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IE Sends Cake to Firefox 2 Team

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the wish-it-was-a-cheesecake dept.

GDI Lord writes "The Microsoft Internet Explorer Team sent the Firefox team a cake for the release of Firefox 2! "P.S.: No, it was not poisoned" " That they know of anyway.

9 of 362 comments (clear)

  1. You have to admit by captnitro · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That was pretty classy. (Even if ultimately it was intended as a bit of good-natured competitive ribbing, which it doesn't look like.)

    I have to say, often times we're prone to think that large organizations such as Microsoft are just a big, faceless entity. As a whole, this may or may not be true, but either way, they're only made up of people. The IE team only wants to ship the best software possible given their resources, as does Mozilla.

    The best to both teams -- let the competition continue!

    1. Re:You have to admit by waif69 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is awesome! It shows that at least some of the team members of the IE development team have some self-respect and can appreciate quality work. This shows that just because a group of developers work for the giant doesn't mean that they are disrespectful and bad sports.

    2. Re:You have to admit by CastrTroy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I got modded troll, but I'm being serious. After 6 years of IE6, they finally release a new version. What they gave us a bunch of copied features from other browsers(firefox,opera) that have been available for years, and from what i've heard, nothing that really makes it better than the competition. And they have worse standards support than everybody else. You would think that in 6 years that they could produce something at least on par with the competition, if not many times better.

      --

      Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
    3. Re:You have to admit by cnettel · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Well, the previous IE team was basically disbanded, with people going to work on Office, Visual Studio and WPF/Avalon/XAML. Two of these are very popular and can, in their own way, surely be considered on par or superior to the competition. (Visual Studio is a nice IDE even for non-Windows development.) It's not a matter of trying for six years and failing, but rather starting quite late, with a team that's still smaller than it was when Trident was first developed. This of course only shifts the blame within MS, from developer incompetence to management incompetence, or arrogance.

  2. Happy to have a job again! by EggyToast · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Remember, Microsoft disbanded the IE team shortly after 6 was released. The IE team sends a cake not just for a "birthday," but as thanks for giving them jobs!

  3. Give Me A Break... by beringreenbear · · Score: 5, Insightful

    For a change, Microsoft's IE team was showing a bit of class and acknowledging that without the competition and innovation from Mozilla Firefox, there (probably) wouldn't have been an IE 7 project. It also hints that there might be some subtle changes in Microsoft's old Cult of Bill approach. At the end of the day, software developers are just people, and political football aside, there really is no reason for animosity. Kudos to Microsoft's IE 7 team for being good sports.

  4. Maybe It's Just a Gift? by Secret+Agent+Man · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Maybe while us users squabble in our own browser war, the development teams actually don't care all that much. Maybe they truly are just glad of how everyone is advancing (as opposed to just trying to one-up each other). I'm not saying that everyone in both companies feel that way, but instead of reading stuff into this surprise present, maybe it was just a good gesture.

  5. Re:Yum, Cake by StevoJ · · Score: 5, Insightful

    and it only worked with one particular fork

    --
    That didn't really make sense. But I'm going to post it anyway.
  6. Perhaps this is common. by LoudMusic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Lots of comments about how the IE team is happy to be empoyed, a friendly gesture, poking fun, etc etc. But I think this sort of thing is more common place than most of us imagine. Big companies that spend a lot of their time working on similar products follow eachother's progress very closely and are aware of the same difficulties they're both having. They may not be on the same team, but they're fighting the same battle. Even physical wartime battles have been known to halt to celebrate a common holiday, together.

    I know that Terminix (a client of my company) congratulated Orkin (the evil competitor) on one of their recent anniversaries. It's a way of saying "We know what you're up against, and we know it kinda sucks. Hang in there."

    My wife and I watched an episode of Dharma & Greg last night (TiVo, don't know the air date) where they're entering a dancing competition. Dharma's parents were against it claiming competition makes people mean and greedy. I see that a lot in society, and it doesn't have to be that way. Competition is to make us better individuals. Without competition we'd never progress to the next level. And because of that we should thank our competitors for putting up a good measure of excellence.

    Even in sports like track and cross country where you can effectively compete against yourself, where's the push to keep getting a faster mile time, higher polevault, or longer long jump if you have nothing to compare it against? At the end of high school track meets I remember walking around and shaking the hands of everyone I competed with. If it weren't for them I wouldn't have been "in the top three" regularly. I'd have just been a dude running crappy lap times on the weekend.

    Here's to competition! The evolver of our modern society. Thank your competitors, for they are what bring us a better life.

    --
    No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!