Netscape Co-Founder Wants IE To Stay With Windows

Wister285 writes: "In a rather intersting turn of events, Netscape co-founder Jim Clark said that he would rather see Microsoft's Internet Explorer stay with the Windows software, should the company be broken up as planned, despite Microsoft's promised appeals. He says that the Microsoft-Other-Software-Company could use the software in a more harmful manner than Microsoft-Windows-Company would. Makes sense... Microsoft-Other Software-Company has a larger grasp on the market (which would most likely be all OSs)." The difficulty with directed outcomes raises its ugly little head again. Where's Harry [that's "Hari" -- mea culpa. timothy] Seldon when you need him?

Comments

While U Were Sleeping The Browser Became The OS

[Carnage4Life]

Lots of slashdotters do not realize this yet mainly because they mostly hack linux (i.e. use mostly C and Perl) and browse the web via Netscape (broken handling of Java, CSS, XML, ECMAscript) but the browser is slowly superseding the operating system in importance. Consider the following points.

• With a browser as the User Interface it is possible to write complex cross platform applications in a truly Write Once, Run Anywhere manner if they are all accessed by the same browser. If you do not believe how powerful browser applications have become and can be
• read this post and think about what he is saying

• Many companies are porting applications that were once client software to the internet to avoid several annoying user problems (e.g. install problems, patching , upgrading software, bugtracking, etc). In fact the last two companies I have worked for which service different kinds of employees are both porting their flagship applications to the internet. One of these is a retail management app originally written in Delphi for Windows, while the other company is porting a Windows NT (MFC) port of an app that was originally Unix (Motif/C++) to the web using JSP/servlets/javascript.

• Think about it, eventually high bandwidth and more powerful machines will be ubiqitous. Already with a DSL connection I can export my Emacs display or use VMWare with little difference from running them locally. With the advent of webpads and wireless computing the browser will play a more critical role in the use of computers while the OS will play more and more of a backseat role. After all almost technology every company in existence is becoming an Application Service Provider so as to avoid all the clientside problems I listed in my first point. MSFT and Sun are working on complete web versions of their office suites. Considering the fact that all most people use their PC for is web browsing, typing a few documents and email it would seem that all they'll need is a web browser regardless of operating system.
• 
  And this is where the problems begin. Already due to Netscape's horrible implementation of W3C standards IE is favored by web developers all over (the horrible browser object model doesn't help much). Already some sites are becoming MSIE specific because developers do not want to maintain one site for IE and a less rich site for Netscape. Heck!!! I'm into Open Source and a browser agnostic but yet when the time came for some friends and I to design (coding starts in the fall) a secure messageboard/instant messaging service accesible over the web for use by a local company for our final project we ended up deciding that all the cool stuff would be in the IE version while we'd just make sure that the page displayed with no hijinks for Netscape. This decision is actually better than what most companies are doing or plan to do in the future. This is what scares me and Jim Clark, what happens when users need to use IE to use MS Office, or when developers can only develop for MSIE with Visual Studio? Considering that MSIE is the predominant browser on the platforms on which it exists it doesn't take much imagination to MSFT Applications Company becoming a new kind of cross-platform monopoly. This is why Jim Clark is scared and wants IE to stay with Windows.

the devil's advocate: part two

[The_Messenger]

"Netscape Co-Founder Wants IE To Stay With Windows"

Yes, I also think that Elian should stay with his father.

Oh well. It will be years before we find out if Microsoft really will be broken up. All of this speculation will do nothing but put the already suffering tech-stocks in even more of a tizzy.

Who thinks that any Microsoft spinoff has a chance of practicing any shady business activities after all of this? The DoJ doesn't assume that after action is taken, everything is peachy. You still have the same people running the companies. They'll have their eye on Microsoft for at least another decade.

I'm part of a tiny group with these intersecting characteristics: Unix fanatic, doesn't like Microsoft products, but doesn't think they should be broken up. I think they should be punished for using their monopoly status to bully others, but I don't think their monopoly status should be taken from them forcefully. I don't think that large US corporations should have the worry of getting so large that the government breaks them up. You gain a monopoly through hard work. Microsoft was only able to bully others once they gained a monopoly. Before then, they didn't have the clout to do be a bully. Afterwards, they used their status to make sure they stayed where they were. I think that they should be punished (fines/business restrictions/et cetera) and watched very carefully. I also think that afterwards, there should be a giant wave of civil suits with generous punitive damages claimed.

