platform-level investments we’re making for you to use. Even though you don’t use any of them, every other browser that exists does (Opera? Firefox? Konqueror? Safari?) and I’m using those.
😉
MS remains the most highly regarded technology company.
This sais nothing about how good they are. This only shows how good people think they are. There’s a big difference there.
If people are ignorant and choose to believe whatever the advertisments tell them to believe then it’s what they’ll believe.
People often think that MS was responsible for bringing the internet to the avarage man. This is far from true, they just had the luck of being at the right place at the right time. Any other company would have done the job just as good or ever better.
It’s all about marketing, and eliminating competition. If people don’t know about anything else, then what kind of a perspective do they have? Ofcourse they’ll think that it’s the best thing out there since they don’t know about anything else.
but i am no elitist that thinks i know best and the world is filled with ignorant people. ms gets plenty of negative coverage in the main stream media….you dont have to an internet tech junkie to hear both sides on MS issues.
ordinary folks are capable of making well informed decisions about computers just as they are capable of picking their elected representatives.
or would you say otherwise and maybe some in the know group should select software and our leaders for us?
Will he complain internally (Scoble works for MS) when he has to access IE sites? Will he say “Hey lets make our applications cross-browser and standard’s compliant”? Answer NOT LIKELY!
Incompatibility with *internal* web sites is not a justification to attack IE or the web developers in a business, and even less of one at Microsoft.
A business has no obligation to make *internal* resources accessible and/or optimised for any pieces of software except the ones they support.
well then why not just replace ie’s HTML engine with mozilla’s?
Because it is GPLed.
Microsoft has a completely anti-open source stance.
No, they have an anti-*GPL* stand. GPL != Open Source.
ordinary folks are capable of making well informed decisions about computers just as they are capable of picking their elected representatives.
Actually, a lot of people tend to vote for whatever they use to vote for, or what their parents used to vote for. Not all people do this but a lot.
As for making decisions about computers. Well, what decisions are there to make if there’s only one alternative available? Who made sure that stores don’t sell boxes with other OSs? Who forced OEMs not to include any other OS on their boxes?
Other companies doesn’t get a fair chance to compete in this so-called “free market” because a certain company is blocking the way.
It’s easy to say that “people choose windows” but did they actually make that decision themselves? It’s only when people are presented with an alternative that they can make a decision.
I don’t read/watch mainstream media from the US much so I can’t really say what they write about MS there. But over here (Sweden) MS doesn’t get bad press, because journalists are so afraid of not being objective that they in many cases even take MS side just to make sure.
But it doesn’t really matter how much bad press MS gets anyway, because if it’s the only known alternative on the market, people will either choose that or simply not buy a computer.
It’s good that you have some faith in people, but you are naive if you don’t think that they can easily be tricked into believe certain things.
s/can/can’t/
there isnt just one choice as evidenced by the myriad os users right here on this board. people informed themselves and use many flavors of windows, linux, mac, beos, whatever.
sears used to sell macs
circuit city has sold macs on and off again forever
montgomery ward used to sell macs
the list goes on for companies that sell computers at retail
atari and commodores and other various brands at different stages were represented in standard retail outlets.
retailers pull products off their precious shelf space if it doesnt sell…or if the vendor sells so high they cant get any margin on the product….or the vendor implements price controls that leave the retailer little room to move or differentiate themselves from other retailers. retailers dont carry the inventory investment unless they believe they move the product and get some reasonable turn ratio.
the worlds largest retailer, walmart, is now selling linux pcs.
online retailing has totally changed the way people can be exposed to technology.
the education system in america was heavily mac up until the last 5 years or so yet all those people that were exposed to the platform chose in overwhelming numbers to still buy a pc with windows when they got jobs and had disposable income. they knew all about macs.
ms has no undue influence over what a retailer chooses to carry inventory of.
there isnt just one choice as evidenced by the myriad os users right here on this board. people informed themselves and use many flavors of windows, linux, mac, beos, whatever.
To the avarage joe there’s only one choice, especially if you skip your US-centric perspective you will realise that Macs are pretty much non-existant in the rest of the world other than special tools for people in the publishing business.
People here on OSNews have computers and operatingsystems as a hobby, most people don’t so they simply don’t know about these alternatives. And even if they know about linux and know about suse or redhat they wouldn’t know how to install it.
The Live CDs is a big step forward there since it’s an easy way for people to try it out. I just handed a bunch of SUSE live CDs to my father because people at his job were very interested in trying it after my father told them about it.
So there is actually an interest for alternatives. Perhaps a few of those people will make a switch. Who knows.
But without a (what you call) elitist like me around those people would never have known about it or been able to try it without much effort.
As for stores carrying alternatives you are again being very US-centric. Walmart doesn’t exist all over the world and I assume that walmart isn’t the largest computer dealer in the world, and I assume that they still only sell the linuxboxes on their website and not in their stores?
I think it’s great that they do though, but try to consider how large impact they have on the world really. Over here pretty much no-one knows about their Lindowsboxes, and even if they did, they wouldn’t be able to buy them.
And macs doesn’t really exist in stores here, it’s generally only in the US it’s like that.
As for commodore, it’s partly their own fault, and partly because MS bought a whole lot of their third party developers in order to eliminate the competition. Both the C64 and the Amiga were in many cases superiour alternatives, but only those who actually did some research figured that out. This was due to commodores bad marketing.
The choices DO exist but they are pretty much invisible to people in general.
