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Time For Microsoft To Open Source Internet Explorer?

Posted by Soulskill on from the if-you-can't-beat-'em dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Ars Technica's Peter Bright argues that it's time for Microsoft to make Internet Explorer open source. He points out that IE's major competitors are all either fully open source (Firefox), or partially open source (Chrome, Safari, and Opera), and this puts Microsoft at a huge disadvantage. Bright says, "It's time for Microsoft to fit in with the rest of the browser industry and open up Trident. One might argue that this argument could be made of any software, and that Microsoft should by this logic open source everything. But I think that the browser is special. The community that exists around Web standards does not exist in the same way around, say, desktop software development, or file system drivers, or user interfaces. Development in the open is integral to the Web in an almost unique way. ... Although Microsoft has endeavored to be more open about how it's developing its browser, and which features it is prioritizing, that development nonetheless takes place in private. Developing in the open, with a public bug tracker, source code repositories, and public discussion of the browser's future direction is the next logical step."

104 of 165 comments (clear)

  1. But the inevitable by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    All the open source freeloaders will just copy it and run it on their linux. And why should Microsoft pay for developers to make a Browser just so it can be stolen and run on linux?

    1. Re:But the inevitable by gweihir · · Score: 2

      I think building a new browser is likely simpler.

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    2. Re:But the inevitable by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I remember IE 4 for Unix. They had IE 5 for Mac.

      I think microsoft plan of isolating Linux from IE failed. Offering it to Linux may give it a few more years of life from it. As people will use IE for Linux to stick with those corporate intranets, that have been made in Front Page, or Visual Studio.

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    3. Re:But the inevitable by Z00L00K · · Score: 1

      Why would anyone even consider that aside from the challenge of see if it can be built.

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
    4. Re:But the inevitable by jbolden · · Score: 3, Interesting

      How did it fail? IE dependencies were a major problem in migrating to Linux in the late 1990s and early 2000s when there was a desire to move away from Windows. IE stagnation retarded the move to web based applications for years. I'd say it was a massive success.

    5. Re:But the inevitable by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Anything that retards the move to 'web base applications' is a good thing.

      The whole Personal Computer revolution was based in the notion that everybody got their own computer, and a room full of IT drones in white codes couldn't hold their data hostage anymore.

      Basing people's access to computing power on their connection to the Internet is a bad idea. Let the Net be a domain for information exchange, not a program loader.

    6. Re:But the inevitable by jbolden · · Score: 1

      Remember that revolution happened (at least in big companies) where the core data was on mainframes and the PÇ was auxiliary. For small business / home that wasn't true. Now we have a mixed environment where people have responsive core IT providing mainframe like services and they have local applications for performance and variety. Seems like best of both worlds.

    7. Re:But the inevitable by nine-times · · Score: 1

      Eh... you make a good point in that it caused the sort of problems that Microsoft seemed to be aiming to cause, but on the other hand, it was temporary and eventually led to IE losing a lot of market share. Now web developers often target Firefox and Chrome, and IE has sort of become the second-class browser.

    8. Re:But the inevitable by blackest_k · · Score: 2

      They are still levering it though, would you believe you can't set IE 10 or 11 home page through group policy unless you are running server 2012 or windows 8

      But then again Chrome is installed on all our systems anyway and google provide policy settings for Chrome. Yes it is annoying locking the home page but some times great idea's are handed down from on high.

      --
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    9. Re:But the inevitable by cyber-vandal · · Score: 1

      Corporate intranets made in Visual Studio work fine in other browsers and have done for a long time. This isn't 2003.

    10. Re:But the inevitable by cyber-vandal · · Score: 1

      would you believe you can't set IE 10 or 11 home page through group policy unless you are running server 2012 or windows 8

      [citation needed]

    11. Re:But the inevitable by jader3rd · · Score: 1

      Anything that retards the move to 'web base applications' is a good thing.

      Yeah, the current move to Store based apps is way more helpful to spreading information to multiple platforms in an open and free manner.
      Down with the web.

    12. Re:But the inevitable by RabidReindeer · · Score: 1

      It isn't "their" data, it's the company's data.

      I won't argue with the fact that "owning" your data is a lot more convenient, but there are several reasons why centralized data continues to be relevant:

      1. It's hard enough to find a shop where even desktop systems have their disks backed up to a secure but accessible location reliably. It gets close to hopeless when you're talking laptops and portable devices.

      2. If the data is on Fred's computer and Bert needs it, but Fred is off fishing in the Bahamas, there's a problem. If Fred took his laptop with him and it fell overboard, there's a real problem.

      3. If Bert did get a copy of Fred's data, then got laid off, Bert has potentially sensitive corporate assets possibly on his personal home computer and we have only his word that they were erased when he was terminated. If we even know he had it to begin with. One real-world case I know of involved salesmen and their customer contact lists. And competitors.

