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EU Says MS Must Offer Other Browsers; Now What?
Glyn Moody writes "So the European Commission is going to require Microsoft to offer competitors' browsers with Windows. '...Microsoft will be obliged to design Windows in a way that allows users "to choose which competing web browser(s) instead of, or in addition to, Internet Explorer they want to install and which one they want to have as default..." [Microsoft] now has until mid-March to respond to the Commission, and might also ask for a hearing. Brussels will not adopt a final decision until it has received Microsoft's official reply.' But having the option to install Firefox, say, is useless unless people know what it is. The implication is that we need some kind of campaign to ensure that people understand the choices they will have. How can open source best exploit this latest EU decision?"
At least, not by me. I imagine that most users will be confused by the presence of more than one "internet" on their machines, and one browser or another still has to be the default. Does MS have to make Firefox the default browser, too?
I used to carry a bottle of whiskey for snake bite. And two snakes. -Nefarious Wheel
Microsoft being forced to design Windows in a way that allows users "to choose which competing operating system(s) instead of, or in addition to, Windows they want to install and which one they want to have as default..."
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
with the integration between Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer.
So... I really hope Microsoft says "sure" and bundles 10-20 really crappy and outdated browsers, with firefox and opera nowhere in sight. The EU deserves a clusterfuck like that for coming out with this stupid decision.
I am not a *blank*, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
Hasn't Mozilla said that they do not want to be bundled with Windows.
Which browsers make the cut and which don't??
It's not difficult to install a new browser. Someone who doesn't know about other browsers or how to install them isn't going to be installing Windows out of the box anyways. They're going to be installing a pre-packaged image from some company... or they got their computer built by some technically knowledgeable person who knows about other browsers.
IE is integrated pretty heavily into Windows as well.
I dunno, I'm all for people having choices and having knowledge... but this seems stupid. I mean, what's next, make them include iTunes with the default windows package?
As an IT professional and engineer, I'm not even sure that I would WANT them to have other browsers installed, by default, on a system... I want it to be as clean as possible by default.
Of non technical people making technical decisions.
Mozilla doesn't want to be automatically packaged and there's nothing in this sort of result preventing Microsoft from packaging out of date crappy browsers. Moreover, the real issues are that 1) IE is in many ways interconnected with the Windows operating system and other Microsoft products and 2) IE is set as the default browser. If microsoft keeps a check box that you need to check when installing to make IE not the default browser then it will not get checked by the normal users. It is probably a better idea to just let the free market continue its slow progress. Firefox and others will win out. And that will occur long before the Year of Linux.
Microsoft is going to fight this decision tooth and nail. They will appeal it and appeal it and appeal it. Microsoft has no good faith intention of complying with this order, any more than they comply with any other order. Look at what they did with the US anti-trust case. They stalled until W became the unelected US head of state, and then Bush promptly caved in and gave Microsoft everything it asked for.
I'm a 28 year old network administrator and software developer. I've been doing this stuff professionally for ten years now, starting with telecommunications programming when I was 18. I'm posting this from an Ubuntu laptop, which has a few terminals open tailing logs on various Debian and FreeBSD servers I manage. I publish most of my software under either BSD or GPL licenses.
Now that you understand where I'm coming from, let me say that you're partially right when you assert that crippling Microsoft's software is stupid. The fact is, this whole thing is insanely stupid, and reeks of socialism. I've been through Microsoft's lengthy history of pushing shitty software on the masses using grossly unethical business methods, and I still strenuously object to this course of action.
The fact that you would even suggest forcibly placing a corporation's patents and copyrights into the public domain indicates you're either (a) incredibly young and naive, (b) stupid, or (c) an unfortunate combination of the first two options. Nobody has the right to tell anyone else what to do with the works they create; I'll be damned if anyone's going to restrict my right to license my works as I see fit. I may not like Microsoft as a general rule, but they deserve the same treatment I enjoy under the law.
I would recommend attending a reputable university to enhance your understanding of basic economics and IP law, but it seems to backfire for a lot of folks who already have warped perceptions in these areas.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Freedom of the people to choose a different browser is great. Somewhere, however, the line has to be drawn. Microsoft is clearly not limiting the ability of other browsers to work with Windows, and is not stopping anyone from downloading and installing a different browser. What happened to the freedom of a company to sell their own product without interference? Why should they advertise for a competing product in their own? Even more, why should they be required to bundle a competitor's product in their own? Should the Adobe Flash installer also include Silverlight? Should RedHat include a Slackware install disk? Really, where does the madness end? I think the appropriate response from Microsoft would be to stop selling Windows in the EU. The EU wants people to see alternatives, so great. Stop making Windows available until there's a public outcry and reversal of these insane rulings.
