Opera Files EU Complaint Against Microsoft 455
A number of readers have sent word about Opera Software ASA's antitrust complaint against Microsoft filed with the EU. Here is Opera's press release on the filing. The company wants the EU to "obligate Microsoft to unbundle Internet Explorer from Windows and/or carry alternative browsers pre-installed on the desktop" and to "require Microsoft to follow fundamental and open Web standards accepted by the Web-authoring communities." The latter request makes this a case to watch. Will the Commissioner take the Acid2 test using IE7?
Good PR for Opera (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh, and their lawsuit has merit, as well.
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Under Windows:
Opera passes, Firefox 2 does not, IE6 and IE7 do not.
Under Linux (Fedora 8):
Opera passes, Firefox 2 does not, Konqueror passes, Epiphany and Galeon do not.
Lynx doesn't either.
I don't have a way to test Safari, but according to the Acid2 site, it fails as well.
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I would be surprised if this is the case - Gran Paradiso certainly passes Acid2 under Linux so I see no reason why it would be different under Windows, and I was under the impression that Safari passed Acid2 as well.
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Gran Paradiso is alpha software, and as such is not ready for prime time. So while I'm glad that Firefox and other Mozilla based browsers will pass the Acid2 test eventually, the fact remains that they don't have a stable release that passes today, 12/13/2007.
Of course, once KDE4 is out and it's possible to run KDE Apps under Windows with the QT4 support - Konqueror will join Opera in the group of browsers passing the test.
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According to the Acid2 site, Safari does not pass the Acid2 test.
Interesting. I just went to the site with Safari (Version 3.0.4 (523.12)) and to my eyes the rendering matches the reference.
Re:I'm not sure this case is a good thing at all (Score:4, Interesting)
If the 80% marketshare of a totally inferior product is made by screwing up open standards to closed, one-'browser'-only-usable ones, thus pushing other browsers out of the market by including this inferior product in a monopolised OS, I think I can see the unethical part of this.
If Microsoft would have kept to standards and then got an 80% marketshare, in a honest competition with the rest of the market, it would be a totally different story. It is not as if MS had a big marketshare and someone came up with altered standards to thwart them, but the standards were there before MS decided to alter them for their own purposes and made it impossible for others to use their (MS's) 'standards'.
Disclaimer: I am not a web-developer, and don't even play one on tv.
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Given that, the only places where they differ from
isn't MS already supposed to have unbundled IE? (Score:3, Insightful)
From the article:
Wasn't this part of the settlement before? I often wonder why we have to see other countries doing the heavy lifting to throttle Microsoft. Microsoft lost, was set up for some pretty severe controls to be administered and lucked out with a changing of the guard and a Justice Department that lost any appetite to really control Microsoft.Also,
This one does get interesting. Maybe this is the avenue required to get Microsoft to move closer to compliance on the accepted standards. There certainly hasn't been any bending to pressures from developers.Re: (Score:2, Funny)
This one does get interesting. Maybe this is the avenue required to get Microsoft to move closer to compliance on the accepted standards. There certainly hasn't been any bending to pressures from developers."
Yeah, that's what we need, governments enforcing coding standards. Just wait till you get fined $100 for using 4 spaces instead of a tab.
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Your example would be to require houses to have a certain brand or color of paint.
This is more like requiring certain house surfaces be rated to carry minimum weights, be within a certain margin of level, etc.
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Re:isn't MS already supposed to have unbundled IE? (Score:5, Insightful)
But we do this all the time. For example, here in the US, electrical devices are required to work on 120V 60Hz AC, and I haven't heard that this is a major impediment to innovation. Granted, there are minor grumbles from manufacturers about needing several different power supplies, so that 240V AC and 50Hz AC can also be used. But still, how has this stifled innovation?