      4. In an era of Big Data, sometimes even a beefed-up desktop machine isn't up to the task of storing and crunching and serving.

      5. In an era of "Constitution-free zones", you may not want employees travelling around with sensitive data or the only copy of the data on their portable systems that could be confiscated and possibly rummaged through by outsiders. That means the entire state of Florida and the most interesting (business-wise) parts of California, New York, Boston, Washington (DC and state) and so forth. Ditto-plus if you're travelling to less-than-hospitable foreign destinations where other governments are even more likely to do so.

      As far as data-on-web/program-on-pc, that works OK when everyone has a standard copy of Windows. Not so much when it's a mix of Windows, MacOS, Android, IOS, and so forth.

    13. Re:But the inevitable by blackest_k · · Score: 1

      http://blog.thesysadmins.co.uk...

      you can google for more

      --
      Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
    14. Re:But the inevitable by jbolden · · Score: 1

      Well yes. But remember net present value is an exponential equation.

      N dollars today is worth N*(1+R)^Y dollars Y years from now, where R is the risk adjusted return I'm aiming for (usually higher than .12). So if R is 15% and Y is 10 years that's slightly over 4 i.e. Microsoft would rather have 1 sale back then, than 4 sales today.

      IE in the last year moved from 2nd to 3rd place. IE in its history has never undersold Firefox.

    15. Re:But the inevitable by div_2n · · Score: 1

      Anything that retards the move to 'web base applications' is a good thing.

      That ship sailed the moment Javascript was born which was pretty early in the development of the WWW.

    16. Re:But the inevitable by cavreader · · Score: 1

      MS still holds a hefty market share for intranet web applications. And targeting multiple browsers, including IE, has become increasingly easier over the years for those who know what they are doing. And MS market share has declined because there are now other choices. It's easy to capture a +90% market share when there are no competitors. .

    17. Re:But the inevitable by nine-times · · Score: 2

      Try to spin it however you want, but there've been competitors for quite a while (Netscape and Opera), and yet the market has shifted from Microsoft being so dominant that major sites commonly were "IE only" and wouldn't work in any other browser, to a position where its more common to see sites go the other way and say, "If you want things to work right, use pretty much any browser other than IE".

      It's not so bad now, since a few years ago Microsoft saw the writing on the wall and started supporting web standards. But a few years ago, I was running into a lot of sites where the developers simply refused to support IE.

    18. Re:But the inevitable by sound+vision · · Score: 1

      IE 5 was actually my browser of choice in the Mac OS 9 era. Completely different than the Windows version.

    19. Re:But the inevitable by cavreader · · Score: 1

      Spin my ass. I was there when Netscape had the largest browser marketshare and then gave it all away to became nothing more than a footnote in the history of the Internet browser evolution. It was right around the same time Java was a full fledged cluster fuck but I will leave that sad topic for another day. In the time it took to resurrect Netscape into Firefox and Firefox into Chrome MS had already grabbed 90%+ of the browser market. And Opera was hardly a competitor that could threaten MS dominance in any form or fashion. And as far as standards go when you have a 90% market share you are the standard. Even when you have "standards" the majority of website developers never follow or implement them correctly any way. Demanding some one adhere to standards is the same thing as demanding they stop trying to do new things not covered in the holy standards. And updating the standards is not a process that has ever happened quickly enough to keep up with the evolving web development platform. And re-read my earlier comment when I said MS still had a very healthy share of the INTRANET applications. Intranet applications allow a company or organization to pick their own standards when it comes to building their IT infrastructure. If an Intranet web application works in IE but has issues with Chrome who gives a shit when the company has determined IE as there Intranet standard? And of course the same thing happens in reverse if Chrome has been designated the company standard.

  2. Question mark in title! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    So the answer must be "no"?

    Isn't this the trend on /.

    1. Re:Question mark in title! by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Funny, the President said "no" ("l'll veto ..." ) more times that I can ever recall during a SotU speech.

      And talk about broken record ..."raise taxes on the rich .... free stuff for everyone else" is just lame playbook. But it works, American voters are stupid.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    2. Re:Question mark in title! by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 2

      American voters are stupid.

      American voters might, stupidly, get to choose from another-Clinton or another-Bush in the coming presidential election.

      About the only good thing to say is they won't get to vote for Obama again.

    3. Re:Question mark in title! by Drethon · · Score: 1

      One of the points of government is to make it hard to pass laws to the politicians on any side can't push something no one else agrees with.

    4. Re:Question mark in title! by Oligonicella · · Score: 1

      Pajama Boy and posse aren't very in sync either, you know.

    5. Re:Question mark in title! by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      What does Saturday morning cartoons have to do with national politics?

    6. Re:Question mark in title! by Cro+Magnon · · Score: 2

      American voters are stupid.

      American voters might, stupidly, get to choose from another-Clinton or another-Bush in the coming presidential election.

