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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
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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