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Ballmer "Interested" In Open Source Browser Engine
Da Massive writes "'Why is IE still relevant and why is it worth spending money on rendering engines when there are open source ones available that can respond to changes in Web standards faster?,' asked a young developer to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in Sydney yesterday. 'That's cheeky, but a good question, but cheeky,' Ballmer said. Then came the startling revelation that Microsoft may also adopt an open source browser engine. 'Open source is interesting,' he said. 'Apple has embraced Webkit and we may look at that, but we will continue to build extensions for IE 8.'"
Microsoft is going to be infected with the GPL virus!
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/craig/05-03sharedsource.mspx
"We will continue to build extensions". That definitely deserves a whatcouldpossiblygowrong tag.
Hasn't IE been a fully integrated part of Windows since, what, all the way back to Windows 98? If they start using some open-source code for their browser, will the architecture of the OS still have IE as such an integral part, or will it become a separate application again? Also, is it really such a good thing to have Micro$oft active in the open-source community? Forgive me, but talk like this makes me a little nervous.
Embrace, Extend... wait, there's a third "E" and a third browser technology, isn't there, Steve, and it's probably got something to do with what you'd like to do with Gecko/Firefox.
Wonder what it might be.
Embrace
Extend
Enjoy
Yes, I suppose Microsoft might embrace open source. Of course, our politicians might lower taxes too. But Microsoft, like politicians, have a long history of saying one thing and doing another. That, and I'm pretty sure Balmer knows that if he mentions open source he'll get a free plug on Slashdot and on other media sites where highly technical people frequent. From a marketing standpoint, it makes sense to hint at open source as much as possible. From a legal and business standpoint, it's more likely he'll dance around on the stage in a Gir suit while singing the doom song.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I USE TEH LINUX AND I R ANGRY
Deliberately fucking up/poisoning what everybody else is doing is the only thing they do well!
How can MS really adopt anything open source at this point? IE isn't just a part of Windows, IE practically *IS* Windows and having it being open source would make a valuable part of Windows open source which Ballmer hates with a passion. Take away IE and Active X and half the reason to use Windows goes away. And really, why use WebKit? Sure, its a decent rendering engine but no better than Gecko or the other OSS rendering engines. I really fear for WebKit if MS manages to use it, because rather than having WebKit we will have MS WebKit which is a highly modified version of an older release, Google's Bleeding Edge WebKit and Apple's Stable WebKit. And honestly, this is taking us back to Netscape Vs IE....
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Either Ballmer is throwing out a red herring, or future versions of IE (presumably after 8) will finally be decoupled from Windows.
But, what open source browser engines are there other than Gecko and Webkit? Both are developed by MS' sworn mortal enemies. Browsers are complex, time consuming beasts to develop.
Microsoft won the Browser Wars but failed to achieve its objectives in victory. The war against Netscape was to insure that all apps either network based or not needed Microsoft Windows with IE to run the apps. With such failures such as Active X which never really made it past the Intranet and Extranet application. What happened was web developers for the most part designed as much using open standards (or at least plugins that were more universally compatible) and then were able to make apps that run well on Windows, Mac, Linux, BSD or whatever just as long as you have a fairly modern browser. What was probably really surpassing to Microsoft most of this. Even decided to give the apps a step back in functionality (just recently for the last couple of year the AJAX method with DHTML became fully functional, or at least 85% there) just to keep compatibility.
What killed Microsoft objective more then anything was the insecurity of Active X and the general habit for people when asked a question is to answer yes and get it done. So now Microsoft is spending millions of dollars in IE development without really getting any major competitive advantage out of the deal. Sure you may have 90% of the market but only 5% of that market actually doing IE Only things you are just wasting your money.
Going to an open source rendering system just seems a way to keep up with the time. By joining the Jones you don't need to keep up with them. Just like with Safari or Chrome all the company needs to do is maintain the browser in features and UI (stuff that closed source companies have seem to shown they have an advantage over open source) and use someone else's Open Source rendering engine (Following specs and making things like rendering engines are what Open Source Developers are good at) So what Microsoft accomplish is a new objective. People will want to stick with Windows because they Like IE over the others.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
itsatrapwhatcouldpossiblygowrongembraceextendextinguishrunrunforthehills
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
In this second great browser wars there are 4 major battles:
Features
Standards compliance
Speed
Security
MS can get features and even standards compliance through proprietary means, on the other hand, security and speed depend on lots of people looking through the code. So in essence, without an open source rendering engine MS can't hope to win. On the other hand, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome have made great leaps because they have all of the above.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Funny how when Microsoft rejects Open Source they get people crawling down their backs. When they suggest they might move in that general direction they get people accusing them of trying to poison Open Source and calling them liars.