      About the only good thing to say is they won't get to vote for Obama again.

      At least, not until Michelle decides to run. :-P

      --
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    7. Re:Question mark in title! by JackieBrown · · Score: 2

      I think basically both sides feel this way.

      Obama is out of sync with the rest of America so we want the Republican Congress to note no on a lot of stupid bills becoming law.

      "The Republicans are (out-of sync) with the rest of America, the veto pen will be needed to stop a lot of stupid bills from becoming law."

      What's happening is the Conservatives are becoming more Conservative and the Liberals are becoming more liberal. There is a whole lot less in-between than their used to be.

      Before, during Kennedy's and Reagan's time, we at least had a common enemy (Soviets) which help bridge some divides. Now we don't have that. Instead, the enemy is the opposite side of the aisle.

    8. Re:Question mark in title! by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      What's happening is the Conservatives are becoming more Conservative and the Liberals are becoming more liberal. There is a whole lot less in-between than their used to be.

      The conservative base of the Republican Party is dying off as angry white old men from the South become fewer in number. The world has moved on without them and they're moving rightward in reaction. Unless the Republican Party expands to embrace moderate conservatives like President Obama, it will soon become a regional minority party.

    9. Re:Question mark in title! by JackieBrown · · Score: 1

      See - that's the problem. You view Obama as a moderate conservative. Most conservatives would view him as an extreme liberal and it scares them (and me) to think that you want someone more extreme than Obama.

      The tea party has shown that this is not just angry old white men. My black wife was more conservative than I am and you can see other races moving up in the party and deciding to just think shrug off all the people that will call them sellouts for not subscribing to the groupthink that all minorities must be democrat.

    10. Re:Question mark in title! by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      Most conservatives would view him as an extreme liberal and it scares them (and me) to think that you want someone more extreme than Obama.

      I consider President Obama to be a moderate conservative because I'm a moderate conservative. From California, of course. If that means to you that I'm an extreme liberal, you seriously need to stop watching Fox News. The Republican Party in California has more in common with the endangered spotted owl than one-tenth of the U.S. population, which is why they're not represented in any state-wide office and probably won't nominate a candidate to replace retiring Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer in 2016.

      If Jeb Bush doesn't sell out to the Tea Party crowd during the primaries, I'll support him in the 2016 election. The Republican Party needs more moderates and fewer extremists.

      My black wife was more conservative

      Black people are more conservative than most people. They became Republicans after the Civil War because President Lincoln freed them from the South. They became Democrats during the Civil Rights era because President Johnson freed them from Jim Crow. If Republicans want black votes, they need to recognize that the southern strategy of pitting poor white folks against poor black folks for the last 40 years doesn't work anymore.

  3. Never going to happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Not as long as it remains integral to the Explorer shell...

  4. Noooooooo! by gweihir · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If they do that, we will get several months of extreme security problems due to all the issues hidden in there. AFAIK they have a whole new thing in development, and they should open-source that instead.

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    1. Re:Noooooooo! by Dracos · · Score: 1

      It wouldn't even take a new crop of IE exploits in the wild to make MS stock drop in price. The first two weeks would be a constant flood of blog posts detailing how crappy the code is. Trident is 17 years old, and many of us have heard how much of an unmaintainable mess the codebase has become in their attempts to implement web standards. Even then, MS would have to release it under a fully open license otherwise no one will taint themselves.

      The "new thing", Spartan, is just a rebrand of IE with a new skin. It'll still be built around Trident and Chakra, so web developers will have no reason to have a different opinion of it from IE.

      MS needs a new rendering engine, but they'll never use an open source one. Their only real option is to write one from scratch, which they haven't done since IE1, and that engine was replaced with Trident (which they bought) in IE4. There was IE5 for Mac, but that was pretty much a one man crusade and its rendering engine was nothing like regular IE.

    2. Re:Noooooooo! by squiggleslash · · Score: 1

      I believe the only "whole new thing" they have in development is a replacement for the shell around IE, not Trident. Not that it's impossible they're working on a new engine anyway, but that isn't what's been announced.

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    3. Re:Noooooooo! by DrStrangluv · · Score: 1

      What I saw on the "whole new thing" in development is that it still uses the Trident engine.

    4. Re:Noooooooo! by gweihir · · Score: 1

      A pity. Their OS has gotten halfway decent with Win7, but their apps still suck. I had hoped they would at least fix the browser now.

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    5. Re:Noooooooo! by cavreader · · Score: 1

      " many of us have heard " Define "us". Hearsay and fanboi forums are hardly the birth place of factual information. But judging from the rest of your comment you must already have full access to the MS source codebase. You sound almost smart enough to develop your own super secure rendering engine which is capable of maintaining at least a 1 year backwards compatibility window so your users are not forced to upgrade every 2 weeks to maintain a running system. Of course nobody has managed that particular feat quite yet but you sound smart enough to give it a shot.

