Slashdot Log In
Ballmer "Interested" In Open Source Browser Engine
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Nov 06, 2008 07:56 PM
from the ted-bundy-was-interested-in-women dept.
from the ted-bundy-was-interested-in-women dept.
Da Massive writes "'Why is IE still relevant and why is it worth spending money on rendering engines when there are open source ones available that can respond to changes in Web standards faster?,' asked a young developer to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in Sydney yesterday. 'That's cheeky, but a good question, but cheeky,' Ballmer said. Then came the startling revelation that Microsoft may also adopt an open source browser engine. 'Open source is interesting,' he said. 'Apple has embraced Webkit and we may look at that, but we will continue to build extensions for IE 8.'"
Related Stories
[+]
News: Ballmer Admits Google Apps Are Biting Into MS Office 293 comments
twitter points out coverage of a discussion between Steve Ballmer and two Gartner analysts in which the Microsoft CEO admits that Google Apps is enjoying an advantage over Office by users who want to share their documents. He points to Office Live as their response to Google, and adds, "Google has the lead, but, if we're good at advertising, we'll compete with them in the consumer business." Whether or not they're good at advertising is still in question, if their recent attempts are any indication. Ballmer also made statements indicating some sort of arrangement with Yahoo! could still be in the works, but Microsoft was quick to step on that idea. Regarding Windows Vista, he said Microsoft was prepared for people to skip it altogether, and that Microsoft would be "ready" when it was time to deploy Windows 7.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Oh No! (Score:5, Funny)
Microsoft is going to be infected with the GPL virus!
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/craig/05-03sharedsource.mspx [microsoft.com]
Re:Sig correction (Score:5, Insightful)
Your argument has two glaring problems. Firstly, government regulation does not equal less competition. In many cases it results in more competition, especially in the case of monopolies and collusion between companies. Secondly, the mafia cannot legally exist because of laws limiting them, in other words, government regulation. Without the most basic regulation, then any business could (and probably would) become like the mafia. Competition would be limited to companies competing to be the most intimidating, and whoever could intimidate enough people into paying them. In a world with excessive government regulation, even the kind that produces less competition, at least the government would be regulating against such behaviour.
In other words, your argument makes no sense.
Parent
Re:Oh No! (Score:5, Informative)
GPL prevents only those who want to prevent others.
Parent
Re:Oh No! (Score:5, Insightful)
"The GPL is viral, and this prevents many commercial companies from adopting and using GPL code, crippling the movement."
Umm, how exactly does the GPL "cripple the movement"?
"If TCP/IP had been GPL, the Internet would be a different place today."
See, this is where you demonstrate your astounding lack of comprehension on this issue.
TCP/IP is a standardised protocol not a software product. There are closed source implementations of TCP/IP, GPL implementations and even completely free implementations today. The licence they are issued under makes no practical difference to anyone.
OTOH, if the TCP/IP standard was "owned" (ie patented) by a commercial company there would be NO internet today.
Parent
Re:Oh No! (Score:5, Insightful)
>Many companies refuse to use GPL code because of its viral nature.
They dont refuse to _use_ the GPL code, but to _work_ on GPL code, since the GPL prevents them from closing it up. But since the only goal of such companies would anyways be to close the code up, the GPL ecosystem loses nothing. They don't lose pure users (which don't care if a app is free or unfree) and they don't lose free software developers. All they lose are proprietary/unfree extensions of their works.
Would you care to elaborate what a free software developer would actually _gain_ if a proprietary company took his code, closed it up, and started copyright lawsuits against his users who dare to copy it like they got used when it still was free? If one of his goals when developing his code was freedom, how would somebody closing up the code and launching lawsuits contribute to this stated goal of the original developer?
>That cripples adoption of GPL software.
It only cripples embracement and extinguishment of GPL software, but considering that crippling that has from the beginning been GPL's goal, it works fully as intended.