Seems whatever happens people just want to hate Microsoft whatever moves the company makes...
Ballmer means non-profitable.
I mean, seriously... Microsoft is just not the same without Wild Bill at the helm.
This is my sig.
"Why is IE still relevant and why is it worth spending money on rendering engines when there are open source ones available that can respond to changes in Web standards faster?"
"That's cheeky, but a good question, but cheeky," Ballmer said.
What the story doesn't mention is that the developer who asked that question was found dead later that day with a folding chair wrapped around his neck.
they embraced KHTML. WebKit was created by Apple from Konqueror's HTML library.
jerky
He's interested in Open Source in the same way ticks are interested in dogs.
Why? There isn't a closed source rendering engine that processes JavaScript anywhere near as fast as Gecko or Webkit. Eventually, this is going to make it very difficult for IE to maintain its market share when common web developers start writing applications that require this kind of performance. There will eventually be web based applications that match Windows or OS X in responsiveness and functionality using only JavaScript HTML and CSS. When ordinary web developers begin to develop software that requires the performance advantage of open source rendering engines, Microsoft will be faced with the decision of switching or becoming obsolete on the web.
The problem is how.
Open source makes this much more difficult.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.
---- Now, where did I put that knife.....
Ballmer pretty much confirmed (was there yesterday) that was the strategy later on in his answer - to beat the standards bodies to new features. The entire strategy they presented was building a new Microsoft-only Web stack built on .Net, and then trying to lock people in with IE8+.
Microsoft's launch of Azure as their cloud computing OS and the Geneva identity backbone clearly defines the direction they're going. Why would they want to change out a portion of IE, which will be the defacto client for apps running on the Microsoft cloud? They have full control over it now and they have market share, I doubt they will just switch out the rendering engine when they have a big unknown on how well their cloud applications will run on it.
Google came in from the complete opposite direction, jumping in the browser fray because they needed to build a browser that would work best with their intended cloud applications.
Funny how when Microsoft rejects Open Source they get people crawling down their backs. When they suggest they might move in that general direction they get people accusing them of trying to poison Open Source and calling them liars.
Seems whatever happens people just want to hate Microsoft whatever moves the company makes...
I guess that means that Microsoft has used up it's credibility as a corporate citizen.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Your argument has two glaring problems. Firstly, government regulation does not equal less competition. In many cases it results in more competition, especially in the case of monopolies and collusion between companies. Secondly, the mafia cannot legally exist because of laws limiting them, in other words, government regulation. Without the most basic regulation, then any business could (and probably would) become like the mafia. Competition would be limited to companies competing to be the most intimidating, and whoever could intimidate enough people into paying them. In a world with excessive government regulation, even the kind that produces less competition, at least the government would be regulating against such behaviour.
In other words, your argument makes no sense.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Well yeah, but you have to admit they do it with a certain panache.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
If you look at the latest versions of .NET, silverlight, integration of Ajax and the overwhelming popularity of the Ajax model in delivering web content, they will have little choice. I suspect they know the architecture of IE just isn't suited to the technology they are trying to deliver their next generation of applications on.
In other words, they want to own the server, not the client, when the applications will be delivered from there. Even their own developers use Firefox/firebug for debugging work (who doesn't?)
to H. G. Wells...
The browser war between Open and Closed, which is now in its three hundredth and twenty-sixth year has at last come to an end. There are no standards compliant websites left to view and few standards compliant browsers left to view with. The Internet has become so polluted with deadly viruses and proprietary code that it can no longer be viewed. There is no place on the Internet that is immune. The last surviving programmers for the manufacture of standards compliant code have been destroyed. Codebase improvements are rapidly diminishing and when they are gone, we must die...
Sig this!
Extend, Embed, Enjoy
Where is your bigoted speech now, asshole?
Their mother told them to turn off the 'computer' and go to bed and if she catches them on 4chan again, she's going to ground them for a 'month of Sundays'.
From TFA:
Microsoft will never open-source Trident. It'd be like letting the entire world look at your dirty laundry.
So what did Microsoft do to Apple that was that terrible?
Got two words for you there: "look" and "feel."