    6. Re:Noooooooo! by squiggleslash · · Score: 1

      What's kinda funny about that is that, as I understand it, they're only replacing Metro IE, with the desktop IE staying the same. The Metro IE is, of course, actually a very nice (tablet) browser, much nicer than the tablet versions of Chrome or Safari.

      So they're changing it.

      --
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  5. Too Late? by Galaga88 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Isn't Microsoft announcing a new web browser intended to replace Internet Explorer today? Maybe it'll be open source. Maybe it'll even be based on Webkit.

    I don't know how much licensed code is in IE that Microsoft would have to untangle the rights to before open-sourcing it, and given the fact that we've mostly figured out how to work around IE's problems at this point, I'm not sure if it'd be worth the effort to do so.

    It'd probably be best to just retire IE, let developers continue struggling through the known-workarounds they've been using until its market-share vanishes, and look forward instead of back. The time spent trying to figure out IE's source could be better spent developing/using a better platform.

    Regardless, I think every web browser should be open source, since they work on (theoretically) open standards, run cross platform, and are the defacto presentation layer for an increasing number of applications. Developers need to be able to understand the internals of the browser to assure the best quality of their own work. Really hoping that's what happens with whatever MS announces today with Spartan. (I just don't think IE is worth the effort to open source at this point)

    1. Re:Too Late? by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Isn't Microsoft announcing a new web browser intended to replace Internet Explorer today? Maybe it'll be open source. Maybe it'll even be based on Webkit.

      I sure hope not. We need competing browser engines to keep things honest. The competition between them is the only way we ever get standards compliance.

      --
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    2. Re:Too Late? by Galaga88 · · Score: 2

      In best Slashdot style, I did some research *after* posting this, and found out that they're sticking with Trident, so at least that bit of competition will be kept.

    3. Re:Too Late? by Marginal+Coward · · Score: 1

      I don't know how much licensed code is in IE that Microsoft would have to untangle the rights to before open-sourcing it, and given the fact that we've mostly figured out how to work around IE's problems at this point, I'm not sure if it'd be worth the effort to do so.

      To expand on that a little, you've touched on some of the real costs of open-sourcing something like this, and there are others, such as documentation, community support, etc. I think the author of TFA is speaking from idealism, but from a strictly business point of view, you have to consider the costs versus the benefits. One of the primary business benefits of open sourcing something often is to attract unpaid volunteer developers. But that's unlikely to happen in this case: not only do the open source folks generally hate Microsoft (say it isn't so!), those who might be interested are probably already working on one of the existing open source browser projects. Why should they switch over to IE?

      Alternatively, they could just throw it out there and abandon it. But that seems quite unlikely: they would lose whatever brand value they get out of bundling IE with Windows, and they would no longer be considered a player in terms of web standards development. That's not where they want to be at this point, where they're still trying to grow their market share in mobile.

      So, although open-sourcing IE might be a good idea in some sort of cosmic sense, I can't think of any real business case for it.

    4. Re:Too Late? by neilo_1701D · · Score: 2

      According to Thurrott, it's Trident minus all the compatibility cruft.

    5. Re:Too Late? by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yes, indeed. But, my impression is, this is going to be just rebranded IE with all the same issues of integration and bugginess and security holes as IE, just with a "new and improved", "best Browser Ever", "Faster than IE" marketing jargon that might work on people too stupid to remember the last 20 years.

      --
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    6. Re: Too Late? by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

      Spartan has a very cleaned out trident engine. So much so it is a new fork without baggage and much faster.

      It can't run legacy code. MS has old engine for corporate sites and loads a tab of IE 11.

      IE is not the piece of cap it was last decade. Spartan is much needed as why should quirks mode slow down porting html 5.1 features

      --
      http://saveie6.com/
    7. Re:Too Late? by maccodemonkey · · Score: 1

      Isn't Microsoft announcing a new web browser intended to replace Internet Explorer today? Maybe it'll be open source. Maybe it'll even be based on Webkit.

      I sure hope not. We need competing browser engines to keep things honest. The competition between them is the only way we ever get standards compliance.

      Spoken by someone who wasn't around for the web browser wars of the 90s...

      Multiple browsers led to less compliance, not more. Both Netscape and IE were in a rush to add their own non standard HTML elements to "outdate" the other. ActiveX didn't come along at a time that IE owned the market. ActiveX came along at a time when IE was in fierce competition with Netscape, and needed to BREAK the standard to push Netscape out of the market.

      Having lived through that, I've never understood the logic of "we need multiple browsers to maintain standards." That's never actually happened in practice. It's like free market philosophy gone amok. Even today, we still see that a bit with either draft or pre-draft things getting added to web browsers outside of standards. Stuff like NaCL is not part of any web spec, and is entirely proprietary to Google, but hey, even with all the competition that's supposed to stop that, it still exists. Because competition promotes people creating their own proprietary stuff to beat the other browsers with.