And note that both the Internet and the Web have standards that are in every sense a "committee" design. In this case, we did hear a lot of grumbling from knowedgeable geeks that both IP/TCP and HTTP/HTML were far from optimal designs. But in fact we don't hear this much from the vendors, who are mostly managed by people who don't have a clue about data packets or text markup. And in fact, both the Internet and the Web have led to a blizzard of innovation from millions of companies, despite their suboptimal committee design nature.
The real problem here is that the legal and political systems are fairly clueless about computer technology, and are likely to totally screw up any decrees with a technical component. Thus, the right solution to the problems caused by Microsoft's obstructionism is a strict separation between "system" and "application" software. Since MS sells an OS, it shouldn't be permitted to sell user-level applications. This would eliminate things like claiming that a browser is tied into the OS, and it would put pressure on the OS people to fully document their APIs. But there's no chance whatsoever that such a separation will ever come about, because nobody in any legislature or court (except Al Gore
In fact, IE is already a good example of how not imposing such a "committee" design causes problems. If MS's claim that IE is tied to the OS are true, then their desire for market control has led to an atrociously bad design of their OS. Of course, the fact that they did quickly supply IE-free versions of Windows showed that they were simply lying. But the fact that they have mostly gotten away with doing this is itself a major block to innovation. It has led to the widespread management support of web sites that only "work" with IE. This not only sabotages the general need for industry standards; it also forces developers not working for MS to waste time trying to make their software work for non-standard browsers for where there is no full documentation.
It's hard to see how this helps innovation, when the really innovative web software such as opera, firefox, safari, icab, konqueror, et al are pushed aside by the general pressure to work only with IE and not worry about the "unpopular" browsers.
IE vs. Adobe (Score:2)
2 cents,
QueenB.
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Can you cite something?
Microsoft was sued by Eolas over a software plug-in patent they owned, and they altered (not broke) the way Flash content behaves in IE. (Basically, they made it so you have to focus the Flash by clicking on it before you could interact with the Flash.) But that was:
1) Not their idea, it was the result of a lawsuit, an
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I'm not sure about the browser (which MS have always claimed is "integrated" and can't be removed). However, I believe they were required to unbundle things like Media player. I believe this resulted in them producing 2 versions of Windows, one with Media Player and the other without (which was ok per the ruling since they were providing an unbundled option), at the same price. So of course, given the choice, how many people are going to pick the version that is
Re:isn't MS already supposed to have unbundled IE? (Score:5, Informative)
Rehash (Score:5, Insightful)
Great plan (Score:3, Funny)
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This is a great idea and all, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Personally, I think the latter option is more appealing, but only because we've been doing with with Linux for more than a decade.
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Re:This is a great idea and all, but... (Score:5, Funny)
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yum install firefox
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The ideal way would be for IE to be a fully add/removable program. Lets say you install a fresh copy of Windows without IE and realize you don't happen to have a Firefox CD (they sell them on the Mozilla store, buy one today!). You go to add/remove programs, add IE just long enough to download Firefox, install Firefox, then go back to add/remove programs and remove IE. Should be simple enough.
Of
That's not quite what they said... (Score:5, Insightful)
From the Opera press release:
Unbundling IE doesn't necessarily mean shipping an OS without a browser. If IE is an optional component, OEMs could still preinstall one browser or another. Even Opera is taking into account the fact that removing IE entirely might not be feasible, and suggesting that the system come with at least one alternative.
I agree that an OS needs to ship with a web browser. But it doesn't necessarily have to be a specific browser except for company policy. Witness Apple replacing IE with Safari, or Red Hat replacing Mozilla with Firefox, etc.
Likely to succeed (Score:2, Insightful)
IANAL, but I think Opera might win this war. Netscape lost a similar battle, but they couldn't leverage the power of EU like Opera can. The EU is also likely to be biased towards Opera because it's a European company (although it is Norwegian, and Norway is not a member of the EU).
On the other hand: the precedence from the media player debacle points to a possible "solution" (forcing Microsoft to release a special version without IE) which in practice means a loss to Opera. The potential buyer of such a pro
As much as I hate IE (Score:3, Insightful)
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If the local computer store is going to sell a boxed version of IE, why would they not also sell a boxed version of FireFox, Opera, etc?
