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IE Developer Responds to Mozilla Accusations
sriram_2001 writes "Dave Massy, a Microsoft employee who works on the Internet Explorer team has a response to the Mozilla Foundation's Mitchell Baker's comments. Specifically, he responds to the claim that IE is a part of the operating system. 'IE is part of the Windows Operating System so that parts of the OS and other applications can rely on the functionality and APIs being present. To be clear there are no Operating System APIs that IE uses that are not documented on MSDN as part of the platform SDK and available to other browsers and any other software that runs on Windows..'
IF there are no operating system API's used by the browser, then why did MSFT fight so hard not ot have to remove it from the browser. IT might not use the OS API's, but im fairly sure it works the other way round. Has he ever tried to remove IE cleanly from a windows install?
Thats the point though the IE gives websites access to the APIs of other programs like WMP without asking the user.
It is part of the OS. That's the part of the post he made.
IE is part of the OS primarily because it is an API that is relied on by other parts of the OS, and other 3rd party apps.
It is rightly described as "middle-ware". Clearly, it's not a driver, or the kernel, or whatnot.
But also clearly, it is not a single executable strapped on top.
It's integrated, but using only methods that and API that are available to anyone to use.
The fact is, there are more uninformed people out there than there are informed people (just read the crap in the original article).
Another fact is that there are more Microsoft fans than there are Open Source fans (right now).
So, the intersection of those two groups means that there are more uninformed Microsofties than there are informed Open Source fans.
And those Microsofties, for whatever reason, have decided to hang out on
Get used to it. That's the same way it will be throughout most of your life, unless you restrict yourself to very exclusive groups with very high entrance requirements (/. is not one of them).You can't argue them down. They don't know enough of the material to know how ignorant they are.
I've argued here with people who swore that SMTP did NOT have authentication. Even after I posted links to the RFC's.
I'm not your typical Slashdot-fanatic, M$-hating, L1nux d00d. I love most of the latest MS products and think they're solid (as long as you're clued).
However, I literally laughed out loud when I read the following comment by the blogger:
As we develop IE we go through very thorough and stringent security reviews to ensure that every change is secure and does not expose the user to attack.
Which version of IE is this?! Nearly every released version of IE has had laughable (keep in mind, I'm not a Linux bigot) security flaws. I'm sorry, but you can't feed the sheep their own shit. They know, they KNOW.
He goes on to say:
The security of any browser is irrelevant to if it is part of the operating system.
That seems to be Microsoft's mantra. However, any security engineer or person with common sense would disagree.
If we are to debate security of browsers then let's bring in relevant arguments and accurate details about different possible attacks rather than rely on the irrational fear that because IE is part of the operating system it must be exposing OS functionality to the web.
Are you fucking joking? There is documented exploit after exploit demonstrating this. People aren't pulling it out of their asses. It's backed by fact, something you appear to be ignoring.
I'm a somewhat-loyal MS customer, but I've got to say I don't like reading tripe like this. What I do like reading is "we're going to fix IE's security model and this is how we're going to do it, what does the community think?".
Perhaps the IE team needs to review their security procedures, because they fuckin' suck hard.