  6. Wow! by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1, Insightful

    That's a lot of spaghetti code in Internet Explorer. I don't think the open source community has enough programmers to unravel that mess.

    1. Re:Wow! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      How do you know what the code looks like? Just an assumption because lol Microsoft code so bad lol?

      I wouldn't use IE either but it has improved a fuckton, surely code quality has too if it hasn't been completely rewritten even.

    2. Re:Wow! by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Historically, Microsoft has always written in spaghetti code for Windows. Also, their financial compensation encourages new lines of code over refactoring old lines of code. Which is why Windows ships with the old black-and-white Command Line and the new colorized PowerShell.

    3. Re:Wow! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Which is why Windows ships with the old black-and-white Command Line and the new colorized PowerShell.

      Except that that is completely false, and it ships with the old command line shell due to compatibility constraints. No enterprise customers are going to buy your new operating system if their existing line of business applications won't work, and we're talking about applications for which the source code or original team may not even exist anymore. Linux has the luxurious advantage of being able to arbitrarily break backwards compatibility, because in terms of market share almost nobody uses it anyway.

    4. Re:Wow! by Richard_at_work · · Score: 1

      Why not? They have enough programmers to create an equal mess with FireFox...

    5. Re:Wow! by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 1

      That's a lot of spaghetti code in Internet Explorer. I don't think the open source community has enough programmers to unravel that mess.

      Yes, but we need a good laugh sometimes, especially if they include IE6 in the OS package...

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    6. Re:Wow! by BitZtream · · Score: 1

      Less than the mess that is otherwise know as FireFox

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    7. Re:Wow! by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 1

      At least FF has been available as OS from the start and is not a proprietary build from a company that has been well off for a long time.

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    8. Re:Wow! by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1
      http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=74

      These junior developers also have a tendency to make improvements to the system by implementing brand-new features instead of improving old ones. Look at recent Microsoft releases: we don't fix old features, but accrete new ones. New features help much more at review time than improvements to old ones.

      (That's literally the explanation for PowerShell. Many of us wanted to improve cmd.exe, but couldn't.)

  7. Do we need another open source browser? by raburton · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I'm not saying we need a closed source browser more than an open source one, so a better question would be do we need another broswer at all?
    Sure competition is good, even when the product is free, but why do they want to make a new browser at all when there are so many out there already? And if they did why would they bother to open source it and who would be interested if they did? If you want closed source you may need to reinvent the wheel, but if you're going to open source it anyway why bother starting from scratch, you might as well just start with a free, decent open source base and build on that. Otherwise it's just a huge duplication of effort, a lot of time wasted at MS.

    1. Re:Do we need another open source browser? by DanielOom · · Score: 1

      It's not so much an Open Source browser that we need, but rather a port of Internet Explorer 6 to Linux / Unix.

    2. Re:Do we need another open source browser? by gronofer · · Score: 1

      Otherwise it's just a huge duplication of effort, a lot of time wasted at MS.

      Of course Microsoft are already spending their resources developing IE. You have to wonder whether they are getting value for money: why not just ship Firefox or Chrome with their OS?

      Open sourcing it as abandonware (or nominally to some new or existing "foundation") is an option they should take seriously.

    3. Re:Do we need another open source browser? by x_t0ken_407 · · Score: 1

      Even more specifically, Presto needs to be open sourced!

  8. Re:pointless by pfleming · · Score: 2

    There are still too many sites that only properly work on IE, business sites that have been clubbed into only working with IE. Once MS has decided that your OS is in their extended, security only, support phase you don't get the new "features" that the IE only sites add on or move to and the proverbial gun to your head is to upgrade the whole OS over one piece of software that should have been broken out into a separate division (open source or not) a long time ago.

  9. Re:Can't happen by jones_supa · · Score: 1

    IE is entangled with Windows

    That was true in Windows 98 times, but has anyone actually verified if that still is?

  10. Yeeeeeees! by Jesus_666 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Whether they'd open-source Trident or whatever comes next, I'd be all for it. Then perhaps people could backport it to older versions of Windows and we could stop writing our websites against decade-old IE versions because people can't upgrade IE without buying a new computer.

    --
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    1. Re:Yeeeeeees! by CastrTroy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The problem isn't Microsoft or old versions of Windows. Old versions of Windows run Firefox and Chrome just fine. The blame for the problems lies solely on the users and corporations/organizations that refuse to use a current browser. If you need a certain version of IE for some old intranet application, then go ahead and use it specifically for that app. But there's no reason why websites available to the general public should be required to support old browsers.