So please explain: How does encouraging non-free software through non-GPL licensing encourage the deveopment of free software?
>I know TCP/IP is a standardized protocol, which was my point.
>If it had been GPL software, it would have gone nowhere because companies wouldn't have adopted it in the early
>days of the Internet.
The GPL on a reference implamentation wouldn't actually have stopped anybody to implement such standardized protocol independently and chose any licence they want for their own implementation.
Parent
Re:Oh No! (Score:5, Insightful)
"Many companies refuse to use GPL code because of its viral nature."
This would explain why BSD is so much more popular than Linux then.
"I know TCP/IP is a standardized protocol"
OK
"which was my point."
No, you compared a protocol to code.
"If it had been GPL software . . "
See you did it again.
Just to put a finer point on it, please let me rephrase your comment.
Many companies refuse to use other peoples proprietary code (in their own projects) because of the legal ramifications. That cripples adoption of proprietary software.
GPL is not about promoting "software adoption", it is about promoting collaborative development.
Lots of people currently enjoy that collaborative development model, as can bee seen by the rising popularity of many open source projects.
Anyway, I'm not sure what alternative licence you are promoting. Proprietary? Fully free as in BSD? Some other fantasy licence that nobody has heard of outside of your febrile imagination?
Parent
At least he's honest. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:At least he's honest. (Score:5, Interesting)
Another Ballmerism from his visit down under [theregister.co.uk] that made me facepalm:
Steve Ballmer has publicly belittled Google's fledgling mobile phone platform, saying the world's largest search engine ad broker is low on Microsoft's list of mobile competitors.
At an investor briefing in Sydney today, Microsoft's chief exec said Google would not have an easy time convincing handset manufacturers to adopt Android, its brand new Linux-based mobile platform.
"They've got some smart guys and hire a lot of people - blah-di-blah-di-blah," Ballmer said of his rival. "They start out way behind in a certain sense, and we'll see how they do."
Then he added "I'm not giving them a hard time" - before continuing to give them a hard time.
Emphasis mine
Parent
Re:At least he's honest. (Score:5, Funny)
OT, I know, but...
Isn't it about time to replace Borg Bill with Balmer pitching a chair or something?
Parent
Microsoft will never (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft will never open-source Trident. It'd be like letting the entire world look at your dirty laundry.
Parent
Re:Microsoft will never (Score:5, Funny)
Someone else mod this guy +1 something - I can't find "Funderrated."
Parent
Re:At least he's honest. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:At least he's honest. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd rather not see an entire rendering engine in one huge monolithic chunk. Part of the reason that web standards outpace browser development by so much is that most engines are very hard to extend. What's wanted is a "standard" API for a data-to-data transformation engine. Instead of the W3C producing a proof-of-concept browser like Amaya, all they need do is produce a proof-of-concept transformation engine instead, which can then be used also to verify proof-of-correctness. (Any other transformation engine for that same transform will produce the same output for the same input.)
Sure, they can still have their own web browser, but they don't need to re-write it when they add to the standard, they can just slide in another engine.
How would this work, in practice? Well, my thought is that each opening tag and either explicit or implicit closing tag would be assigned a numerical value that would be assigned by the W3C, much as the IANA assign port numbers. Each engine would then register what numerical values it supports.
The browser would then consist of five parts: network I/O, a preprocessor which converts tags to ID, a set of engines which would "compile" the page from a "high-level" format into a much "lower-level" portable format, a rendering engine which converted the portable format into a much more specific format, and then a display engine which displayed the results.
The primary advantage of this sort of arrangement is that things like CSS could then be easily replaced in a browser. It would be much more pluggable than the Mozilla engine or the libwww engine. It would be much more customizable. A major plus, given that very few browsers conform the the whole standard and all conform to different bits. If you could rip out modules from a browser you didn't like but did support a tag or feature you needed, this would not be a problem.