MS was an early developer for Macs and had some of the first prototype machines. While assuring Apple that they weren't, they were using their knowledge of the thing that made a Mac a Mac, the Toolbox, to build a GUI on top of DOS. This GUI was released later as Windows, and although apologists try to play it off as based on Xerox's interface (whose designers were at Apple by then anyway), there is much evidence that they ripped Apple off. Apple put a ton of R&D into the interface, it was not much like Xerox's at all -- it was very much an "invented here" mindset as opposed MS's "NIH."
Thus was born the Look and Feel suit; Apple sued Microsoft for ripping off their interface, but in the meantime, Apple's then-CEO, John Sculley, had given Gates a badly-worded agreement that was construed by the judge to be a license to produce Windows using Apple's "intellectual property." Then again, part of the settlement was that MS couldn't use overlapping windows; that's why they were tiled until version 3.
All this actually didn't matter much; Apple made the bulk of its revenues on the Apple II line until 1987 or so, and Microsoft could likely have parlayed Apple's BASIC license into permission to use Apple's interface R&D anyway ("applesoft" BASIC was developed by MS, Woz did the superior "integer" BASIC but never upgraded it to handle floating-point math).
Here's what I consider the main point: Apple saw the Xerox work, and took some of the key people who created it, but they totally improved it. Quickdraw did real regions, roundrects, and other stuff the Smalltalk interface didn't. Microsoft may have seen the Xerox work, definitely saw the Apple stuff, and then put together a half-assed, hackneyed piece of shit.
This is what Microsoft has done ever since. Apple runs Microsoft's interface R&D, in a way. I think that's the real reason MS bailed them out in 1997. Bill Gates famously said, "I want Mac on a PC! I want Mac on a PC!" They always get pretty close, but somehow stay so far.
Linux seems to be much closer, using technology (X) that really was developed independently on a parallel track; thus they have their own thing that isn't some wanna be copy and stands on its own.
They're just tired of trying to compete with Mozilla.. if you can't beat 'em.. join 'em. ;)
-Troll, Flamebait, and Offtopic are NOT equivalent to disagreement.
But we wikes his wittle argument.
Aw, cute wittle wibertarian.
Firstly, government regulation does not equal less competition.
He didn't say it did. He said that a certain level of regulation (ie, outright prohibition) creates an environment which encourages mafia tactics.
It's always a long day... 86400 doesn't fit into a short.
Ballmer is as relevant as John McCain.
you had me at #!
As a web designer, the nightmare of my day is having to check my code against IE, Firefox, Safari, etc. Most of all was IE. That crap [IE] could really screw with you. The fact that a complex page design almost always couldn't accommodate both W3C standards and IE has made many days almost unbearable. Now I understand, "Well then don't program for it," and trust me I would love to live that idea, but the truth is company execs don't give a rat's ass. A lot of people use IE, and you're page has to work accordingly.
Anyway, my point is that IE8 beta 3 has shown some great improvements with CSS, XHTML, JavaScript support. Finally there will (should be) support for the pseudo :hover, etc. I've already seem some great improvements in complying with W3C standards. Though not up to par with its competitors, Microsoft has actually put some effort into this one that I haven't seen before.
It looks like someone working there ran across this page, or one like it, and thought it was finally time to make a change.
Extinguish.
Hey, it's a Firefox, ok? It has to be extinguished, didn't you learn anything in your scout meetings?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Does anyone ever get sick of the level of cynicism anything Microsoft is met with here on Slashdot?
I fully expect to be down-modded for saying this, but I've seen sweeping improvements in Windows products as a result of open-source competition. Microsoft has seen open-source work in a proprietary OS with Apple, so I'm sure it's something they'd seriously consider for their own product.
Similes are like metaphors
Microsoft will not replace the IE rendering engine with something else. Here are reasons why:
1.Lots of stuff out there that relies on quirks of IE (both quirks in the way it parses/renders/etc the HTML and quirks in the way it works internally where apps poke into IE memory to do undocumented stuff)
2.Too closely tied into the OS to be replaced
3.Too many apps embedding IE rendering engine (MS and otherwise) and relying on it and how it works
Awesome! One of my foes defending my position! Will you be my friend now?
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
It even complies with Unix' "Do one thing, and do it well"
I'm not insane! My mother had me tested.
Microsoft embrasing open source, one of the many signs of Apocalypse. Beware !
EULA : By reading the above message, you agree that I now own your soul.
