Think of HTC's of creating your own HTML tags in HTML.
There are a ton of disadvatages of doing this on the server side. If you do this on the client side the client can cache individual components, even re-use (multi-thread if you will) multiple instances of the same component on a single page.
And my original point was that a lot of large corporations are tied in with MS because they have been using these technologies for years now. Have been using them before Mozilla even existed. At the time IE was the best on the market, and now there's not enough reason to spend a fortune rewriting software just because Mozilla came out. That explains why some corporations can not switch browsers that easily, which in turn adresses the original posters question why firefox hasn't conquered the world yet. Capiche?
As for ASP.NET not using HTC's, it can. Microsoft does it in their own software written with ASP.NET. (CRM, just to name one example.)
In all seriousness I don't understand why Mozilla hasn't taken over the browser market already. It has all the features that anyone would want in a web browser and I've been using it for years. Why doesn't...
Do you know large multinations take YEARS to verify and test their software. Large customers of our company (I'm talking hundred-thousands of people) still use NT4.0 with IE5.5. How they even survive on the net, beats me, but they do, and they're not willing to upgrade anytime soon.
Did you know that some large corporations depend heavily on Microsoft's MSXML/XSLT, HTA and HTC technologies? Mozilla has no equivalent that I know of.
When I put my intranet-webapplication-designer-hat on, Mozilla isn't even close to the level of functionality that IE is on. I wish it was.
You mustn't be aware of IE extensions like MyIE or Avant. http://www.avantbrowser.com
They introduce tabbed browsing, have extensive popup-blocking capabilities and have more security management when it comes to cookies. They still use the default IE rendering engine, so anything broken or insecure in IE there won't be fixed.
I for one, as a developer, like to work with IE when writing intranet solutions when possible - the XML/XSLT/XMLHTTP features in MSXML4 are really nice. They're nice enough for Mozilla to copy over some of them even. Too bad they didn't go all the way or I would switch in an instant.
Most large corporations run IE5.5 or IE6 anyway, so usually we get the green light to make our websites for IE only.
The first one is that a lot of companies have very, very specific demands. I've worked for governments and large corporations (power and telecom companies) and their demands are so highly specific that no opensource package will even come close to what they demand. So your model might work in some areas, it still will not in others.
The second one is in the adapting part. Apart from the greatest opensource projects, the state of the documentation is pathetic. It is very hard to take over a software project, even WITH decent documentation. So I imagine that adapting just some opensource project from the street will be a nightmare for whoever needs to do it. It's very unlikely something good can come out of that.
Now, don't get me wrong. There are a lot of area's where OSS *WILL* work, but OSS it's not the magic recepy for fast, cheap and good software whenever and wherever you want it.
There are a lot of area's that need software that programmers just don't give a damn about.
I'll just name one - EU (European Union Government) certiefied invoice management for national governments. Yes, invoices have to meet requirements before they are recognized by the EU, which in turn qualifies them for financial help by the EU.
In general the whole business back-end that needs to deal with all sorts of boring laws and government guidelines is an area so boring and specific that no open source programmer would care. But there's millions of euros to be made in that area so there are literally dozens of companies with hundres, if not more, employees that make a healthy (if not somewhat boring) living from making this kind of software.
This setting wouldn't work most of the time, IMHO.
For open source to work there needs to be a certain public interest in the software, and there need to be developers in the group of interested people. Opening up software that nobody wants to look at or develop further is totally pointless.
A lot of software out there (I dare to argue it's the majority of the software out there.) is simply too boring or to business-specific to benefit at all from open source.
Look at it this way. In the few (two? three?) years that MS has been active in the console field they have managed to sell as much consoles as one of the long term players in the field. (Nintendo.)
I don't own any console nor am I a real MS fan, but what they have achieved with the XboX in such a short time and on such a (what was assumed to be a) closed market is pretty amazing. Especially because this is their first generation console.
Oh, applause! You've just mentioned two of the top-3 OS projects and use them to generalize between the whole OS vs Closed software debate.
Where's your openSource equivalent of Photoshop and the range of graphic industry tools? Where are your opensource blockbuster games like quake3, the sims and everquest? Where is your opensource business timesheet, projectmanagement and accounting software?
No, proprietary software isn't going anywhere. It may lose a bit of ground to some succesful opensource projects, but it's far from "done for".
Most of those functions (tab based browsing, popup blocking, multiple desktops) are not present in a default Windows installation, and the other functions are certainly not Free in the Windows world.... Euh.
On windows we can have Opera, Mozilla, and a dozen other tab-based browsers. (Avant, just to name one.) And Avant and Mozilla are free!
Multiple desktops... windows has that. Most modern display drivers come with that feature. (free)
Popup blockers... well, they were basically invented for windows-based machines first:) (And most tabbed browsers can block them.)