The secondary advantage is that it would be possible to provide support for non-SGML-derived tag-based systems, such as TeX, Postscript, and so on, natively. At the moment, you can include a link to a .ps file on a web page, but it's very hard to embed it, and completely impossible on most browsers to embed it in a way that integrates completely smoothly with HTML or would allow you to include active hyperlinks within it (unless an independent postscript viewer supported them). By compiling the whole page from all kinds of formats into a single, unified format, anything that is possible in one format becomes possible in all formats.
This isn't how web browsers are written, though, and it doesn't seem likely that this is how web browsers will be done in the future. Which keeps document types isolated from each other and keeps browsers from fully supporting any of those document types.
Parent
Re:At least he's honest. (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you have any reason to believe that the Trident codebase is anything other than a steaming pile of horseshit?
Back in the original browser wars, both the Netscape and Microsoft browsers were evolving very rapidly, with lots of quite fundamental changes. At the end, when the Netscape code was open-sourced, it turned out to be (no surprise) a big mess that took several years to sort into shape. Meanwhile, Microsoft sat on their monopoly and did NOTHING to the browser, until they were forced into evolving again once Firefox started to seriously dent their market-share.
The current state is that the Mozilla code has been substantially rewritten and is now in pretty good shape, but Microsoft are stuck hacking away at the old crud.
Parent
Some possible problems, here? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Some possible problems, here? (Score:5, Funny)
"Sorry, you do not have Internet Explorer installed. To download, please visit http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/ [microsoft.com]"
Sure, most of us probably have a FF install on a USB key somewhere, but what about the people who just bought their computer from the store? This'll drive them insane just like the "Keyboard error. Press any key to continue" error.
Parent
Re:Some possible problems, here? (Score:5, Interesting)
FTP. No, not a solution for the average user, but on a fresh install of XP, I'll often just ftp Firefox (and then install noscript, abp, flashblock, etc. and restart) in order to download the other stuff I need to keep the computer in a relatively useful state.
Yes, I could use IE and go straight to mozilla.org, but off the bat, it loads msn.com and I have no desire to expose IE7 or worse, IE6, to the mercies of the scripts and ad providers on the page.
P.S. releases.mozilla.org is where you want to go.
Parent
Re:Some possible problems, here? (Score:5, Funny)
They could just fix the "Add or Remove Software" applet so it points towards a collection of optional software hosted on a secure server. If you wanted to install IE, you could choose it there and have it installed automatically.
Maybe they could call it a "Repository".
Parent
Re:Some possible problems, here? (Score:5, Funny)
I just got thinking. So let's say Microsoft doesn't include the new IE in it's next Operating System -- how do you get it?
Gee, I wonder how I can install a browser on this Linux box without a browser already. That's unpossible!
Parent
Re:Some possible problems, here? (Score:4, Funny)
There is a very easy way to fix this... the first time a user requests a web page, or maybe they click an icon on their desktop called "web browser" a little window pops up: "Would you like to download - Mozilla Firefox - Internet Explorer - Safari ... etc" problem solved.
"Hello there! It looks like you're trying to browse a webpage! Would you like to..."
Parent
Re:Some possible problems, here? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Some possible problems, here? (Score:5, Insightful)
You misunderstand. Ballmer said that they would look into a new rendering engine. Which means that IE will still be IE, just with a new codebase under the hood. After all, 95% of their customer base won't understand the difference. All they'll know is that IE is still part of Windows yet works better than ever.
Which Microsoft will then go on to say is an inexorable part of the Operating System. (insert eye roll here)
Parent
Re:Some possible problems, here? (Score:5, Informative)
Webkit is LGPL. As long as they have the engine separated into the same sort of controls they have today, it should meet the LGPL license just fine. Perhaps with a bit of wrapper code released as LGPL.
Parent
Re:Some possible problems, here? (Score:5, Informative)
Er. More like...
