
Most of the popular browsers these days are based on one of the two open source rendering engines - khtml/WebKit and Gecko. The most popular browser, however, is based on proprietary technology: Internet Explorer. Even though IE made some progress during the past few years, it's no secret that it took Microsoft far too long to counter the success of Mozilla's Firefox. Currently, Microsoft is working (and thus, spending money) on Internet Explorer 8, and this prompted an audience member during a keynote by Steve Ballmer to ask an interesting question: is it worth spending money on IE, with so many open source engines readily available?
Ballmer's reply may surprise you.
Member since:
2005-07-07
I'm not sure how true that is. I'm certain that they license code (or buy it outright) from other proprietary vendors. Adobe and Apple, two other proprietary vendors also do that quite regularly. The only difference here is that they would be licensing code from an open source vendor. It's a much smaller paradigm shift than many realize. It just makes good business sense, unlike clinging to an ideologically based, prejudice against open source software.