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Give Mac Explorer to the People?
An anonymous reader writes "In an article on the BBC News site, Bill Thompson suggests that Microsoft release the source for IE:Mac to the world so that others can continue to develop the product. While this may be a pleasant fiction, Microsoft does seem to be making an effort to change their image. Could we see more OSS interaction from the software giant in the near future?"
How about we just let Mac IE die and keep gathering support for Firefox?
Surely the reason why microsoft would never do that is the fact that not in a million years would that product stay on Mac. I would give it two weeks before it was given enhancements, ported to windows, and released as a compatible alternative to IE 7, eating away at ever more market share.
I thought Firefox was better than IE anyway and code-reviewed by millions of users worldwide. Why do you want the IE source?
Or are there not enough OSS browser choices already?
The real question is why? The Mac already has both a more modern Apple-produced browser (Safari) that MS themselves recommend, along with a true open-source alternative (Firefox), not to mention all the usual suspects if you're not a fan of either of those (Opera, etc.).
While it may be a nice pseudo-political irony to have IE Mac go open-source, it is an old, outdated browser that was rendered unnecessary long ago in every sense of the word.
I'm not that interested in the browser but some of the middleware code to emulate windows calls on the Mac might be interesting to play with...
------- Code to try when you're bored: qsort( 0, UINT_MAX, sizeof( int* ), IntCompare );
Not gonna happen. Not in my lifetime anyway.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
After all from what I understand, Microsoft is looking at exploiting the open source model of development for getting free developers. I very much doubt they would go down a path where they transfer the entire copyright of the codebase to a non-profit organization (like Netscape/AOL and Mozilla Foundation).
Then again, with Safari working very decently - who needs IE on Mac ?
I can almost picture Steve Ballmer - "developersQuidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
Long Answer : They probably have (or should have) a "core" which is identical to any system, only the system dependant api, or itnerraction of that core renderer with the system, would change from IE mac to IE Win (read file, allocate memory, render window, call external program etc...). There is no way they would open their "IP" (the core) to the world.
Now it might be that the core is compeltly different from a system to the next. Then I will probably be the first to yell "what the hell were they thinking ???".
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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visit randi.org
Let it die, let it die already!
Yes, Mac IE was fairly advanced for its time, but the quicker it disappears from the face of the planet, the better! All the techniques on which modern web design rely that work reliably in all the major browsers have major issues in Mac IE. Floats and clear in particular - these just require such awful hackery when Mac IE specifically needs to be supported... it's worse than IE 5 and Netscape 4 combined! (Okay, so that might be a slight hyperbole.) ;P
Yes, it's very understandable that the behaviours of these properties weren't well defined back then, and compared to the Win IE of its time, Tantek and team did a superb job with this browser... but that was years ago. It's dead now, and needs to be forgotten as quickly as possible!
Microsoft is looking at exploiting the open source model of development for getting free developers.
Who isn't?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Yes, they do seem to be making that effort, and it does appear to be working on the surface. However, beneath the surface, the same Microsoft is still in business.
Unless Gates and Ballmer relinquish the throne, the real Microsoft (not the Microsoft that the image-makers paint for us) will not, and can not, change.
First, as many have pointed out, Microsoft doesn't have the right to open up all the code.
.).
Second, the code isn't really worth anything at this point. The rendering engine in Mac IE has nothing to do with the rendering engine in Win IE and it's easily the slowest rendering engine out there (well, it's definitely a ton slower than Moz, IE Win, KHTML. .
Third, the author says that his reason for wanting Mac IE is for some random website that will require it in the future. Unfortunately, while a website may require IE, it won't work with IE Mac. IE Mac has nothing to do with IE Win. It can't run ActiveX. It doesn't render things similarly. If a website requires IE, Mac IE users are out of luck.
Fourth, I don't think anyone would be impressed by releasing the source for an application that is so dead. Releasing the source for Win IE would be amazing - the community could clean up security holes, improve standards compliance, etc. and make IE a better browser. Mac IE, on the other hand, is long gone. It's just too hopeless to salvage anything useful. It would be like Microsoft open-sourcing Internet Explorer 1.0 - just too old to make anyone care at this point.
