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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?"
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.
I honestly hope it works out with Apple getting its ass kicked for only offering Safari. Seriously, where's the justice?
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.
Dear god, how this got a +4 Insightful I'll never know.
Madness? Using an illegal monopoly to muscle into other markets is madness. You're saying you'd be quite happy for the electric company to bundle a crappy washing machine that tears your clothes with your electricity bill?
Oh, and the electric company have ensured that even if you buy another washing machine, you can't remove theirs. And theirs insists on washing your clothes from time to time, no matter how hard you try to remove it. That's what MS did here - they used one product that you pretty much *had* to buy to bundle in a bug ridden piece of crap and force it on customers.
You can't remove IE from a system, they managed to bodge it in pretty well. And no matter how many competitors products you install, from time to time IE will pop up again.
If you're going to talk about the freedom of a company to sell it's product without interference, go speak to Netscape. They deserved to be able to sell their product without Microsoft illegally killing their market. And yes, it was illegal. Both the US and the EU have ruled on that now.
Calling decisions by some of the top courts on two continents insane just shows how much you're missing the point here. You're right about a line needing to be drawn though; the courts are telling Microsoft they've stepped over it, and it's about time.
None of the OEMs are bundling other browsers because IE has a zero cost to them to include, despite it being a non-zero cost to Microsoft to create. I.e., Microsoft are using their Windows monopoly to distribute their web client.
If the Windows OEM license fee was broken out into a Windows fee and an IE fee, then more OEMs would decide to skip the IE aspect and install Firefox, Chrome or Opera.