Let's assume they contribute patches back and you are the project leader. Would you accept their patches?
"Enrage" the folks you're trying to lock in?
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
In other words, exactly how IE4 eliminated Netscape in the first browser war. By burying them in the W3C.
I think what people overlook is that the standards process favors the "big guy" over the "little guy" -- assuming the big guy is paying attention. It will take some time for Microsoft to catch up, but it's a real possibility that they could they could pull ahead of Mozilla/Webkit/Opera within a couple years.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
I watched the speech yesterday, and saying Ballmer is "interested" in an Free/OS browser engine is complete bullshit. The title of this article is simply misleading. It should be changed. For starters, the woman who asked the question (they were not her questions) said she though the question was a bit "cheeky". Ballmer then repeated what she said basically, and then said he doesn't know what cheeky means, and suggested another word in replacement of cheeky. He went on to say that he is happy/confident with his IE8 developers. This article makes Slashdot look bad.
*shrug* I dunno, what that AC said makes at least as much sense as the AC he's calling out, and there's the added bonus that the AC he's calling out is likely so ignorant in the first place, that he'd actually believe that's true. Either way, can't see how everyone else can lose out here. ;-)
...just as fleas are "interested" in dogs.
Emasculate?
it just means that many people don't like MS and don't trust it and don't want it. I am one of those people
You can't handle the truth.
Uhh, regarding your sig: The Mafia controlled the Italian government for decades. The president of Italy, Andriotti, was the chief of the Mafia!
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
At least not for a long time. He may say that he is interested, but its not something he or anybody else high up at MS is likely to push.
If this does happen, does it mean that we could see IE tab in Linux?
exactly. the best example for that is russia of nineties. it was a real libertarian paradize with laissez-faire capitalism and the rest of the life.
most buisnesses were undistinguishable from thugs and the rest paid protection money.
even the law enforcement was the same.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Balmer, being the crazy nutcase original that he is, has actually acknowledged OSS achievements in the past and - for a MS exec - is quite aware of what it going on in OSS. After all, the newer Windows UIs perpetually copy the better ideas from KDE, so there has to be some awarness.
Between him and BG I suspect he'd be more likeley to admit when it's time to move from shrinkwrap software to services, allthough he still doesn't even mention that in public.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Government control is a normalising force, designed to keep the system working and the interests of the people first and foremost on the agenda.
Well, that's a nice theory. However, you must have been living on Mars. In reality, it morphed into this decades ago: Government control is a force working to keep the Big Corp system working and the interests of the their sponsors - the filthy rich - first and foremost on the agenda.
'Why is Windows still relevant and why is it worth spending money on OS kernels when there are open source ones available that can respond to changes in computer world faster?,' asked a young developer to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in Tehran yesterday. 'That's cheeky, but a good question, but cheeky,' Ballmer said. Then came the startling revelation that Microsoft may also adopt an open source OS kernel. 'Open source is interesting,' he said. 'Novell has embraced Linux and we may look at that, but we will continue to build extensions for Windows 7.'
Persian Project Management Software as a Service
Isn't that's sort of what they tried to do with ActiveX, Active Channels, MSJVM, etc? You say you were at the conference so maybe you can point out some of the differences in approach.
My 2c: I think they might be underestimating the pressure on content creators to reach the common denominator, technology-wise. Obviously you're going to consider using newer or proprietary technologies if it outweighs the downside of losing potential eyeballs. But how often is that worth it? I think Microsoft.com is still the only website that I'm regularly at that can use Silverlight. I'm sure it's growing, but if it was IE-only people might have just laughed it away.
Web devs were willing to code/design for a specific stack when there wasn't any other option. ECMAScript is getting to the point now where I really have to wonder what serious value an all-MS approach can offer vs. the usual LAMP + PHP + JS stew. Maybe it can speed things up on the development side (big maybe, considering the newer options: Django, RoR...), but again, isn't losing eyeballs too much to pay for quicker development?
The stuff you can do with .NET and IE in terms of publishing networked apps is pretty slick, but I just can't see anyone lining up to do those sorts of things when the target audience is the internet at large rather than an office building.
Maybe they do get it, but they're too big of a company to fundamentally change their strategy on this. I always hesitate to call Microsoft dumb. I'm sure there's no shortage of talent there. So I'm wondering what specifically is different this time around. What's in the pipeline that's so enticing that people won't flinch at tying themselves to a specific vendor?
