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.
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Member since:2006-05-09
Member since:2005-08-11
"I do not think should thing could occur actually.... "
It's the best thing that could happen to the web, Safari, Konqueror and IE using the same rendering engine. MS couldn't mess with it too much, because the don't own the code, and any changes they make would need to be available.
Doing this would leave just 3 different major rendering engines to code for, Webkit, Gecko and Opera, and would make web devs lives so much easier
Member since:2005-07-09
While I dont disagree with what you are saying I think the post prior to yours was saying how difficult it is becoming especially nowadays with so much competition and innovation...basically pressure from open source for Micrososft to maintaint that sort of hardline stance. And I agree 100% with that post as well!
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.
Member since:
2005-07-08
Microsoft doesn't have endless developer and maintanance resources. Competition is getting tougher for them, and for example, their security record with web browsers hasn't been good at all. They might really do this, or at least consider it seriously.
Apple is a commercial proprietary company too, much like Microsoft, and they use Webkit, BSD base for their proprietary OS etc.
It would be a big paradigm change for Microsoft, of course, and thus it would be big news, but in many ways it could make sense too.
But naturally it might also never happen. Maybe that would seem more probable too for now.