Granted I'm sure some people wouldn't buy windows if they started doing something like that but people in general are not aware of the alternatives to windows and IE.
That is _exactly_ the point th
Unlikely (Score:2)
I imagine most of them, upon finding a browser wasn't included with their OS, would start asking each other and their geek friends what browser to use, rather than walking right down to the store and buying IE. The reason they assume IE == Internet is because it came with their OS. As soon as they have a choice between a free download and paying for an (arguably) inferior product, which will they choose?
Pointless (Score:2, Insightful)
I dislike MS's monopolistic practices as much as anyone. But really, there's not much harm in bundling an OS with a browser IF they don't prevent OEMs from including other browsers or from removing the IE icon from the desktop.
Even if MS were forced to include some other browser along with IE, that probably wouldn't help Opera. Unless, of course, their actual goal is to simply force MS to bundle *their* browser. And that would seem to be a fairly ridiculous demand.
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I dislike MS's monopolistic practices as much as anyone. But really, there's not much harm in bundling an OS with a browser IF they don't prevent OEMs from including other browsers or from removing the IE icon from the desktop.
It's not about dislike, it's about illegal. MS is a convicted monopolist and the rules are different for them. They are leveraging their OS monopoly to dominate the browser market, and they are using their dominance in the browser market to damage competitors.
Without the lever, the intentional incompatabilities of IE would make it 3rd choice or drive it into extinction. With the lever, web designers are forced to adapt to the "quirks" instead, producing webpages that work well on IE but not so on other (st
Re:Pointless (Score:4, Insightful)
They are leveraging their OS monopoly to dominate the browser market
Are they? I know they *were*. They were doing that by preventing OEMs from including, say, Netscape on machines they sold. To my knowledge, they're not doing that anymore. Are they?
they are using their dominance in the browser market to damage competitors
How are they doing that now (not 10 years ago)? Simply having a product (an OS) that has good features (like a browser) is not unfairly damaging to competitors - that's just outcompeting your competitors. What are they doing now that was found to be illegal anticompetitive behavior last time? Because as I recall just bundling a browser wasn't part of that.
Without the lever, the intentional incompatabilities of IE would make it 3rd choice or drive it into extinction. With the lever, web designers are forced to adapt to the "quirks" instead, producing webpages that work well on IE but not so on other (standards-complient) browsers, which in turn drives more people to IE, creating a lock-in effect.
Seems a little weak to me. Seems to me it would be fairly easy for the Opera devs to get their browser to work with the IE quirks if they were interested in doing so. I realize they're not, but that's not the point. It just doesn't seem all that compelling a reason, to me, to go to a business and say "this is the engineering spec you have to work with by law". Doesn't seem at all reasonable to me. And again, I don't like MS. But remember, just having a monopoly is not in and of itself illegal. You'd have to prove that MS is using embrace and extend to intentionally make Opera not work. And that might be provable. But even then, best-case scenario is that MS would have to document how IE treats web pages (which I believe is documented now). I can't see the government deciding, by law, what HTTP standard they have to use.
And somewhere along that route, a dozen or so laws have been broken and the only reason MS hasn't been drawn and quartered in the courts is that they move faster than the court system and will probably be bancrupt long before the final, crushing verdict is rendered.
This is certainly true, but I think there are probably other places where MS is causing more problems than the browser "market". Heck, we saw the trial from the Win95 days drag on so long that it was made totally irrelevant by later versions of Windows. But I don't think that's at issue here. To me, this is kind of like the North trying to re-fight the Civil War - the issues are now largely irrelevant and we already won. MS lost. Like I said, unless they're still pressuring the OEMs....
To me, the bigger issue is that these days almost any browser is "good enough" and free, so people will use whatever comes with their machine. That's not a matter of anticompetitive practices, it's a matter of consumer apathy. As such, Opera should focus more on OEMs than trying to sue their competition.
