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> The big difference is that Chromium is open-source > while IE was not. While certainly laudable -- how does that matter in practice? The drama surrounding

by apl 15y ago

> The big difference is that Chromium is open-source > while IE was not. While certainly laudable -- how does that matter in practice? The drama surrounding IE5 would have unfolded in a similar manner if Microsoft's browser had been open source. It's about control and pushing for non-standard features, not development strategies... Your second point stands, of course.

vibrunazo 15y ago
> It's about control and pushing for non-standard features, > not development strategies... I guess the point he's trying to make is that if IE was open source, then MS would have much less control over pushing non-standard features. If chrome tries to pull the same tricks today, people will just build chromium without it and compete. So I agree with chime, that chromium being open source makes a big difference.
- ootachi 15y ago
  It's not really possible to compete with Chrome just by building the source. For one, Google has an exclusive OS deal that can't be replicated -- which is the main point of this article.
- apl 15y ago
  > If chrome tries to pull the same tricks today, people > will just build chromium without it and compete. I doubt that. As ootachi mentions, this isn't a purely technological race. Far from it. Chrome succeeds for multiple reasons, one of them of course being Chromium's engineering; however, without Google backing the browser heavily, it'd die. You make developing and maintaining a viable Chromium-fork sound like a trivial thing, but it isn't. (Plus, this fully ignores community inertia -- shit would have to hit the fan before people "just build chromium without it." The community took Dart and NaCl in stride!) So in the end, open source doesn't give you much immediate protection from IE5-ification. Look at how long it took to make Mozilla/Firefox competitive.
  - yuhong 15y ago
    Except that Mozilla was a completely separate code base from IE and had to do reverse-engineering, while WebKit is itself open source and can be forked directly. (WebKit itself in fact was a fork of KHTML)
rsynnott 15y ago
There is at least some form of publication and consultation these days, though. When Google comes up with SPDY or NaCL, or Apple comes out with HTTP Live Streaming, they publish specs and sometimes submit them to standards, with the result that they're often adopted elsewhere; HTTP Live Streaming has been picked up by Chrome, Android and WebOS, for instance. As far as I remember, Microsoft tended to just make up new things and add them to IE, without a proper spec, and sometimes with no real documentation.

by apl 15y ago

vibrunazo 15y ago

> It's about control and pushing for non-standard features, > not development strategies... I guess the point he's trying to make is that if IE was open source, then MS would have much less control over pushing non-standard features. If chrome tries to pull the same tricks today, people will just build chromium without it and compete. So I agree with chime, that chromium being open source makes a big difference.

ootachi 15y ago
It's not really possible to compete with Chrome just by building the source. For one, Google has an exclusive OS deal that can't be replicated -- which is the main point of this article.
apl 15y ago
> If chrome tries to pull the same tricks today, people > will just build chromium without it and compete. I doubt that. As ootachi mentions, this isn't a purely technological race. Far from it. Chrome succeeds for multiple reasons, one of them of course being Chromium's engineering; however, without Google backing the browser heavily, it'd die. You make developing and maintaining a viable Chromium-fork sound like a trivial thing, but it isn't. (Plus, this fully ignores community inertia -- shit would have to hit the fan before people "just build chromium without it." The community took Dart and NaCl in stride!) So in the end, open source doesn't give you much immediate protection from IE5-ification. Look at how long it took to make Mozilla/Firefox competitive.
- yuhong 15y ago
  Except that Mozilla was a completely separate code base from IE and had to do reverse-engineering, while WebKit is itself open source and can be forked directly. (WebKit itself in fact was a fork of KHTML)

rsynnott 15y ago

There is at least some form of publication and consultation these days, though. When Google comes up with SPDY or NaCL, or Apple comes out with HTTP Live Streaming, they publish specs and sometimes submit them to standards, with the result that they're often adopted elsewhere; HTTP Live Streaming has been picked up by Chrome, Android and WebOS, for instance. As far as I remember, Microsoft tended to just make up new things and add them to IE, without a proper spec, and sometimes with no real documentation.