Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 22nd Aug 2006 17:08 UTC, submitted by Innova
Mozilla & Gecko clones Microsoft wants to help aid in the development of Firefox. It sounds pretty scary, doesn't it? If you're still here, let me tell you that it's not as bad as it seems. Sam Ramjii, Director of Microsoft's Open Source Software Lab, has extended an invitation to the Firefox and Thunderbird developers asking them if they'd like to visit the company's open source research center. Microsoft's hopes are that, in a four-day span, the company can provide the open source developers with enough information to get the popular web browser running smoothly on Windows Vista.
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lagitus
Member since:
2005-07-18

All the competition that has died, has died because their products were crap - I challange anyone here to name *ONE* product that was killed because of Microsofts 'anti-competitive' nature - name *ONE*.
Netscape?

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NotParker Member since:
2006-06-01

Netscape?

The company that stole its IP from a university and Spyglass? The company that gave away for free every version of its browser and complained when Microsoft used the same model?

Please. Get real.

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rcsteiner Member since:
2005-07-12

Neither company is all that innocent.

Rumor does have it that Marc Andressen snuck off with the Mosaic source, and that Netscape's browser was based on that.

However, Microsoft licensed the same code from Spyglass for a percentage of the royalties and then proceded to give the browser away, effectively screwing Spyglass as well.

Besides, the main thrust of the complaint about Microsoft was not the fact that the MSIE browser was free, but rather than the MSIE browser was tied into the OS in such a way that it could not be removed w/o potentially breaking other subsystems and applications.

Please. Get real. And try to limit the revisionist history. Many of us were also there, and we remember very well what occurred.

Edited 2006-08-23 17:44

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kaiwai Member since:
2005-07-06

Netscape?

Ever run Netscape Navigator or Communicator on Windows? there is a reason it was called "Nutscrape" by end users and web developers alike, it was an awful product that was prone to hanging, crashing and corrupting mail firles.

When Microsoft improved Internet Explorer, Netscape took its MONOPOLY for granted and assumed that people would jjust keep using their product, irrespective of how crap it was; well, they were proven wrong, end users migrated away, seeing that yes, it was actually possible to surf the internet without having a browser crash everytime it came accross a Java applet or a Flash/Shockwave object that needed loading.

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