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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.
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:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
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!
I'm no techical wizard, but the article really doesn't make a whole lot of sense, does it? As far as I know, the rendering engine is totally different from Mac to Windows. It isn't as though they're using the MSHTML dll. Hell, doesn't Safari use WebCore for display and WebKit for their plugin architecture? (again, I'm not really up on this, so feel free to correct)
IE5 for OS9 was a fairly nice piece of software, but the OSX version was always ghastly. If the rendering engine is passé too, then ... why release the code? I'd suggest the effort is better spent getting Microsoft to release a standards-compliant "browser" with be done with this particular era in the history of the internet.
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.
Microsoft does seem to be making an effort to change their image.
And that's about all; Microsoft is all about marketing. They can change their image by putting millions of dollars into ad campaigns, without having to change the way they run their monopoly. It is very expensive from a marketing perspective to change the opinion of anyone that has caught on to what they are really doing behind the scenes with all their OEM contracts and extending of protocols -- so they are only interested in beguiling ignorant people and management-types.
Statements like this that put an arguably misplaced faith in giant multinational monopolies are nothing short of propaganda and free marketing for Microsoft.
Microsoft could open-source some of the code - what they wrote themselves - but there's still code in there from Mosaic, which MS licensed from Spyglass. Not sure if Spyglass owns the rights or has just licensed them, but the ownership seems a little murky to me. Does UIUC own it? NCSA? The citizens of the USA, who paid for much of its development?
I dunno, but I'm betting that MS couldn't easily release IE as OSS even if they were so inclined.
Mudge
In theory, theory and practice are the same.
In practice, they're not.
He is referring to the closed source libraries. OSX is not completely free.
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...
There are none. IE for the Mac was built from scratch not using a single line of IE Windows code by a different team of developers who most likley didn't have any formal communication with the IE for windows team.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Microsoft still makes MSN Explorer for the Mac and that is wher I think Microsfot wants its existing IE users to migrate off to. By opening the code for IE up they creating competition for MSN Explorer as well as risking people improving IE for Mac and then porting it over to run on Windows.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/metricmusic
I've never understood why people would want to use any MS product on a Mac. Whether it be IE, Office, or whatever - surely one of the points of using a Mac is that it's an alternative to using MS products. Would you consider running IE on Linux? Probably not, theres no point.
http://www.mongoosesystems.co.uk
Damn, it's like right when they just give out the foot in mouth awards we get a gem like this.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
MS has NOT acquired Opera, as the parent states.
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
This can't and will never happen. Internet Explorer, until 5.5 was mostly written in C++ with MFC (Microsoft Foundation Class Library). With MFC you could, in theory, write your code on one platform and run it on almost any platform. If they release the Mac version to the public Microsoft would release at least half, if not more, of its IE source (even from current development branches.)
A lot of that technology is either licensed from other sources, regional and is under local governmental control, or is closed source because it is under court order because of past law suits. In other words much of Internet Explorer isn't a Microsoft product; it would a nightmare for Microsoft to make it such.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
I know a lot of people have already stated this here, but it needs to be reiterated ad infitum, since so many of you can't seem to get it into your heads. The only thing that IE for Mac has in common with IE for Windows is the name! That's it. It's not a common codebase. It's not the same developers. They both just happened to be made by the same company and given the same name. Got it?
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
Other Suggestions:
China should withdraw from Tibet and allow the Tibetans to construct a Disneyland in Lhasa, since Tibet is already becoming little more than a tourist trap.
Bush should withdraw from Iraq and let the war be carried out by our powerful allies from Togo and Lithuania.
The Road Runner should let the Coyote have him for dinner.
They should develop a snow ball in hell that would survive for an extended period of time.
Etc.
Admittedly, I can see why someone would want IE on the Mac; there tend to be way more "legacy" pre-OSX Macs than Windows PCs out there that can't run the latest and greatest. Lots of Mac installations tend to be task-based (running a piece of scientific equipment, desktop-publishing the same publication month after month, etc.) or they're simply in non-profit organizations that can't afford to replace them every three years.