However, if I would go shopping for a cellphone then I’d find a lot of different brands carrying different software and OSs.
Desktop computers are pretty much the only product where choices aren’t easily available.
Do you really think that people don’t want a choice?
One there’s already an ActiveX component that does this, but it’s not going to work as well because the rest is closed-source. Two Gecko (the rendering part) is under the MPL ( http://www.mozilla.org/projects/embedding/embedoverview/EmbeddingBa… )
[rain (IP: —.bredband.skanova.com) -]
“People often think that MS was responsible for bringing the internet to the avarage man. This is far from true, they just had the luck of being at the right place at the right time. ”
Note the two versions of “The Road Ahead” (I have both). Note the important difference…the Internet!
Note the two versions of “The Road Ahead” (I have both). Note the important difference…the Internet!
Actually I’ve never read it. I won’t spend money on such a book and I can’t find it a the local library so, care to explain?
speak for yourself stray. you are not the spokensperson here for the rest of us
Lol, here I am defending your side, and yet you still lash out. Go figure..
People often think that MS was responsible for bringing the internet to the avarage man. This is far from true, they just had the luck of being at the right place at the right time. Any other company would have done the job just as good or ever better.
Probably true, but Microsoft were the ones who *did*. Ergo, they are responsible.
Every successful company was lucky enough to “be in the right place at the right time”, why single out Microsoft ?
Probably true, but Microsoft were the ones who *did*. Ergo, they are responsible.
Microsoft did not bring the internet to the average man, that was Tim Berners-Lee right along with the Mosaic Project followed by the success of Netscape and AOL. Microsoft came in much later! Let’s not forget that Bill Gates himself wasn’t convinced by the importance of the Internet until after Netscape made headway.
Rain: Avalon has a TON of stuff that no other platform does. Compositing engine, so you can display video on top of video, and have much better control of where/how graphics get displayed. Could Mozilla use this? Maybe, we’d have to explore if they could use this functionality without breaking standards compliance that I love Mozilla for.
Avalon also has a bunch of new 3D APIs. These can be used to make new kinds of icons that add new functionality. These kinds of APIs could certainly be used to make Mozilla a better application for users (and, again, without touching the rendering engine, so that standards-compliance is not touched).
WinFS is a whole new type of file storage system. I can see a whole bunch of ways that a browser might use this to build new types of history experiences for users. Again, without touching the rendering engine.
I don’t believe XAML is something that Mozilla should support. That’s a declarative language for programming Windows applications. It is NOT an appropriate technology for cross-platform applications.
Remember, using Longhorn features isn’t a “use them all or none at all” proposition. Developers can take a pragmatic approach and use the APIs/technologies that they want.
One other area that’ll be improved? Font display. I have to find out if this requires changing the rendering engine at all, but there are some pretty sizeable advances coming in this area, mostly so content can be better displayed on various resolution monitors.
Please don’t give up cross platform capabilities!!
Yes, I use Xp as well and it is a rather good Desktop OS, but it is only thanks to OSS developers that MS pulled out their figner and started developing better SW. Without OSS developers in general and Linux or Free BSD developers in particular, MS users would still be paying an arm and a leg to (Xp)erience a BSD every 5 minutes……
Please keep MS out of your picture; you are doing a great job. Don’t let MS soft talks destroy it
“Rain: Avalon has a TON of stuff that no other platform does. Compositing engine, so you can display video on top of video”
MacOSX, BeOS, Zeta, AmigaOS, MorphOS, XDirectFB & FD.O (running on Linux and FreeBSD) all have that. All in different ways. Why would in this regard supporting Longhorn, which isn’t even finished yet, be more important than the other OSes and applications already available?
“Could Mozilla use this? Maybe, we’d have to explore if they could use this functionality without breaking standards compliance that I love Mozilla for.”
Who do you mean with “we”? If you really want several features in Mozilla while nobody else seems to develop these, feel Free to join in the development process. Why not? That’s how the other developers work as well. You could also bring this up on the developers mailing list.
You see, it almost sounds like “please implement this and that”. Ofcourse you may ask so, but can you also imagine that to some this sounds arrogant or suspicious from the mouth of a(n employee of a) competitor?
When I say “we” I mean that the developers who would consider new features, and me. It might sound arrogant or suspicious. But that will play out over time as people learn where I’m coming from.
By the way, I work in the Windows group. How is that a competitor of Mozilla?
“By the way, I work in the Windows group. How is that a competitor of Mozilla?”
That’s exactly why i wrote “[…] from the mouth of a(n employee of a) competitor”. Microsoft develops software which is competing with Mozilla, that much is obvious.
It isn’t a matter of wether you _are_ a competitor it is rather a matter of what people _perceive_ you are. Don’t be surprised when FLOSS developers/users look suspicious to a Microsoft developer saying something about their work or what they should / should not do (developing X means Y will be developed later!). It doesn’t mean anyone’s right either.
Like i said, IMO you have -as either independant individual or Microsoft employee- all the rights to start developing because i only look to it from a legal point of view. I’m not sure wether you are allowed from your employer’s point of view, i cannot comment on that aspect.
That’s IMO. How developers think about it is a different question and i think that by not discussing it with them you’re convincing not the people you’d have to convince, unless you want to convince “users -> developers” instead. I really suggest a more direct method now; dropping the ball on the mailing list of Mozilla, including input you’ve got so far from the open discussions (it’ll make a discussion much more easier with that background).