I don't think the OS should be seperated from the apps. Microsoft has valid points. The integration of the two has helped them to really improve how things work. You know why IIS runs fast as hell? Because the engineers had the OS source and could make whatever optimizations you want. When you write software for one OS, which you have complete knowledge of, and will only be executing on one arcitecture, a lot of problems Magically disappear. Why should we begrudge them for doing this?

I'm also tired of those that diss Dell, Gateway, Compaq, and others for [up until recently] only selling Windows PCs. Is Microsoft behind this? They have a minor role. More important is the demand of the comsumers. Windows has no competitors there. Why? The only other company that produces a viable newbie OS is Apple, and they are intent on keeping the OS with the hardware. What other OS could compete, even if Microsoft weren't a dinosaur?

Microsoft could have had competitors in this market. Sun, HP, or (snicker) SGI could have sold stripped-down versions of their respective OSes (SunOS, HP-UX, and IRIX) with CDE as a GUI and done quite well. (CDE, for you Linuxers, is the Motif-friendly windowing system that has been common on commercial Unix and DEC systems for years.) All of these companies are large enough to provide appropriate driver support. Or imagine if Sun, HP, and SGI could have allied themselves to create a UNIX-based consumer-level OS. They'd have excellent driver support for networking, printing, and graphics, and enough market share to get whatever else they needed. Plus, if implemented correctly (i.e. not stripped down too much), the power and stability of UNIX.

CDE does have the ability to be a consumer GUI! How many of you knew that Sun boxen are used internally by Sun as PCs? Yep, a friend of mine who did Sun marketing reminded me of this. He, being a marketer, was not very techinical. (A sweeping yet sadly true statement.) I say, "What did you think of the Solaris GUI? Easy to use?" He says, "No problem." To elaborate on his cluelessness, he didn't know it was CDE in combination with dtwm**. That the user didn't even know what it was called, and yet was able to use it as a desktop OS for four years, with no UNIX training, proves that the Windows-esque isolation of the user from the CLUE can be done in UNIX. But it never caught on in the "real world", and couldn't have, because up until last year commercial level UNIX was very expensive, and didn't run on x86 hardware. But this is the subject of another rant.

That's another thing: architecture. You complain that Compaq won't sell you a PC with Linux. I'll complain, why can't I get a PC with a RISC chip?*** ;-)

Ah well, I'm just daydreaming and babbling again. And I could do this for hours, ranting about why I love UNIX, and how I don't think NT is a bad product, but should be marketed as a desktop OS, and blah blah blah, mouth running like I'm Signal 11. Wow, this Microsoft stuff will do that to you. We'll be seeing books and movies and studies and After-School Specials ("Don't let your kids become Microsoft Programmers!") and Made-For-TV Movies ("Bill Gates, Give Me Back my Baby!") for twenty years afterwards.

Reminds me: did anyone watch that cable movie (on TNT?) that was about the lives of Jobs and Gates? I heard about that, but not being much of a TV viewer, I never watched it. Is it available on video? It sounded vaguely interesting.

** Since SunOS 5.7, that is. OW is still in option, but honestly, why? CDE is beautiful for the power-user as well as the newbie. If you want a cleaner desktop, use AfterStep. OW offers ZERO benefits, other than being preinstalled. :-)

*** The closest you'll get is a Sun Ultra 5, which will cost you about US$3200, including 17" monitor. The box has an UltraSPARC IIi, and is pretty cool considering how much you'd have to pay to get a similar system from HP or SGI. The cheapest HP workstations will include full SCSI and a bunch of other stuff I honestly don't need, and start around $7k. Note that while HP now sells Linux workstations, they're x86. Sort of a waste.

---------///----------

I think the DOJ is counting on it.

[aardvaark]

I saw a Charlie Rose (yes I watch PBS regularly!)
where he had the DOJ, MS lawyer, and some
colmnists the other day.

Seems like the DOJ is almost counting on the
browser being powerful in the way that
is mentioned in the article. I think the DOJ
wants those two MS companies to be at each
other's throats.

What about letting the software company keep
IE, but Windows company gets IIS? That way
they can't leverage IIS and IE together?
I don't like the idea of IE+Windows together
for the short term though.