Standards. (Score:2)
De Facto Standard (Score:5, Insightful)
Opera on Linux (Score:2)
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I think the opera browser for desktop is linked to the QT libraries, at least so on a Fedora distro. Not sure whether this is true for Windoze or mobile phones.
My view ... (Score:3, Funny)
Fine (Score:2, Troll)
How
Firefox, Opera, ...? (Score:2, Interesting)
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Name one OS that doesn't bundle a web browser? Some bundle several, but to my knowledge, proprietary and semi proprietary usually bundle their own browser, and no other.
Of course, getting MS to make their browser follow standards better is definetly a good thing. It's not that bad getting things to work well in IE and most others (in my experience), but at the same time, it
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
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I don't see bundling software with your OS abuse of a monopoly if you OS has a monopoly. I do see bundling software that corrodes standards, as abuse however. You can add artificially high prices, artificially low-and-non-profitable prices to eliminate competition, forcibly preventing competing software for working on your platform, etc. as bad monopolistic practices also.
In this case, poorly followd standards, there are two fixes. An option should be given, rathe
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
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Surely it should be left up to the OEM to decide what browser to include.
Not necessarily.
It is the OS Vendor (Apple, Ubuntu, whoever) that does the bundling in virtually all cases that exist today. That's because only the OS vendor is in a position to do the testing etc. required to make sure the browser plays well with the OS. To pass those test costs on to the OEMs would result in huge redundancy in testing, and varied results in quality. Such a result would unfairly penalize MS.
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
Such a result would FAIRLY penalize Microsoft.
Although I dispute the idea that it would penalize Microsoft at all. It's the
OEM that will get the call when things break. It will be the OEM (not Microsoft)
that bears the responsibility and cost of support.
Those that take the support call should be the ones that get to decide
what is and what is not included.
That's part of being a reseller in ANY OTHER CONTEXT.
He who will get the grief gets the ultimate control.
Microsoft short circuits the market by being a monopoly that can
bully any of it's customers into bending to it's will.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
You're absolutely right.
The thing to bear in mind here is that the web browser is not part of the operating system when you take into account what an operating system actually is. The web browser is an application that runs on the operating system; it is not a part of the OS itself. Microsoft may have built IE in this way, but the implementation doesn't necessarily define where the lines are drawn. The availability of a myriad of different web browsers, each of which is fully capable of running on a variety of OSs without being integrated, proves this. Microsoft has gotten away with IE bundling primarily because they claimed it isn't feasible to remove IE from the OS. That is a load of BS, but they fooled the courts once.
It's not a load of bs (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It's not a load of bs (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Informative)
Quite correct. Technically one can consider the entire UI of an OS to be "optional".
I will now point to the myriads of UI fiascos, efforts, flame wars, holy wars, and bottom up redesigns that have gone on in the (GUI) KDE/Gnome/XWin/X.Org projects or the (audio) ALSA/OSS/ESound/aRts/JACK projects.
I am not even going to list out all the various , especially since Wikipedia has them nicely summarized. [wikipedia.org]
Sure all of the above projects had their reasons (most of those reasons well natured, and an few of them devious), but in some cases the sheer amount of rework that has gone on is just pointless. How many times does the wheel need to be reinvented?
Imagine if the various major projects had been coordinated and run efficiently. Maybe Linux would even have had sound working out of the box (out of the torrent?
Just restricting ourselves to browsers for a moment, if all the development effort that has been spent fighting had instead been used to make just one awesome browser, FF 3 would have been released last year, be fully complainant with HTML 5, have its CSS bugs long since worked out, support the entire SVG standard (right now all browsers with SVG support have only partial support). If some of those other projects mentioned above were unified then FF would also have had 100% working audio/video streaming in every format under the sun running on Linux to such an extent as to make Windows and Mac users jealous.
But just in terms of Gecko development, effort has been spent on Galeon, Epiphany, K-Meleon, Mozilla, and Firefox, and I'm sure I've forgotten a few as well!
