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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?"
...How can open source best exploit this latest EU decision?"...
By learning to eat its own dog food. Heck, Open Source zealots still use IE to post to Slashdot. Why? They still edit their documents using MS Office. They still create video files using Flash and cannot agree (read implement) a "standard" for file locations on Linux and versions.
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!
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!
It's nothing more than a forfeiture like any other. Money doesn't matter to them. Whatever a regular fine would be, it would be made up for within a week. Nope, Gotta hit 'em where it hurts...if they really did anything wrong. And your basic economics and IP law is partly responsible for the broken economy designed solely for the benefit of the big dogs that we live under today. So I have little faith in what ever people with a vested interest would have to say. It is meaningless in a rigged system.
What?
Really? Name Apple's desktop monopoly. I'm waiting
What you describe doesn't sound much worse than using plain IE. With IE you all the time get messages, security-warnings, have to click on "interactive content" so it starts running, have to adjust "security levels" and in general get trained to click "ok" all the time.
But isn't it funny that MS is now forced into making their products more and more unusable? Anybody remember having to chose indexing techniques for Windows' help system the first time it was run? Now users will get this all the time. Just bizarre.
I recently re-installed Windows and was literally enraged to find that it wouldn't install on any disk other than disk 0. This is SATA for crying out loud!
All intents and purposes. Not intensive purposes.