There's absolutely no denying that Linux/KDE/Gnome/Mozilla have come a long, long way. And they're awesome pieces of software. But face it, most popular *nix windowmanagers copied a lot from Windows, just so people like your friend could feel right at home.
There's nothing wrong with copying the good bits. As long as it's legal:)
This is only true for the largest and most used OSS projects. I doubt "thousands of experienced geeks" will look at the many, many small OSS projects on freshmeat or sourceforge.
And boy, am I glad I live in a country where something like the KKK could never happen:)
This law (that, again, has been in effect since 1974) is a good thing. It protects the individual from large corporations. So some large newsoutlets won't be able to attack a person without at least printing the other side of the story. Big deal.
It's just that if you happen to be a professional news media on the internet, then the law that was alreay in place for print media, also applies to you. Really, nothing new for EU countries. No rights are being stolen, violated, etc. This law has been in place and doing it's work happily for decades in the EU, and I fail to see why it would cause problems on the net.
It's really amazing that a lot of posts here try to attack the EU version of free speech, while I think that a lot of (European) people would argue that the EU version is a lot better than the US version. Oh well.
Freedom of speech is the right to say whatever you think.
Not if that "free speech" is unjustly damaging another person or business.
Total freedom of speech into the extreme without any consequences for those who speak is nothing short of anarchy.
Americans are always so proud of their version of "free speech", not realizing that they are in fact bound to a whole other set of limitations, especially after 9/11.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, but they got there in only a year or something. (As opposed to the 6 years Mozilla needed to not reach 1.0)
Think of HTC's of creating your own HTML tags in HTML.
There are a ton of disadvatages of doing this on the server side. If you do this on the client side the client can cache individual components, even re-use (multi-thread if you will) multiple instances of the same component on a single page.
And my original point was that a lot of large corporations are tied in with MS because they have been using these technologies for years now. Have been using them before Mozilla even existed. At the time IE was the best on the market, and now there's not enough reason to spend a fortune rewriting software just because Mozilla came out. That explains why some corporations can not switch browsers that easily, which in turn adresses the original posters question why firefox hasn't conquered the world yet. Capiche?
As for ASP.NET not using HTC's, it can. Microsoft does it in their own software written with ASP.NET. (CRM, just to name one example.)
Do you know large multinations take YEARS to verify and test their software. Large customers of our company (I'm talking hundred-thousands of people) still use NT4.0 with IE5.5. How they even survive on the net, beats me, but they do, and they're not willing to upgrade anytime soon.
Did you know that some large corporations depend heavily on Microsoft's MSXML/XSLT, HTA and HTC technologies? Mozilla has no equivalent that I know of.
When I put my intranet-webapplication-designer-hat on, Mozilla isn't even close to the level of functionality that IE is on. I wish it was.
You mustn't be aware of IE extensions like MyIE or Avant. http://www.avantbrowser.com
They introduce tabbed browsing, have extensive popup-blocking capabilities and have more security management when it comes to cookies. They still use the default IE rendering engine, so anything broken or insecure in IE there won't be fixed.
I for one, as a developer, like to work with IE when writing intranet solutions when possible - the XML/XSLT/XMLHTTP features in MSXML4 are really nice. They're nice enough for Mozilla to copy over some of them even. Too bad they didn't go all the way or I would switch in an instant.
Most large corporations run IE5.5 or IE6 anyway, so usually we get the green light to make our websites for IE only.
Netherlands, @home cable (4096 down / 128 up) for about $45. They're going to quadruple the upspeed to 512 in a few months for free.
... and you have to be a total commie if you don't love THAT!
I know why and they will never be able to achieve it.
The last time someone said that to microsoft they went ahead and did it anyway, and behold... Nintendo and Sega are down, only Sony is left.
These guys have resources a small nation can only dream of.
Really. Do. Not. Underestimate. Microsoft.
How can they do this!? Looks to me that Interplay, Activision and Eidos are playing some game of who can shut down the most and best game studios.
:(
I lost count of good gaming studios that got the axe lately. And at the same time drivel like Tomb Raider 7 hits the shelves
Sad panda's all around the world!
There are two catches in what you propose...
The first one is that a lot of companies have very, very specific demands. I've worked for governments and large corporations (power and telecom companies) and their demands are so highly specific that no opensource package will even come close to what they demand. So your model might work in some areas, it still will not in others.
The second one is in the adapting part. Apart from the greatest opensource projects, the state of the documentation is pathetic. It is very hard to take over a software project, even WITH decent documentation. So I imagine that adapting just some opensource project from the street will be a nightmare for whoever needs to do it. It's very unlikely something good can come out of that.