Heck, Open Source zealots still use IE to post to Slashdot.
[citation needed]
Seriously, are there statistics on browser share among posts on /.? (NOT views, posts...)
Yet, everyone has been buying programs for video game consoles for almost 30 years
I think this statement best summarises where you are wrong. You do realise that most people have never owned a console. I am talking about the majority of computer users, not people in some African nation. You really do have a very warped view of the world, if you think 50% of people using computers even know what a browser is.
What part of Windows doesn't allow users to choose a competing web browser?
Exactly.
Boot you machine, see 3 or 4 icons on the desktop:
Install Internet Explorer
Install FireFox
Install Opera
Install Safari.
Problem solved.
The real question is will they force Apple to do the same, or does the Little dictator of Cupertino get another free pass?
What about Ubuntu? Does it have to offer a choice as well?
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I honestly hope it works out with Apple getting its ass kicked for only offering Safari. Seriously, where's the justice?
If the geek had an once of sense he'd put more distance between himself and the EU bureaucrat.
There is precedent now for government to add or subtract - mandate anything it wants from any OS distribution - depending on which way the political winds are blowing.
If MS is forced to bundle others browsers, they cannot be expected to support them. When regular mostly computer illiterate users have a problem with software they phone support, MS will be more than happy to redirect the calls to opera, (is there even phone support for FF?), and tell them they will have to pay extra thanks to the EU. It is one thing to tell MS to bundle competing browsers, it is another to force them to offer technical support for them for free.
I make a competing calculator (hypothetically). I want an icon on the desktop for the Windows Calculator, Maxima, Octave and Mathematica.
I also (again, hypothetically) make a notepad replacement. I want my product, Notepad++, Wordpad, Microsoft Word, and a half dozen scintilla-based knockoffs.
I also hypothetically make an alternative desktop shell. Because Microsoft FORCES you to use theirs, before you even get to see all of the five BILLION other fucking icons, I want a screen to pop up with only a mouse, and a choice of shells. Mine, which doesn't support UAC, separation of privileges, explorer shells (which will confuse the heck out of people,) explorer extensions (bye-bye TortoiseSVN, TortoiseHG, etc,) or other features. Also included should be shells that barely work.
And finally, after booting into Windows becomes a clusterfuck of choosing about eighteen trillion defaults, I as a developer expect my users to have a relatively stable and ubiquitous set of APIs available.
Oh wait, we threw that out the window.
Fuck.
Here's an idea. Let Microsoft keep doing what they're doing and easily choose between default programs, and even allow those programs to prompt the user to alter their default. Because any other option is fraught with favoritism and is just going to cram OEM desktops with more bullshit than ever before, and make the idea of targeting the Windows desktop from a developer or support perspective laughable.
More to the point, how is Microsoft going to exploit it? I'm not an anti-MS zealot, but I can completely see them bundling some third-rate thing that still uses the IE rendering engine or something like Safari that's nowhere near usable on Win32.
That said, if IE is still the default option (or from the user's perspective appears to be), then this judgement really amounts to zilch no matter which side of the debate you're on.
Shouldn't Mac OS also have come with other browsers then?
What about the iPhone, which does not even allow other browsers to be used in its OS?
I'm not in favor of Microsoft, but Apple is not that much different.
I agree with you to a point. The issue that the EU is trying to redress is really a long-past issue of the 1990s. Microsoft's practices wiped out Netscape, but that's ancient history. Firefox, as IE's chief competitor, has made great strides in the market without any help from the EU or anyone else, but by simply being a damned good browser with a good feature set, easy expandability with dozens of rather good extensions. In a real way, the market itself ultimately is correcting the issue.
But there is a flip side. Just because ultimately the market seems to be making some headway in trashing the Microsoft monopoly doesn't neocessarily mean that Microsoft should not be punished for previous anti-competitive behavior. Quite frankly, this isn't the way to do it. The ultimate problem here is legal systems in North America and Europe that allow companies with large bank accounts to essentially buy the time the need. Microsoft made a mockery of due process, but it's merely taking advantage of a system that is essentially designed to put off justice as long as possible (look at how long SCO could keep an utterly foundationless set of legal claims going).