Now think about how much of a hassle it has been to get all the various Linux browser configurations setup to work with all the various sound systems and media players. Streaming video working instead of a web page? Well that may depend on which of the 4 included browsers is being used!
Yes, choice is good. But when it is a matter of 5 choices, none of which do all that needs to be done, then the user is stuck choosing what they "least need to work" want rather than what they want to use, and that is not a good choice to force the user to make.
Any one given approach has its draw backs, a common complaint about FF is that abstracting away the UI (XUL et all) is resource intensive. As everyone who bothered to make a FF "native API spin off" eventually figured out, in 2 years no one really cares anymore and there is not much perf diff between native APIs and XUL.
This is sort of getting off track. Well not really. The final statement was:
Well of course it is technically POSSIBLE. But feasible? Not if you take into consideration the end user experience.
On a more grounded level, I'll note that Microsoft's HTML renderer is used all over the damn place in Windows XP and Vista. Looking at Vista's control panel, it sure as heck looks like nothing more than a fancy HTML page. One could easy argue that putting a thin wrapper on top of a basic OS level component then shoving in Favorites, History, and Cookies is such a minimal effort in comparison to writing an actual HTML renderer (just look above at the slew of Gecko front ends!) that the vast majority of the "web browser" code is fundamental to the end user functionality of the OS.
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
To some extent, this does/did happen. There was a long period of time during which every computer bought seemed to have musicmatch jukebox (customized, no less) on it. Then, with the deal HP had with Apple, HP computers all came with itunes for a while (do they still?). So why is it such a problem to bundle in another browser if they're bundling in media players?
I don't necessarily frown on microsoft bundling software with their operating system. Really, we can choose to use it or not use it. What I frown on is them bundling broken software (namely IE) that appears to casual users as if it works fine. This creates a situation where users won't move past internet explorer because they don't understand that it's a problem at all. That's what I frown on.
To me, this then means that Opera should not necessarily take this case to court, but instead to the OEMs (like you said). They don't need to unbundle IE or change any of its OS integration. They just need to add in other browsers to show users they exist. They did it with media players, why not with browsers?
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
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Except that when using an alternative OS, you've already made the decision to use something that isn't the "default." For most people the question of which OS to use never comes into the picture (unless of course the question is XP vs Vista, in which case your choice of browser isn't really a choice at all). The overwhelming majority of people simply buy a computer from a well-known name like HP, Dell, etc., and they get Windows with it. When the question of which OS to use isn't a question at all, it co
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
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Linux misses the point, since I'm talking about proprietary and semi-proprietary, which they aren't, and almost everything in Linux can be considered "3rd party" to the actual OS anyway - Most distros are just cherry picked 3rd party software packages, with a few bits of custom code and some distinct aesthetic flare. Lynx, Galleon and Opera probably should be added to your list of the option
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Interesting)
The issue I have usually heard from a web-design standpoint is that Internet Explorer is the only pre-installed option on Windows (meaning many people never bother to switch to another browser), is not remotely standards compliant (meaning web designers have to do all kinds of fun workarounds for IE compatibility) and is not open source, so (unlike the Linux and OS X situations) industrious end-users cannot simply go in and fix any HTML/CSS standards compliance bugs in the default-browser-flavor themselves.
That's how I read the Opera suit, though admittedly only one possible interpretation... "either make your browser play nice with the rest of the world, or offer other default browsers that do."
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And no, IE is not "core" to the OS, nor should it be. The OS is just the kernel and drivers. It's the desktop that is the GUI [explorer.exe], and tray and all that stuff.
It's most likely a better solution to unbundle IE and WMP [among other things] from the install media and let users choose which they want during install. Chances are if you're going
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cmd
ftp
open ftp.mozilla.org
cd pub
cd
get Firefox.exe
Run Firefox.exe
????
Profit
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I understand the complaint, but I'm not sure that it's a problem that most computer users care about. The population here on slashdot is a bit different, but most slashdot users know they can get alternative browsers, what the relative strengths and weaknesses are, and have an opinion on which they use and when.