Mac IE is dead. It's old. There's nothing useful there and open-sourcing it wouldn't help the Mac community or the open-source community. It wouldn't give any insight into the things that make websites IE-only since IE-only websites don't work with Mac IE. This article is just bad.
1) MS Releases IE for Mac as Open Source...
2) Project goes no where, produces no new code, no bug fixes, because the code is open, hackers find holes and hack IE Mac...
3) MS Starts FUD campaign about how open source is less secure, doesn't produce bug fixes fast, and doesn't add new features!
It's a nice idea but it's wishful thinking, surely. The IE stuff sounds too core and too controversional for Microsoft to play around with it.
OTOH, it's possible that Micrisoft might start to become a little more open. They might decide to do so by making the best of what they regard as a bad job, for example opening up their server protocols with a song and dance about open saucery because they are in heavy trouble with the EU over the matter anyway. Or they might decide to make their browser a little more flexible, along the lines of Firefox extensions, etc.
But it is easy to overlook that opening up anything could be fairly traumatic for Microsoft. It's not just the money, it's the whole philosophy of the company that would feel threatened. Microsoft is built on the notion that every single thing, right down to the precise shade of the last pixel, must be absolutely determined and controlled, and then parcelled out dollar by dollar. Only this, the theory must go, guarantees an acceptable "user experience" that can be replicated 100 per cent on any desktop anywhere in the world.
Perhaps there are 500 business-school tomes which back up the idea. If so, they are history now. In many ways, a bold move Bill Gates could make in 2006 would be to accept that the philsosphy which built Microsoft may be becoming incapable of sustaining it, step back and let someone else take a crack. And that could really wrong-foot Google et al, too.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
If it is MS and your serious about working in that area then seeing thier code could at a later stage contaminate any chance of doing serious coding elsewhere.
The reason why some aren't too keen on thier shared source license.
Emphasis on the was part. IE5/Mac was a great browser when all you had was Netscape 4. Then again, Netscape 4 makes poop look like gold, so that's not that much to start with. At the time, IE5/Mac had rendering qualities and CSS support that outdid it's equivalent on Windows. Meanwhile, newer versions came out of pretty much everything (Mozilla grew up, Safari started up, IE/Win grew into IE6) - and the IE5/Mac team didn't do diddly-squat. That is why, in this age of Ajax and good clean CSS - IE5/Mac is now a stinker. It's unstable, unpredictable... obsolete. Let. it. die.
If IE for the Mac were reliably compatible with sites that "require IE" this would be interesting.
And at the time IE for the Mac came out, it was interesting. I, for one, found it to be much better than Netscape in numerous ways. And at the time, the Mac business unit was trumpeting how compatible it was with Web standards.
Unfortunately, it was. And therefore is not particularly "bug-compatible" with IE for Windows.
I'm very pragmatic about browsers. I don't care about purity, I just want to get my web purchases processed. Safari is very good. In fact, my experience so far is that it is very, very rare to find sites that a) do not work with Safari that b) do work with IE for the Mac. Specifically:
a) If a site claims specifically that it "requires IE 5 or higher," it usually does not work with IE 5.2 for the Mac.
b) If a site claims to require a specific browsers and any browser other than IE is on the list, it usually will work with Safari.
c) If a site, for whatever reason, does not work with Safari, it is more likely to work with Firefox for the Mac than it is to work with IE 5.2 for the Mac.
So... unfortunately... I think this is a non-issue.
If IE for the Mac were a high-fidelity reproduction of vintage-2000 IE for Windows, it would be nice if someone had the source and tried to maintain it. As it is, I don't think there's any good reason to care.
By the way: I found out the hard way that although IE for the Mac and for Windows both have a very useful "web archive" feature, the archive files themselves are in utterly different and incompatible formats, with no known conversion tool between them.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Please stop spreading the Vulgar Raymondism that the Firefox code is read by millions of users. Have you read it yourself? I'll bet not! Most users and even programmers DO NOT read source code. You only hurt the open source / free software movement when you dump out steaming piles of horse shit like that. There are enough valid reasons to use open source / free software like Firefox, that you don't need to lie about it.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com