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
> What about Ubuntu? Does it have to offer a choice as well?
You don't force Ubuntu to offer a choice. You package it up and agree to maintain the package. It then gets placed into a repo or onto the base install CD depending on its license, legal status and popularity. I suspect that were Microsoft to package a native IE and offer to maintain it in Ubuntu's distribution that it would be accepted. A Winelib port wouldn't be quite as welcome but would be allowed into the online repos. If it were released under a compatible and approved Open Source/Free Software license then even Debian and Fedora would take it.
See the difference between a monopoly trying to manipulate the market and a distribution based on Free Software trying to make happy users?
Democrat delenda est
At first when I read this, I thought, "How could the EU possibly come to this conclusion? Firefox has over 20% market share and is still climbing. Are they dumb?" But then I sat down and thought about it. Who prompted this investigation? Opera. Opera has not had the success that Firefox has enjoyed. Now, most of use don't see this as a problem, but to the EU, it is a problem because Opera is a European company. The way the EU sees this, it's not a question of alternative browsers being able to take root, (Firefox already shows that is possible) it is a question of alternative EUROPEAN browsers being able to take root which has not happened. Think about the consequences of this decision. Considering that Mozilla has already stated that they would not bundle their browser with Windows, what other "major" browsers are really left? Just Chrome, Safari, and Opera, and I have trouble seeing Apple and Google forcing themselves upon MS. Really, Opera is the only browser that would really benefit from this. The way I see it, it's all politics, they want to help Opera, the poor European browser, fend off those terrible Americans who can build better products.
What's to stop Microsoft from offering a crappy version of Firefox? They've got engineers to spare; they could download the code (ah, open source) and tell their engineers to muck it up so it crashes or mis-renders and so forth. Then install it so IE7/8 looks shiny compared to a rotten turd that they put in because they had to.
I don't think they'd even have problems releasing their Firefox CE (Crippled Edition) source code to comply with the GPL. ("Here, you guys can have this back!")
In other news, Microsoft Windows users are now covered under the Americans with Disabilties Act...
Not to mention that putting a disc in a Wii and installing PC software are about as far apart as changing the oil and just putting gas in the car.
A more pertinent question is when iPods are going to ship with an eMusic client.
Open Source zealots still use IE to post to Slashdot. Why?
Because MS is an OS monopoly that illegally ties its browser to its OS. It's difficult to get away from Windows and IE, because of their anticompetitive behavior. That's the whole point of the EU decision!
Here comes the worst...OpenOffice file formats are 100% open for years now, i.e., free to implement but there is not a single open source office suite that implements them with 100% fidelity!
What are you talking about? OpenOffice.org implements ODF perfectly well.
Same story on browsers and so on.
These are folks that talk "vendor lock-in"..."open formats" and all the similar rant. Please give us a break!
Sorry, but it is vendor lock-in when the file format is not published and has to be reverse engineered. That wouldn't be a problem if the software were well written, but it isn't. MS Office isn't even compatible with itself, as it refuses to open old Word files because MS has determined Office can't do it in a secure fashion. OOo is so far ahead of MS Office that OOo can open the old Word files MS Office won't!
Microsoft had found ways to make Java under-perform while promoting their own proprietary and non-compliant Java VM. Microsoft did similar things against DR-DOS. I expect to see the same of any co-bundled browser.
Any implementation of a browser alternative should be written as a drop-in replacement for the trident rendering engine, not merely the inclusion of some alternative browser package in the add/remove programs list. Part of what is wrong is that too many applications become vulnerabilities by virtue of trident's own vulnerabilities. But if those same API handles were linked over to webkit or something else, then people would have a true alternative that fixes problems not only with the browsers, but within applications that use the rendering of them.
The market is already doing what they hope to achieve, and it got a nice head start. They should just let it happen instead of legislating it, we're already halfway there.
Exactly. There are two sets of rules, those for Microsoft, and those for Apple.
Apple can force Quicktime on you in their OS, Safari, Itunes, and many other bundled applications... but Microsoft cant. This is just getting tired and old.
Lay off microsoft. The OS's features are stripped to shit as it is because of these stupid laws.