The average computer user given the option to install a different browser during installation (or, considering the population, first boot on a Dell/HP/whatever)
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
My ADSL router (a Netgear DG834G) uses a web interface for its configuration panel. I might have a hard time getting on the internet to download a browser if I don't have a browser to set up my internet connection.
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
The rules are DIFFERENT when dealing with a monopoly.
Stuff that is perfectly legal, reasonable, and even encouraged in a competitive environment are disallowed in a monopoly.
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
For example, there is no rule that says if you are a monopoly your company will be divided up into separate pieces, but they've done that.
Similiarly there is no rule that says if you are monopoly that the government will decide how much you can charge for your product, and when you can raise prices and by how much, but they've done that too.
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Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft has forced IE into a "defacto standard". Now every web designer has to write code that works on IE and browsers that are not broken. Often you will see web pages that only work on IE.
Silverlight is the next step. Flash is bad enough but Silverlight will make it even harder to keep the Internet OS neutral.
To solve the no browser issue is real easy. Just provide an Icon for that will download Firefox, IE, Opera, or Safari from the desktop. Let the user decide at runtime.
Of course you will then have to change the HTML help system so it can work with any browser and not just IE.
I am all for requiring IE to follow standards. Not bundling would be great IMHO but I just don't think it is practical.
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They typically install a windows "distribution" supplied on a computer by an oem such as dell or hp.
Windows should come without a browser, leaving it to the distributor to install a browser of their choice, this is how it used to be and many distributors bundled netscape.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
The good news is someone's finally getting it: they finally want to force MS into standards compliance. That's all that really matters. I don't see the browser application itself (or media player, for that matter) as a monopoly abuse - it's the content that's the abuse. IE/WMP both play proprietary content, using Windows as the vehicle.
Sabotaging Windows' built-in media capabilities only harms consumers. Preventing MS from leveraging those capabilities to push their own proprietary, non-interoperable formats helps them and everyone else.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple bundle Safari, but it's trivial to remove in it's entirety (or simply not install), different linux distributions bundle different browsers and they can always be removed/replaced easily... What windows distributors (ie OEMs) really need is the ability to remove ie completely and replace it with a third party browser, instead of being forced to install the third party browser alongside the buggy outdated one that's built in.
And as for not having a functional browser, there are many many other areas where windows lacks functional apps in comparison to other systems, they don't bundle a functional spreadsheet (or even a facility to view spreadsheets) for instance, nor do they bundle an ssh client/server (everyone else does, and ssh is becoming the standard for remote admin of network devices, replacing telnet), they don't even have a secure erase tool by default and many other shortcomings compared to other systems.
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That almost s
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
~90% of users are going to go with whatever browser they're given. Chances are they don't know what a browser is, and won't even know there are other pieces of software that do the same thing. I've met plenty of people using FF who just think it's a different place for the "internet" to live.
Most apps/sites (read: most = retarded) require IE. Most tech support lines require you to use IE (i.e. they'll hang up on you if you say you don't have it, telling you that only IE can be used to solve any problems hovering around ports 80 and 443). Therefore, for an OEM to provide tech support to their customers (a legal requirement) without incurring fees in altering their "help" systems to cater for "user does not have IE" or "user consents to use a different browser than officially mandated one" branches, the people with the purse strings generally see it as their xmas bonuses going up in smoke.
End result? IE is so entrenched it's a practical neccessity, whether it's made optional or not.
And this brings us to the second point, where Opera are right on the money: why is IE so entrenched? Because, for a time, you practically couldn't use chunks of the web without it, and it's pretty much still mandatory on intranets (yay for ActiveX) - ref. browser wars - because MS deliberately subverted the standards. They even tried the same thing with Opera, feeding it malformed stylesheets on MSN [news.com] in order to make opera appear defective, resulting in the semi-famous B0rk! edition.
