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Yeah, a letter to the editor

From:  "Jay R. Ashworth" <jra-AT-baylink.com>
To:  letters-AT-lwn.net
Subject:  Yeah, a letter to the editor
Date:  Thu, 13 Jul 2006 18:07:14 -0400

Fancy that.
 
Think about this, folks:
 
What would we do if Microsoft released IE7.0 simultaneously...
 
for Windows 2K/XP, OS/X and Linux?
 
And was 100% ALA/Zeldman compliant?
 
Discuss.
 
Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com
Designer Baylink RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates The Things I Think '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA http://baylink.pitas.com +1 727 647 1274
 
        Fanfic: read enough, and you'll loose your mind. --me


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Cheer? And then get back to work ...

Posted Jul 20, 2006 7:42 UTC (Thu) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link]

Those of us who aren't absolute purists might even download it and browse
with it for a while ... before getting back to work.

Yeah, a letter to the editor

Posted Jul 20, 2006 11:29 UTC (Thu) by KaiRo (subscriber, #1987) [Link]

Nice idea... I'd continue to use SeaMonkey and develop it further to make it a better piece of software, though ;-)

Yeah, a letter to the editor

Posted Jul 27, 2006 19:02 UTC (Thu) by TRauMa (guest, #16483) [Link]

Hehe, reading this comment _in_ SeaMonkey just made my day! Thanks for your ongoing efforts (the translations since Milestone something, SeaMonkey, etc.), it means much to many.

Yeah, a letter to the editor

Posted Jul 20, 2006 19:48 UTC (Thu) by bwarren (guest, #38700) [Link]

Say "Thanks Microsoft", then surf a bit and play with the flying pigs.

Yeah, a letter to the editor

Posted Jul 20, 2006 20:43 UTC (Thu) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link]

na, boring. who would use it?

After we stop laughing

Posted Jul 21, 2006 5:11 UTC (Fri) by kirkengaard (subscriber, #15022) [Link]

Complain about the licensing terms and ask to see the source and interoperability information.

Then go back to using Free Software.

Clearly, the point I was trying to make wasn't obvious...

Posted Jul 24, 2006 21:07 UTC (Mon) by Baylink (subscriber, #755) [Link]

How would such an event impact the arguments made by the open source community. Specifically, how would it impact Moz*, which would cease to have the "we're the only browser available" argument available to it...?

Clearly, the point I was trying to make wasn't obvious...

Posted Jul 27, 2006 18:52 UTC (Thu) by ninjaz (guest, #2083) [Link]

Your point appears to have been built on a false premise. Opera is already available for the three platforms you mentioned (and others).

The problem with any closed-source software is that users are subject to the whims of a single vendor for maintenance, security updates and new features.

In Microsoft's case, that would be especially problematic since they consider Linux to be the enemy. Opera has released packages built for many Linux distributions and several versions of those, which is more than most closed-source vendors do. It is hard to imagine Microsft doing the same.

Also, the only reason I can think of for using MSIE would be to use poorly-designed intranet sites, which depend on native Windows code in ActiveX components. Having the browser but not the Windows runtime environment would invalidate even that use.

I had a similar problem when I tried Opera last year and went looking for AdBlock equivalents. Instead of the simple Firefox-style extensions that work on all its platforms, what I found were Windows-only executables. It's not just the browser itself, but the user and developer community that exists around it.

So, on a Linux system, it would just be a closed-source browser that would have to be downloaded separately to get it onto a system with 2 good browsers already built-in (Konqueror / Firefox). Then, it would need to be maintained independently of the standard security update mechanism to stay current with its numerous security updates.

Not to mention the EULA and software freedom issues...

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