Now, don't get me wrong. There are a lot of area's where OSS *WILL* work, but OSS it's not the magic recepy for fast, cheap and good software whenever and wherever you want it.
Well, you said it!
There are a lot of area's that need software that programmers just don't give a damn about.
I'll just name one - EU (European Union Government) certiefied invoice management for national governments. Yes, invoices have to meet requirements before they are recognized by the EU, which in turn qualifies them for financial help by the EU.
In general the whole business back-end that needs to deal with all sorts of boring laws and government guidelines is an area so boring and specific that no open source programmer would care. But there's millions of euros to be made in that area so there are literally dozens of companies with hundres, if not more, employees that make a healthy (if not somewhat boring) living from making this kind of software.
This setting wouldn't work most of the time, IMHO.
For open source to work there needs to be a certain public interest in the software, and there need to be developers in the group of interested people. Opening up software that nobody wants to look at or develop further is totally pointless.
A lot of software out there (I dare to argue it's the majority of the software out there.) is simply too boring or to business-specific to benefit at all from open source.
Uh. MS will *WANT* you to use Avalon and WinFX in the long term. I can't imagine they plan to keep Avalon, WindowsForms *AND* old style GDI around.
With windowsupdate you at least have a single place to download these patches...
(Woops... there goes my karma!)
Look at it this way. In the few (two? three?) years that MS has been active in the console field they have managed to sell as much consoles as one of the long term players in the field. (Nintendo.)
I don't own any console nor am I a real MS fan, but what they have achieved with the XboX in such a short time and on such a (what was assumed to be a) closed market is pretty amazing. Especially because this is their first generation console.
Oh, applause! You've just mentioned two of the top-3 OS projects and use them to generalize between the whole OS vs Closed software debate.
Where's your openSource equivalent of Photoshop and the range of graphic industry tools? Where are your opensource blockbuster games like quake3, the sims and everquest? Where is your opensource business timesheet, projectmanagement and accounting software?
No, proprietary software isn't going anywhere. It may lose a bit of ground to some succesful opensource projects, but it's far from "done for".
Uh.... the romans beat you to that by.. oh, about 2000 years.
Most of those functions (tab based browsing, popup blocking, multiple desktops) are not present in a default Windows installation, and the other functions are certainly not Free in the Windows world. ... Euh.
... well, they were basically invented for windows-based machines first :) (And most tabbed browsers can block them.)
:)
On windows we can have Opera, Mozilla, and a dozen other tab-based browsers. (Avant, just to name one.) And Avant and Mozilla are free!
Multiple desktops... windows has that. Most modern display drivers come with that feature. (free)
Popup blockers
There's absolutely no denying that Linux/KDE/Gnome/Mozilla have come a long, long way. And they're awesome pieces of software. But face it, most popular *nix windowmanagers copied a lot from Windows, just so people like your friend could feel right at home.
There's nothing wrong with copying the good bits. As long as it's legal
Apparantly the PHP team has great problems with making it all MT-safe :)
This is only true for the largest and most used OSS projects. I doubt "thousands of experienced geeks" will look at the many, many small OSS projects on freshmeat or sourceforge.
ROFL.
I hate to break it to you, but Europe is actually bigger than the USA.
Check it out on the map. Oh, and don't forget to include Russia. They're part of Europe, you know.
Or did you perhaps mean "the EU"? In which case it's only slightly smaller.
If you want some country 30 times smaller then the USA, try Poland.
And boy, am I glad I live in a country where something like the KKK could never happen :)
This law (that, again, has been in effect since 1974) is a good thing. It protects the individual from large corporations. So some large newsoutlets won't be able to attack a person without at least printing the other side of the story. Big deal.
Professional media outlets, be it print or internet, is indeed "not free". You are correct about that. They have been bound by rules for decades.
If you think the US media is "free" (as you define it) then you've got a thing or two coming.
It's just that if you happen to be a professional news media on the internet, then the law that was alreay in place for print media, also applies to you. Really, nothing new for EU countries. No rights are being stolen, violated, etc. This law has been in place and doing it's work happily for decades in the EU, and I fail to see why it would cause problems on the net.
It's really amazing that a lot of posts here try to attack the EU version of free speech, while I think that a lot of (European) people would argue that the EU version is a lot better than the US version. Oh well.
Freedom of speech is the right to say whatever you think. Not if that "free speech" is unjustly damaging another person or business. Total freedom of speech into the extreme without any consequences for those who speak is nothing short of anarchy. Americans are always so proud of their version of "free speech", not realizing that they are in fact bound to a whole other set of limitations, especially after 9/11.
To a first approximation I'd guess it as "those who've been paid to do so by companies who view FOSS as competition".
You mean those thousands of paid programmers and software architects that are already having a tough time because of the current economic state?