Well, that's another interesting theory, but being unable to prove it one way or the other, and having vast tracts of circumstantial evidence backing up each, let's just stick to the theoretical, shall we? After all, we were originally talking about "ultimate expressions", which really should be purely theoretical. The mafia is one of the closest things we have to the ultimate expression of deregulation.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Does Ballmer even know what's cheekiness?
As far as I can decipher it, the OP's argument breaks down as follows:
Excessive government control ==>
Insignificant competition ==>
Violent business practices
It's more like:
Excessive government control ==>
It's a crime simply to engage in a certain type of business transaction ==>
People who engage in those business transactions have little incentive not to break other laws ==>
Violent business practices
This link is clearly demonstrated in the realms of human trafficking, arms dealership, drug trafficking, alcohol in the '20s, gambling, and usury. That last two are examples where an outright ban isn't necessary to encourage violent business practices; there are some instances where gambling is legal, for example, yet the mob still finds it profitable to involve themselves in casinos.
To say that excessive regulation results in less competition focuses on one relatively small, rarely used aspect of government regulation.
So what? The only one waving their hand about how common or rare this situation is, is you.
It's always a long day... 86400 doesn't fit into a short.
So you are referring to ineffective excessive government control. I guess, in effect, it would be very similar to absolutely no government control.
So you would think that the mafia being violent is a result of business practices they do being illegal, rather than the other way around? The way I see it, the mob is naturally violent. That's their MO. They use intimidation and violence to practice their business. Since they already break one of the largest taboos we have (murder), they figure they might as well go after something lucrative like gambling.
So, to characterise excessive government control as less competition is extremely misleading.
Perhaps, but then again, no-one asked me to delve any further on that point. I had assumed it was obvious, after people looked beyond the one or two cases of government regulation being anti-competition (in free markets), and realised that there really aren't that many examples, whereas antitrust laws are part of the law itself, and are actually enforced (I know, not as much as some would like, but they are enforced).
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Only a minimum of regulation is needed - like preventing theft and fraud - just enough to make it more profitable to please the customer than to not please him.
The Russians had decades of excessive government control to create the conditions of the nineties. Under that regulation, pretty much every business was illegal, in the nineties those illegal businesses came to the forefront.
No matter how bad it was, this is the essence of a quote (as accurate as I can remember) from a man that lived under both systems: With the criminal gangs, we were afraid every time we went outside. Under the communists, we were afraid all the time.
Using Russia in the 90's as an example of libertarianism is climbing a fair way up to the peak of the heights of stupidity. Or perhaps just more socialists propaganda blaming the opposition for the results of their own failures.
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
Chair Man of the Borg.
Say hello to my little sig.
It's already here Steve....its called Firefox....get a life man!
And even if the rendering engines were GPL'ed, you could write an RPC wrapper daemon and call the library's services thruogh a socket. Batch calls if you can, to minimize the number of ctx switches.
Depending on what the library does, this may or may not be prohibitive. Talk to the disk? No problem. Do a single dot product? You're dead; look at compiz drawing a window while resizing it, and count the ctx switches.
Surely you can't deny the immediate advantages of being able to spend exorbitant amounts of money on lobbyists. :) Do I need to bring copyright extensions or marijuana prohibition into this? (Yes, I'm in America)
What day is it? Could you please tell me?
Historically most monopolies came about through government intervention in the market.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
More often than not, government regulation actually encourages more competition.
Government regulation of a particular business always increases the barriers to entry in that business. This is not always a bad thing, but it always reduces competition.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Apple provide an OS which is highly compatible with unix like systems such as linux, bsd and solaris... But if that's all it was, it would be pointless...
What differentiates OSX is the whole package, you get premium hardware which runs an OS and set of apps specifically designed and thoroughly tested to work together on the exact hardware you're using.
What differentiates MS is compatibility with the existing applications and other MS products you may be tied in to...
If MS were to embrace a unix system, then they would have nothing to force people onto their software instead of one of the many free unix systems out there, and each small step towards standardisation chips away at the artificial lock-in they have spent so long creating.
MS just aren't geared up for competing on a level field based on quality and value. Competition would massively shrink their margins, they would have to curb their aggressive and costly expansion into other markets to cut costs, and they would have to invest a lot more in improving their products... And their costs for product improvement would be a lot higher than their competitors, due to the haphazard way in which many of their products are engineered.
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In other words, your argument makes no sense.
The eighteenth amendment disagrees.