      --

      Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
    2. Re:Yeeeeeees! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Website developers are perfectly free to chose which browsers to target. If the web site is interesting or useful people using old browsers can chose to update their browsers. If the website in question is of little use to most people they won't bother upgrading their browser. If your goal is to draw a lot of traffic then it's the developer who determines what browsers the site is going to support to make sure the site can be accessed by as many different browser versions as possible. Internal corporate web sites and applications are usually developed for whatever browser the company has set as it's internal standard. MS got the jump on just about every other development stack because their development tools leveraged their browser an OS making it cheaper and faster to build custom corporate applications starting back in the early 90's. MS's most successful product in terms of grabbing and keeping market share was VB. Prior to VB C/C++ development ruled the day. VB increased the number of potential "developers" which coincidentally meant all those new "programmers" had to target the MS stack. Purists and technophobes can debate both the good and bad traits of MS all day long but those who detest MS in every way should spend more time building something better instead of incessantly complaining about the past. MS achieved monopoly status because a lot of their early competitors took the money and ran when MS came knocking on their door looking to buy their technology. That's not stealing that's just good business. IE was able to surpass Netscape because of the atrocious management and lack of vision of everyone involved with improving the Netscape browser.

    3. Re:Yeeeeeees! by Jesus_666 · · Score: 1

      No, the problem is exactly Microsoft and old versions of Windows. "I need this specific version of Internet Explorer for this custom intranet app" may be of relevance in big corporations but for SMEs the limiting factor is usually their Windows version.

      Internet Explorer is tied to Windows. You can't install IE10 on Vista. It's simply not possible. That means that for any SME running Vista IE9 is the latest version of IE. And they expect their shiny new website to be equally shiny in IE9. And no, they aren't going to buy new computers or install a different browser because their web designer told them to. (Plus, they know full well that their new site's visitory might also run IE so "just use a different browser" won't convince them even if they do switch browsers themselves.)

      If Windows 8.1 was free and had the same requirements and UI as Windows Vista you could perhaps convince some of these people to upgrade. It isn't, though, and that means that either you cater to their browser choice (which usually means the latest version of IE supported by the oldest version of Windows they run) or they'll take their business elsewhere.

      Having an open Trident/Son-of-Trident would at least allow people to backport it. If the mainstream tech media reported on it word might actually reach these businesses and they might consider installing the latest OpenIE. Not all of them but perhaps enough to further drive the old-IE user base further down until we can finally declare 8 and 9 irrelevant like 6 and 7 already are. Even Microsoft wants that to happen.

      --
      USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
    4. Re:Yeeeeeees! by Rob+Y. · · Score: 1

      But the problem isn't backporting trident. It's forward-porting IE6. Anybody writing web apps today that require the latest IE is nuts. The problem is old web apps that were targeted to IE back when it was dominant. Those apps still exist, and those users need a version of Windows that supports that browser. New apps can run on those old Windows systems (and Macs, iPads and Chromebooks, etc) via Firefox, Chrome or Safari, but those old IE-specific apps can't run on a more recent Windows (or any other system for that matter).

      Which begs the question - why open source Trident, when it has no real purpose any more? Why doesn't Microsoft simply wrap Webkit in a Windows-friendly frame and call it a day. It'd save them a ton of money, and it wouldn't cannibalize anything - unless there's still a part of MS's strategy that calls for leveraging what's left of their desktop monopoly to 'own the web'. But I think that strategy's dead by now - if only because it's failed...

      --
      Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
    5. Re:Yeeeeeees! by Jesus_666 · · Score: 1

      Nobody cares about IE6. At least nobody who counts. As far as web design is concerned, the current shambling zombies are IE8 and IE9. Those are the ones I see people asking about and those are the ones we could get rid of if we could backport newer Trident versions.

      People generally don't use these versions of IE because some internal web app requires them. They use them because they're the most recent versions available for their version of Windows. And they're not going to upgrade Windows because they don't need to; their current setup works for them and there's no business case for upgrading before something breaks.

      --
      USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
    6. Re:Yeeeeeees! by Rob+Y. · · Score: 1

      But those are the users that you could conceivably tell to 'just download Firefox on your old Windows system' and then stop targeting old IE versions in your app. That'd be just as easy as getting them to download a backported IE11 to their XP systems - and possibly less confusing if the IE11 had to co-exist with IE8 or 9, and users had to know which one to launch for your app. At least 'launch Firefox' is a non-ambiguous instruction.

      And there is another class of in-house (or 3rd party) web applications that were written to use some features of old IE versions that won't work in newer versions, and for some people, at least, that's the reason they haven't upgraded Windows. Maybe they don't count in your book, but they're out there.

      --
      Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
    7. Re:Yeeeeeees! by Jesus_666 · · Score: 1

      The problem is not really the customers themselves but the expected visitors to the site. (And yes, I'm talking about websites. Web apps follow different rules as the customer and the user are the same person.)

      Generally, customers expect future visitors to use something similar to what they themselves use. If the customer uses IE8 they will assume that a significant number of visitors will also use IE8. Telling the customer to switch to Firefox is useless as they can't assume that all visitors will now also magically have switched to Firefox. The only argument that does work is if we can show to them that the IE version in question has a negligible market share.