However, without that exception I can't see why anyone would want IE on OS X. Maybe for compatibility with a web application that only works with IE?? I installed IE on my Mac when I got it a year ago, and I don't think I've ever opened it. Firefox is capable of handing most sites now. Even "IE Only" sites at least render OK.
Seriously. IE for Windows has hella security holes as it is. Releasing the source code for Mac IE, which is also widely used, would only open up more security holes than already exist in public knowledge.
Besides, it would take months for any initiative to start and release a "patch" to fix said new holes.
They haven't updated it in forever, so IE mac is really so old as to be useless. If you use a Mac, you're probably using Firefox, Opera, or Safari, and much happier anyway.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
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.
Yes - right after the FAA give type approval for flying pigs.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
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!
Regular slashdot readers woule be aware that the 'red box' dream of rhapsody is to some degree being realised in the form of Darwine, itself based on wine
Don't hold your breath relying on Microsoft to be a good Mac community member and open sourcing this 'legacy' browser. If true IE compatibility is required then at least in theory it is possible to run the real thing under wine in OS X.
The advantage of this strategy is that by contributing to wine's completeness, other Windows applications will be runnable within OS X. :)
Sure you'll be running a Windows app, but you'll be able to browse all the IE-dependant intranet webapps your Windows XP colleagues use, from the sanctity of your Mac environment.
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
No.
"In a world without walls and fences, who needs Windows and Gates?"
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.
They didn't, and it doesn't. IE for Mac was a completely different team, and it does not render the same as IE for Windows. It does not support ActiveX, either. It is a different browser in all but name. Unlike some other unfortunate ports to Mac, MS did not implement a hacked up Windows API compatibility layer for IE.
Go look at the project history, developer statements, or thousands of different web design sites that talk about this. The two browsers render quite differently, in that IE for Mac tended to be much more standards compliant, and did not implement the IE for Windows specific behaviors.
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!
Several years ago Mac IE 5 was one of the best browsers on any platform. The tazman layout engine was great, and the application had some well executed features. IMHO, Mac IE still has the best download manager out there... even if the OS X version is buggy.
Unfortunately, aside for some security updates, Microsoft more or less stopped development after their half ass OS X port. IE 5 was a GREAT web dev tool when it was good. It significantly limited (not eliminated) my need to run over to a networked PC to check new projects.
It's disappointing to see that MS let this thing rot and die.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Actually, ActiveX does run just fine on the Mac, and has for a long time. I used it in 1996 to develop a plug-in system for a visual programming language called Bounce, and Mac Common Lisp). Metrowerks actually modified their C++ compiler to support it (adding a _comobject magic class that you can inherit from to get the vtable pointers formatted in the right place so multiple inheritance and QueryInterface worked together properly). Microsoft used it to port IE to the Mac, and paid Metrowerks to make the modifications to support it.
ActiveX/COM is actually quite a cool and useful technology, which is why Firefox uses XPCOM on all platforms, a clone of ActiveX/COM. Mozilla's XPCOM isn't the only clone of COM: before Mozilla developed XPCOM, Macromedia developed their own ActiveX clone called MOA on all platforms. mTropolis mFactory also had its own COM clone called MOM. There are actually lots of COM clones, many of which are incompatible with the real thing and require their own special tool chains to develop plug-ins (which is ironic since the goal of COM was cross language binary compatibility).
And yes, MacIE is a horrible wretched piece of crap, and open sourcing it would be a pointless waste of time. The JavaScript interpreter is uselessly sub-standard, and the DHTML implementation is missing many important features.
Microsoft hired a bunch of excellent Mac programmers to develop it, and they wrote much of their own code base from scratch (using the Metrowerks Powerplant gui toolkit, totally different than the new Aqua [old NeXT Step] libraries), but Microsoft pulled the rug out from under them before they could fix any of the bugs, and wouldn't let them support it, instead diverting them to other projects like WebTV. So it's languished for many years, and even if it were open sourced, it would be an enormous amount of work to bring it up to being compatible with modern web browsers.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
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