By forcing MS to produce a browser that follows the open, published standard (as opposed to the limited subset they do currently), all of a sudden we have a level playing field not only for browsers but for web devs as well. MS certainly has the technical nouse to produce a world class browser, but their strategy since Netscape died has been to keep it usable enough that people didn't puke up their own pelvises whilst using it, but make it no better than that. Heck, you think IE7 would have happened without FF? I doubt it. They choose not to because they have a vested interest in keeping as much of the net, and the web, using protocols or applications that they control, either in whole or in part because that makes controlling you, the product, that much easier. If everyone was going around using opera, or flashblock, or google apps, or Macs, we'd have plagues, cats and gods living together, mass hysteria and, dog forbid, drops in MS's mindshare and marketshare which can only leave the fortress gates open for commie pinkos like Linyos Torovoltos, making the problem even worse.
Thankfully, such a proposition has a chance, albeit slim, of happening in Europe - a fully CSS W3C-compliant IE would be a colossal boon for web devs, and ultimately users, the world over, probably eventually to MS's decline, since they'd be forced to compete on features rather that support for the semi-crippled IE-only interwebosphere. Apart from corporates of course, where IE will still rule the roost due to Active Directory (Opera! PLEASE support SPNEGO so those of us in MS shops don't have to chuck our creds in every five minutes! Firefox, PLEASE add MSI support and a GPO snap-in and I can guarantee you five hundred users tomorrow). Not sure it'd fly in America, cos what's good for MS is good for the US is good for the world, right?
Disclaimer: long time Opera fanboy, long time Brit with long time disdain for the US govs foreign and economical policies
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Simply put, third party app developers aren't going to be happy with MS until they implement some sort of Marketplace / Ubuntu Software catalog like functionality, where people can search and automatically install software just by clicking a checkmark. And even then, they'll flip out because "their" Icon isn't already there or MS didn't allow them to join, ETC.
Is this what people actually believe? (Score:2)
Well, that's semantically weird. Why would I install another browser if I "don't want"? Or do you mean "don't want IE"?
Read TFS, at least? Here, look:
In other words, nothing to prevent them shipping Opera and/or Firefox with Windows, whether or not th
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
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Why should Microsoft do that?
Because the EU isn't afraid to collect 1 mio. Euros per day in fines if they don't. Like, you know, that other large western country where they prefer having criminals in office to prosecuting them.
Unbundling it would mean the OS doesn't have a functioning browser
The horror! The horror! They'd have to put extra CDs with IE on it into the shops. Only, you know, that's an option the competition can also make use of, at which point we have a market, and market mechanics can sort things out, as in the better offering wins. Right now, we don't have a market, we have a monopo
Re:Vista (Score:4, Informative)
If you are talking about back end stuff like Windows Update, that's not even done through a web page in Vista anyway. Maybe it uses some IE components in the background but I doubt the Firefox people want to make a module to update Windows anyway and updates to the OS is Microsoft's space anyway - a basic part of the OS. Not sure what else you could be referring to. Web based Help for Windows? Same idea.
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Re:Vista (Score:5, Informative)
I have Vista and Opera, and Opera is set as default. If you click a link anywhere in Windows, it launches Opera. For example, if you get an error there is a link to an appropriate KB article on microsoft.com. Clicking this for me launches it in Opera.
The only programs I've found that don't honour the default are Yahoo Messenger and City of Heroes - apparently they prefer to hardcode to launch IE, which is their choice.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
There are a few rare cases when IE opens to display a website, but this is only when following a link from a really crappy program. I can only assume that this would be due to the programmer of said app hard coding the app to use IE (which is retarded, but has absolutly nothing to do with Vist
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You know what this is? I
Re: (Score:2)
Monopolies are not good for consumers and not good for an industry as a whole. Government regulation probably won't be perfect, but I'd at least prefer that they try.
Re: (Score:2)
KDE is not a monopoly.
Two obvious things: (Score:4, Insightful)
No, they don't. However, KDE, Apple, and even Nintendo, do.