      If there was a legitimate new version of IE for old Windowses it might help in driving old versions out of the market, even if it only gets the IE diehards to upgrade. Over here in Germany we already had mainstream media telling people to stop using IE (especially after the DHS and the BSI issued warnings); we might very well see computer mags reporting on an open-sourced IE for those who can't switch. That would further reduce market share and make the day when IE8/9 can be safely ignored come sooner.

      (Then all we need to do is get rid of iOS <8 and Android <4.4 and we might even be able to ditch most remaining vendor prefixes.)

      --
      USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
  11. Why just IE? by houghi · · Score: 1

    Why not make the same arguments for Office? Or for Windows?

    If anything, they should perhaps make it easier for plugins to be linked. Yet do not forget that end-users are not their customers. Companies are. Be it big companies that buy licences directly or computer manufacturers.

    At work I am not even able to install AdBlock, so why would I be wanting to use Chrome instead of IE? As an IT person, IE works for what it does at the job, so why would I want to add anything else (unless the CEO wants it). You can not really remove it, so why bother? And let the people use at home what they want.

    --
    Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
    1. Re:Why just IE? by itsenrique · · Score: 1

      BYOD?

    2. Re:Why just IE? by Marginal+Coward · · Score: 1

      Why not make the same arguments for Office? Or for Windows?

      Unlike those two, they give IE away as part of "the Microsoft/Windows system". So, on the face of it, IE is an expense but doesn't directly produce revenue. However, it does add some genuine value to Windows in terms of giving users a useful tool for immediately downloading a better browser.

    3. Re:Why just IE? by gnupun · · Score: 1

      Why not make the same arguments for Office? Or for Windows?

      Office and Windows bring in money, IE does not, at least not directly or as substantial. Making them open source would bankrupt MS. IE too would have been commercial, but was made free as a tactical strategy by MS to bankrupt (or cut off air supply of) Netscape since MS was afraid the Netscape Navigator browser would take over platforms and make operating systems, such as Windows, not as useful/important anymore. Navigator would've turned OSes into ordinary device drivers.

      This does point to a curious fact: since all major browsers (IE, firefox, opera, safari etc) are free, there is zero incentive for commercial browsers to enter the market. The lowered competition due to free product has probably resulted in low quality of browsers that are too buggy, insecure, consume memory like pigs etc. Does free == low quality?

  12. Re:Not gonna happen. by MickyTheIdiot · · Score: 1

    So the argument here is that security by obscurity is the only thing that is making it usable?

    If that is a case then the whole thing should be killed. It's even worse than I thought it was.

    And damn the shoddy business aps that rely on it. Maybe the can actually take responsibility for their mess for once.

  13. Re:Can't happen by Dracos · · Score: 1

    mshtml.dll still exists. It loads when Wndows boots because it's the core of IE and Windows Explorer.

  14. Wave sayonara to the P.O.S. by Tablizer · · Score: 1

    Better yet, dump it, and include an OSS variant in future Windows.

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
  15. Re:Can't happen by jones_supa · · Score: 1

    Okay. Provide the proof that it is used by Windows Explorer.

  16. bigger problem by frovingslosh · · Score: 2

    We all know that IE is tightly integrated into Windows and the two can never be separated Microsoft testified to that under oayh, and we all know that they would never lie to the court or congress. So making IE open source would demand that Windows be open source. Clearly Microsoft can't open source Windows, so they will have to keep IE closed source too. That's too bad, because I was looking forward to that piece of crap working it's way into other projects.

    --
    I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
    1. Re:bigger problem by Ravaldy · · Score: 1

      Windows and the two can never be separated Microsoft testified to that under oayh

      Integration doesn't mean they can't separate the rendering modules from the main app.

  17. Re:Can't happen by jones_supa · · Score: 1

    What if Windows Explorer just fires up an Internet Explorer container inside itself? What if ripping away IE would only cause Windows Explorer to not be able to open URLs?

  18. Opening sourcing IE... by DrStrangluv · · Score: 1

    Opening sourcing IE would just perpetuate it, and I'm not sure I want that to happen. I would, however, like to see them use a public issue tracker (and I'm not talking about Connect here) that allows the part of the public that cares to help drive feature prioritization and bug fixes.

  19. Re:Not gonna happen. by DrStrangluv · · Score: 1

    "Security by obscurity" doesn't mean what you think it does. After all, even correctly handled passwords are still just a sufficiently obscure sets of bytes relative to all possible sets of bytes.

  20. Re:Not gonna happen. by MickyTheIdiot · · Score: 2

    Bah. The argument was that there are security flaws that will be used as attacks if the code is on view of the public. It's the classic (meaningless) anti-open source argument. If the code was good then it wouldn't matter if it is viewed or not.

