4 ms·

If Microsoft wanted to take their toys and leave the browser market, they would have done just that — perhaps bundling Firefox (to stab at Google) for a fractio

by akho 7y ago

If Microsoft wanted to take their toys and leave the browser market, they would have done just that — perhaps bundling Firefox (to stab at Google) for a fraction of the cost of continued Edge development. Trident was not much of a contender in 2010s. It’s formal death does not decrease diversity. Now that Microsoft _embraced_ Chrome, I expect the browser market to become more diverse, not less.

bayindirh 7y ago
> If Microsoft wanted to take their toys and leave the browser market, they would have done just that... With all the coupling with other Windows subsystems and some features just to enable a Windows-only PC ecosystem, I'm not sure that IE/Edge/Trident/EdgeHTML can be open sourced in a whim. > Now that Microsoft _embraced_ Chrome, I expect the browser market to become more diverse, not less. Internet explorer just became a OS vendor backed version of NeoPlanet browser. Just the same thing, in different shell.
- DaiPlusPlus 7y ago
  Former Internet Explorer SE here: it’s not the coupling with Windows that makes it impossible (MSHTML is actually really self-contained). The main reason Microsoft doesn’t open-source legacy code is because there a huge chunks of licensed third-party source code that cannot be publicly disclosed. While those portions could be stripped-out, it would be a mammoth task to go through the source code history and identify what belongs to who and stub it out if necessary (let alone replace it with first-party code). Whereas MS’ new projects (like .NET Core) were made open-source from the start and made in the open (Cathedral and the Bazaar) - so there’s no mean ol’ lawyers from LCA to stop people having fun.
  - bayindirh 7y ago
    Hey, thanks for the information. That's really enlightening. Now I know better.
_emacsomancer_ 7y ago
> perhaps bundling Firefox (to stab at Google) for a fraction of the cost of continued Edge development. I think that would have been a preferable outcome, for it would have pushed at least some fraction of users towards Firefox, potentially helping to shore up the only browser using a (significantly) different engine. Instead we have another Chromium-based browser, which doesn't add anything of significance to the browser landscape.

by akho 7y ago

bayindirh 7y ago

> If Microsoft wanted to take their toys and leave the browser market, they would have done just that... With all the coupling with other Windows subsystems and some features just to enable a Windows-only PC ecosystem, I'm not sure that IE/Edge/Trident/EdgeHTML can be open sourced in a whim. > Now that Microsoft _embraced_ Chrome, I expect the browser market to become more diverse, not less. Internet explorer just became a OS vendor backed version of NeoPlanet browser. Just the same thing, in different shell.

DaiPlusPlus 7y ago
Former Internet Explorer SE here: it’s not the coupling with Windows that makes it impossible (MSHTML is actually really self-contained). The main reason Microsoft doesn’t open-source legacy code is because there a huge chunks of licensed third-party source code that cannot be publicly disclosed. While those portions could be stripped-out, it would be a mammoth task to go through the source code history and identify what belongs to who and stub it out if necessary (let alone replace it with first-party code). Whereas MS’ new projects (like .NET Core) were made open-source from the start and made in the open (Cathedral and the Bazaar) - so there’s no mean ol’ lawyers from LCA to stop people having fun.
- bayindirh 7y ago
  Hey, thanks for the information. That's really enlightening. Now I know better.

_emacsomancer_ 7y ago

> perhaps bundling Firefox (to stab at Google) for a fraction of the cost of continued Edge development. I think that would have been a preferable outcome, for it would have pushed at least some fraction of users towards Firefox, potentially helping to shore up the only browser using a (significantly) different engine. Instead we have another Chromium-based browser, which doesn't add anything of significance to the browser landscape.