Why? Because Microsoft is a monopoly. Monopolies have to play by different rules.
Actually, it is, because I can actually uninstall Konqueror. Dolphin is the new default file manager, and nothing else requires Konqueror. I can then set Firefox or Opera as the default browser.
Now, I like Konqueror, so I keep it around, but that is fundamentally different than IE. If Dell wanted to ship Kubuntu machines with Firefox instead of Konqueror, they could do that. But Dell cannot ship Windows machines with Firefox instead of IE, because you cannot remove IE from Windows.
Isn't that a legitimate complaint?
More importantly, IE is the least standards-compliant of any browser, STILL. Isn't it damaging to the Web as a whole to have the most popular browser also be the least compliant? It's precisely because of these people you talk about that I can't simply design a page for standards -- I now have to design it once for the standards (tested in Firefox, Konqueror, Safari, and Opera), and then add in a ton of hacks to make it work in IE.
Re:Just shut up already (Score:4, Insightful)
It is fundamentally different for one very good reason:
Microsoft are a convicted monopolist, the vendors using KDE are not. It is illegal for a monopoly to use their market position to leverage other markets, which is exactly what they are doing.
Also, I should point out that I know of no Linux distribution which comes with only one browser.
If Dell and others feel comfortable distributing **Linux**, what makes you think they wouldn't distribute Opera and Firefox if there were a demand for that?
Because there is no financial incentive to do so. They have already paid for IE (since it is bundled as part of the cost of Windows), so shipping another browser instead doesn't save them any money. It is easier for them to just leave the Windows installation as-is rather than having to remove IE (which is easier said than done) and install another browser.
On the other hand, if IE wasn't bundled with the stock distribution the cost to Dell of installing any (free) browser would be the same, giving other browsers an equal footing.
The people that Opera is whining about not having access to, are largely the people who think that Internet Explorer is "The Internet."
By either not bundling IE, or bundling alternatives, these people's awareness would be raised and they might actually try alternatives (and find something that suits them better) rather than assuming IE is "the internet". I see no reason why peoples' ignorance should be used as a reason for perpetuating their ignorance.
Re: (Score:2)
1, Just have IE installed...
2, Have both IE and a newer browser installed...
Number 2 is more work, wastes drive space and creates additional support burden.
If they could choose a browser then great, but as it stands theyre forced to include ie wether they want to or not.
Re: (Score:2)
It's about a convicted monopolist leveraging their market dominence to force people to use their software. When a company does something that is good for their business (ship a browser with their OS) we can not compare it to what a monopolist in the market place does. By definition such actions by a monopolist cause harm to competing busine
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Like the tax laws, you don't have to like it, but that's the law of the land.
Re: (Score:2)
The rules change for monopoly corporations.
Ten years you might have made the argument that Microsoft was a monopoly (and you'd be wrong, but that's another tangent). Today the idea is absurd. There are numerous alternatives to Microsoft. Large marketshare does not make a monopoly.
Re: (Score:2)
Today the idea is absurd. There are numerous alternatives to Microsoft.
Which is why all the corporate networks are so diversified with many different systems you can choose from when you start a job?
Large marketshare does not make a monopoly.
Both Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] and Merriam-Webster [m-w.com] disagree.
It's not the size of the market share. The question is not if you have 100%, 90% or 80% of the market, but whether you control the market, to the exclusion of others, and can dictate the price of the product. Or in other words: Whether the price-finding mechanics of the free market have been destroyed.
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No, it really doesn't. (My Linux servers do just fine without a browser on them.)
Regarding your analogy, it's not as if Microsoft's TCP/IP stack violates major standards and makes everyone else in the world have to adjust their network hardware/software to be able to ping Windows. Nor is it like Notepad violate
Re: (Score:2)
I'll go right out and install a browser on my hundreds of servers that don't have them. I didn't know it was required! I'm amazed the systems even boot.
Operating systems also boot without TCP/IP stacks, time clocks, shells, and numerous other things -- and could still do useful work. What's your point?