MS may like having IE intergrated into the OS, where as Firefox doesnt like that approach. Why cant MS intergrate the browser the way they want and leave Firefox to develope how they want?
What browsers CANT you run on windows? Opera, Safari, Firefox... they all run on windows. Where is the problem?
Perhaps the EU should also force MS to include other operating systems such as OSX and Linux on their install disks for Windows 7. That would be FAIR. (rolls eyes)
The issue is that you CANNOT uninstall IE. It's been deliberately entangled coreward to prevent that from being doable, even with third party tools.
I'm not sure where you get this FUD, but yes, you can uninstall it. I think the "entanglement" you're referring to is the fact that there are several DLLs that provide the Windows HTML rendering engine that don't disappear when you uninstall IE. They don't go away because other applications use them. ... *grumble*
I mean, you're just talking about the small potatoes, here! What about all the other crap that IE leaves laying around? What about that pesky TCP/IP implementation!? You wouldn't believe the pain in the ass it was for me to get rid of that when I uninstalled IE! I mean, heck, IE uses scrollbars, right? So why doesn't uninstalling IE remove the scrollbar GUI component from Windows? No More Bloat!
You use the word socialism as if it is a bad word.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Well they could simply force any browser on the market to respect standards. A bit like the Euro safety standard: Euro NCAP for cars.
If the new browser do not respect the current standard like HTML 5 in 2009, it can't be bundled with an operating system.
Prolem solved. IMHO.
As a web developer I couldn't care less about browser brand. It can be named Safari, Internet Explorer,Opera or Firefox. Open source or not. I don't care. What matters is the compatibility with standards. Then people could choose their browser for their performance, UI, whatever.
Is the history of browsers and how Microsoft killed the ones before it.. not by making a better one (actually they did at the beginning), but by first of all Including it with the OS, and secondly tightly integrating it into the OS.. When IE was started, it was a separate but free download.. if they had kept it that way, much trouble would have been avoided.
Your calculator and notepad examples are relevant.. IF Microsoft had not been suppling these apps since the 3.0 days and there where people selling them as separate apps, you can bet your ass they would be pissed when all of a sudden MS included them in the OS for free. What do you think would happen if the next version of Windows suddenly included a photo editor that was on par or better than Photoshop ?
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
Every OS in the market probes this, with the glaring exception of MS OSes.
You can remove the browser in any other kind of machine and your computer will sit there, happily doing anything else you asking it to do, because the browser is an *user level* application.
If the brilliant Software Engineers at MS do not understand this (ha! As if...) it is not the market's fall.
Also some people here are way too young to remember how MS *abused* their monopoly in order to obliterate the competition, who were selling a product that threatened to make the Windows platform irrelevant. The threat was so real that now Google may bring that promise to fruition in spite of MS's interference.
That is what monopolies do, which is illegal, and why governments need to intervene, otherwise such companies would continue to stifle progress and innovation.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
No ! It absolutely isn't the same argument.
Because Microsoft are a convicted monopolist they have to live by different rules, rules which govern monopolists and their behaviour.
These rules do not apply to companies who are not monopolists, Apple is not a monopolist so these rules do not apply to Apple.
Yes ! Obviously, duh, because Apple & Firefox are not monopolists.
Do you understand now ? It's really not that hard.
Another problem is that in IT classes people are taught microsoft, not the critical thinking required to seek their ideal solution. Microsoft will retain their monopoly until IT education becomes education and stops being indoctrination.
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.
Grow up. Might as well say most families are socialist. Children do not contribute and yet they get all these free handouts where the parents will go to jail if they don't. Absolutely terrible.
Nobody has the right to tell anyone else what to do with the works they create
Faulty logic. Ownership, by definition, is the right to control something. Any ethical, not legal, argument saying "because they own it" is meaningless.
All he's suggesting is another, possibly appropriate, way to fine M$ by taking something of value (the monopoly a gift from society at large in the first place) away from them.
As an aside it is also not unreasonable to say that when patents and copyrights become de facto or de jure standards, just like trademarks and for much the same reasons, they should be lost. Monopolies (i.e. market failure) are unhealthy for exactly the same reason any centralized power is unhealthy and are an unfortunate byproduct of current unstable, winner-take-all intellectual property market structures (it's always going to be more efficient to create "IP" once and copy it n times than to create it m times and copy each n/m times) and we need to find ways of fixing that.
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You communist! Breathing shared air!