  21. "Huge disadvantage" by Yunzil · · Score: 1

    I don't know, being open source hasn't helped Firefox, which keeps getting progressively worse with every release.

  22. Is it time? by roc97007 · · Score: 1

    Way WAY past time. But one possible issue might be that Microsoft doesn't want anyone to see how yucky the code is.

    --
    Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
  23. Re:Can't happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Heheh. I love it when people spout out about something that was true in the past, but no longer is true.

    It demonstrates that they don't understand the scientific method. Test your hypothesis first, grasshopper. Then speak.

    When you try this today on Windows 7, IE 11, you'll discover that it does not render the web page inside Explorer. It shells out to IE (spawning a new process with a separate window), and loads the requested page into that browser. Explorer continues to run, with it's last folder view showing.

  24. Re:why? by roc97007 · · Score: 1

    Regular people, the ones more likely to use IE to begin with, don't give a hoot if it's open source or not.

    Absolutely agree. But open sourcing IE might cause it to become a better product, which, one would think, would benefit regular people even if they did not realize why.

    --
    Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
  25. Re:ie by roc97007 · · Score: 1

    MS can't open source IE. There is far too much info going out to Microsoft from your computer. It would upset too many people if they found out how much.

    I think you're right. But what they could do is create a subset of the IE code that's scrubbed of all info gathering and other proprietary code, and anything that might give insight into properties of the operating system, and release *that*. (I have some hazy memory that M$ has done this before with some product, but I can't remember the details.) It probably wouldn't even be functional, but may allow some smart programmers to fork IE and create something that works.

    I've written that, and I'm staring at it, and I can't think for the life of me why anyone would want to do it. Never mind.

    --
    Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
  26. Useless by whizbang77045 · · Score: 1

    Who would want this thing? Why invest time in an open source project that's doomed from the start?

  27. Reasons to open source IE? by cjjjer · · Score: 1

    So people can patch IE 6,7 & 8 so they can keep it updated in Windows XP. Screw that shit...

  28. Re:Can't happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I'm running Win7 that's been stripped of IE using RT7 Lite...entering a url in the address bar does nothing but bring up a box saying that there's no associated program to complete the action. Several other subsystems removed too. Done judiciously, it doesn't mess up OS functionality at all. That being said, your assertion seems incorrect.

  29. Partially open sourced? by unixisc · · Score: 1

    Since when is Safari and Opera 'partially open source'? I thought they were always closed source. Unless they're just talking about webkit

    1. Re:Partially open sourced? by x_t0ken_407 · · Score: 1

      Yes, they're referring to the layout engines (Webkit and Blink); that's the partiality of each respective browser in regards to 'open source'

  30. Re:ie by roc97007 · · Score: 1

    How much would be left though?

    The name?

    --
    Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
  31. Internet Explorer forever Windows only .. by lippydude · · Score: 1

    This won't happen as so much of Internet Explorer code is mixed-in with the help sub-system, Microsoft Office or embedded in the Operating System. That's why Internet Explorer won't run on anything else except Microsoft Windows.

  32. Bypass Demonstrated for Use-After-Free Mitigation by lippydude · · Score: 1

    "Most recently, Microsoft brought new memory defenses to the browser, loading Internet Explorer with two new protections called Heap Isolation and Delayed Free .. last week .. Jared DeMott successfully demonstrated a bypass for both"

    ref.

  33. This will allow IE to take its rightful place.... by SpamHeart · · Score: 1

    ....as an integrated component of systemd.

  34. Re:Not gonna happen. by Eythian · · Score: 1

    Bah. The argument was that there are security flaws that will be used as attacks if the code is on view of the public. It's the classic (meaningless) anti-open source argument. If the code was good then it wouldn't matter if it is viewed or not.

    It's not a real argument, but I bet that opening it would expose many vulnerabilities. The code has never seen the outside world before, it's not hardened from experience like other engines.

    This said, it's probably the most tested by exploit writers, so maybe it cancels out.

  35. Why bother? by Woadan · · Score: 1

    IE will be deprecated in Windows 10 and a new browser introduced. Let's worry about the new browser.

    --
    You can't bend reality to meet your perceptions.
  36. Re:Can't happen by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

    I can verify that explorer.exe links mshtml.dll on Windows 7 x64, I used the Microsoft Dependency Walker (quite reasonably called "depends.exe") to check. However, I can not verify that it's actually in memory, or that it's ever actually used, just that it's still linked. I checked to see if it was within memory with process explorer, it's possible I misused it.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  37. Re:Can't happen by jones_supa · · Score: 1

    Finally some actual detective work. Thank you.

  38. Fuck that. Open source Presto!! by x_t0ken_407 · · Score: 1

    -Fan of Opera 12.x and below

  39. Just throw it away, please! by MoarSauce123 · · Score: 1

    What is the point in open sourcing IE? Just throw this steaming pile of garbage into the digital trash can and forget that it ever existed.