Slashdot Mirror
Time For Microsoft To Open Source Internet Explorer?
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."
Not as long as it remains integral to the Explorer shell...
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.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
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)
I think building a new browser is likely simpler.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
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.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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.
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.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
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.
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
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
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.
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.
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.'"