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?"

Comments

You don't wanna do that!

[Ochu]

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.

Why?

[badasscat]

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.

Not gonna happen.

[Noryungi]

Why? I can list several reasons for this:

1. If there is something interesting in the code, Microsoft won't release it, because they don't want to help the competition (Firefox or Opera).
2. If there are huge bugs in the code, Microfost won't release it, because that would be helping hackers.
3. If IE/Mac and IE/Windows share code, Microsoft won't release it, because that would be even more help for hackers.
4. Finally, Microsoft won't release the code because that would be helping Apple. And helping Apple (and/or Open Source) is helping the enemy that stands between Microsoft and Total World Domination(tm).

Not gonna happen. Not in my lifetime anyway.

Oh please, god, no!

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Re:Or not?

[vertinox]

Apparently, whoever modded you flamebait never had to use IE for the mac. It is a horrid wretched peice of software that should die like the rotting beast of Golgamathea that it is.

It is like a program with all the problems and stability issues of IE 5 (sans Active X because there is not Active X for the mac) with none of its benefits that you would get on a PC version. Hell... Most of the pages rendered nothing like their windows counterpart. The program was made from scratch using a totally different team not related to the IE team for the PC.

As soon as a better alternative came out (Safari) I dumped IE.

May it burn in hell and let us not metion it ever again.