We desire far less to have Microsoft's code in open source products. Microsoft is not an open source implementor. Microsoft is an opened source museum. You can't take their code to other platforms. With the threats of lawsuits against any user of Linux over the alleged 235+ patent violations, the open source community with impunity and with all imperativeness should shun any contribution by Microsoft. Any Microsoft involvement is a tainting of the water so to speak.
The goal of Open Source is to create an environment where none have to fear the likes of Microsoft and their proprietard ways of life. The Open Source community will move forward on its own with adequate time given.
This is a just say no to Microsoft imperative. Shortly after the time they announced the threats to everyone over the 235+ patents one notable party at Microsoft stated that 2008 was the year of the death of Open Source. What that means is that they fundamentally had their plans laid out to destroy Open Source, most likely through embrace, extend, extinguish.
NO to Microsoft means no to this type of decrepit deceit of those that care about having a choice and being free of the encumbrances and lock ins from MS.
The Open Source community created and has perfected webkit. To have Microsoft implement it is the embrace part. Not to mention they are the largest profiteer of software on the planet. As a consequence they can afford to fix their own product and have no need to have other unpaid contributors produce code for them to make more profit.
In order to win one must be willing to fight the hard fight and endure. One can not long endure if they do not understand that once Microsoft embraces this they will extend it (just like they tried to do with Java). Any extension will kill the product finally by extinguishing Open Source actual efforts because Microsoft will have taken control. This is no different than what they did with OOXML to Open Doc--why use Open Doc when the rest of the world uses OOXML?
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
They don't choose a terribad license. Anyway, why not just help out with existing superior projects? :)
This is only partially true. The implementation of hardware on the Mac is now the same hardware found in the world at large. The hard drives can be swapped with impunity, video cards the same, etc. It only takes the proper drivers (just like linux and wind) to make them work properly. The processors are the same, the memory is the same, the chipsets for wireless and networking is the same.
Yes, Apple has tested them to ensure that they work and have proper drivers but the Mac is nothing more now than a clone manufactured by the likes of Foxconn in China just as other pre-fab manufacturers do. HP, Dell, Gateway, Sony, Toshiba, etc all do it the same way. Does any other manufacturer have access to the source code to produce bug fixes and improved integration? No. But in reality the hardware is exactly the same.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
It should be +5 insightful. Sheesh, can't you get anything right?
Windows = Closed source from Microsoft
IE = Closed source from Microsoft
Microsoft has acknowledged that IE has reused Windows Kernel Source Code.
And Netscape is denied and deprived of reusing Windows Kernel Source Code.
Isn't this illegal?
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
No, just somewhat effective. Enough to make illegal business risky. What's with the false dichotomy? Running out of counter-arguments?
Did you read the OP's post? If so, read it again. He did characterise excessive government control as less competition.
They do exist. However, there are far more instances when government regulation has the opposite effect. Antitrust is built into the law, all designed to increase, or maximise the effectiveness of competition. Of course, we have occasional case-by-case exceptions, but they are exactly that: exceptions, and are designed to do a better job than competition could have done in the same situation. That's why I say it's misleading.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
russia of the nineties was the perfect example of pure libertarianism - even the government went private.
that guy you quote, who was afraid all the time, i suppose, he was a criminal. because i have also lived under both systems and i'd rather live in the mid eighties of ussr than in the mid nineties of russia because the only thing the soviet citizens back then were afraid of were american nukes.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
russia of the nineties was the perfect example of pure libertarianism - even the government went private.
I don't know where you get your idea of libertarianism. I suggest you have a look here: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=libertarianism
Libertarianism is not anarchy, although some libertarians may advocate the idea of no government, I don't think that would be commonly regarded as a more "pure" libertarianism. In practice, the ideal of freedom of thought and speech requires constitutionally limited government. The government going private would more commonly be termed fascism.
that guy you quote, who was afraid all the time, i suppose, he was a criminal.
A dangerous criminal no doubt. Probably had an unapproved opinion. Possibly even a religion.
only thing the soviet citizens back then were afraid of were american nukes.
Except the people being tortured in communist prisons for their religious or political views of course. Or those at risk of such abuse. Don't pretend it didn't happen, it's too late for that.
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
I disagree. I think most monopolies happen in small towns, where the local store is the only game in town.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
If you aren't ashamed of what you are posting, why are you posting AC? And yes I think you have a right to post AC and would even defend that right, but OTH an AC post generally indicates shame IMO.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?