KDE's Webkit which trails behind Apple's, but is "stable" in that it's not a moving target, it's simply not as up to date.
Apple's Webkit which trails its internal builds by anywhere from months to years.
Google's Webkit which could be anywhere from two months newer to two months older than Apple's, and demonstrates that no such proprietary hacking is necessary to get ActiveX to work.
MS's Webkit which would probably be a direct copy of Google's, with a hack to require all sorts of extraneous metadata to turn it on. MS won't do any other hacking because they believe it is not possible to do [ajaxian.com].
Parent
Re:Some possible problems, here? (Score:5, Informative)
"It is surprising how different the versions of webkit are."
This is untrue, and mostly a product of misunderstanding but partly a product of FUD as well. More on this below...
"the current release of Chrome is almost 4 times faster than the current release of Safari"
This really has almost nothing to do with Webkit, and does not demonstrate a difference in the rendering engines at all. Ultimately what we're looking at here is a comparison of JavaScriptCore (Safari's current* ECMAScript interpreter)â"released 19 June 2008, with only minor changes from the major version from more than a year earlierâ"and V8 (Google's ECMAScript-bytecode translator engine)â"released 5 September 2008 against a codebase that was nearly brand new; while it's true that JSC is a [legacy] part of Webkit, V8 is not a part of Webkit at all. Comparing the two isn't really meaningful.
Moreover, Chrome is not released, it's a very, very early, unpolished beta.
A more apt comparison would be...
"It would be interesting to see if the Safari nightly builds have closed this gap." ... the nightly builds, which use a similar engine (SFX is somewhat different in its approach, but ultimately in the same class as V8). And in fact, performance is roughly the same. It's not like this information isn't widely available, either.
I can't speak to the particular benchmark in question or whether it even has merit as a general browser benchmark (note, Google's benchmark has little merit here, as it strictly tests JS language speed, rather than DOM performance [which is extremely important for nearly all browser performance experiences]), and I don't have an environment which would be suited to finding out for myself, but I encourage you if you're that curious to try a nightly build on the test yourself.
With that said, there are existing browser benchmarks (eg Dromaeo 2) that tell a story much more interesting story.
John Resig on JS engine performance [ejohn.org]
This shows JSC (not SF or SFX) beating V8 on a bunch of DOM tests [javascriptly.com]
But I want to reiterate, this is hardly a good example of differences in Webkit releases. These are differences in browser releases and over a very wide stretch of time (in the current JS engine war, especially).
* By "current", I mean "released"; it is current in that sense, but actually two generations old in the Webkit project. The Webkit team has since produced SquirrelFish [webkit.org] and SquirrelFish Extreme [webkit.org], the latter being much closer to (and often faster than) Chrome's performance on every task except (if I recall correctly) recursion.
Parent
The third "E". The other browser. (Score:4, Funny)
Embrace, Extend... wait, there's a third "E" and a third browser technology, isn't there, Steve, and it's probably got something to do with what you'd like to do with Gecko/Firefox.
Wonder what it might be.
Re:The third "E". The other browser. (Score:5, Interesting)
Ballmer pretty much confirmed (was there yesterday) that was the strategy later on in his answer - to beat the standards bodies to new features. The entire strategy they presented was building a new Microsoft-only Web stack built on .Net, and then trying to lock people in with IE8+.
Parent
3 E's (Score:5, Funny)
Embrace
Extend
Enjoy
Reality check? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, I suppose Microsoft might embrace open source. Of course, our politicians might lower taxes too. But Microsoft, like politicians, have a long history of saying one thing and doing another. That, and I'm pretty sure Balmer knows that if he mentions open source he'll get a free plug on Slashdot and on other media sites where highly technical people frequent. From a marketing standpoint, it makes sense to hint at open source as much as possible. From a legal and business standpoint, it's more likely he'll dance around on the stage in a Gir suit while singing the doom song.
How? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How? (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, leaving IE and ActiveX in is half the reason NOT to use Windows. Replacing them with a more secure, stable, standards-compliant browser core? Sounds great. Updating the old junk and pretending it's not five years past its prime on release date? Fail.
Parent
Re:How? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:How? (Score:5, Insightful)
And really, why use WebKit? Sure, its a decent rendering engine but no better than Gecko or the other OSS rendering engines.
One reason for using WebKit over Gecko would be the licensing...I know that for lots of corporations, BSD-licensing is much favored over anything related to GPL...(Gecko is MPL)
Parent
Re:How? (Score:5, Informative)
One reason for using WebKit over Gecko would be the licensing...I know that for lots of corporations, BSD-licensing is much favored over anything related to GPL...(Gecko is MPL)
Parts of WebKit are under the LGPL and parts are under a BSD-style license (I don't know which parts and I can't be bothered picking through the source code to find out), Gecko is all MPL/GPL/LGPL tri-licensed. You're going to have to adhere to the conditions of the LGPL if you actually want to use all of WebKit, so what's the difference? Gecko could be said to be better as you get to choose between a library-level or file-level copyleft, since you only have to adhere to one of the licenses.
Choosing WebKit over Gecko would probably be more about speed (WebKit is definitely faster), code-cleanliness (I hear Apple chose KHTML over Gecko to base WebKit on because of this), and simple bad feelings. A lot of people at Mozilla still don't like Microsoft, and the feeling may well be mutual among the browser developers on both sides. Apple probably just seem a more palatable choice to be working with for Microsoft.
Parent
Re:How? (Score:5, Insightful)
ActiveX is an abortion, and has (mostly) died its well deserved death; but MS now has Silverlight, which is a much more competent stab at the web-stuff-plus-secret-windows-sauce concept than ActiveX ever was. I do strongly suspect that they cannot, and know they cannot, continue to make IE exclusive HTML/javascript a selling point. Keeping IE current is a chore, keeping it ahead has proven impossible, and there are now enough mac users out there, particularly among desireable demographics, that making websites IE only is no longer practical for anybody who wants a broad audience. That said, though, they seem to be moving forward with Silverlight, which isn't an IE exclusive; but might well be exactly the sort of "proprietary innovation" that Ballmer is referring to. Unfortunately, Silverlight is more competent than ActiveX ever was, so just waiting for it to collapse of its own weight probably won't work.
Parent
Re:How? (Score:4, Funny)
Can you please use a few more dollar signs when you post? Right now you're at the point where I simply dismiss whatever you're saying. But verily, if you use a few dozen more, I'll start to think you're just disabled and take your opinion seriously in the name of equality and progress.
Parent
Re:How? (Score:5, Funny)
There you go! Courtesy of sed.
Parent
I don't know what to make of this (Score:5, Insightful)
Either Ballmer is throwing out a red herring, or future versions of IE (presumably after 8) will finally be decoupled from Windows.
But, what open source browser engines are there other than Gecko and Webkit? Both are developed by MS' sworn mortal enemies. Browsers are complex, time consuming beasts to develop.
Seems reasonable to me. (Score:4, Interesting)
Microsoft won the Browser Wars but failed to achieve its objectives in victory. The war against Netscape was to insure that all apps either network based or not needed Microsoft Windows with IE to run the apps. With such failures such as Active X which never really made it past the Intranet and Extranet application. What happened was web developers for the most part designed as much using open standards (or at least plugins that were more universally compatible) and then were able to make apps that run well on Windows, Mac, Linux, BSD or whatever just as long as you have a fairly modern browser. What was probably really surpassing to Microsoft most of this. Even decided to give the apps a step back in functionality (just recently for the last couple of year the AJAX method with DHTML became fully functional, or at least 85% there) just to keep compatibility.
What killed Microsoft objective more then anything was the insecurity of Active X and the general habit for people when asked a question is to answer yes and get it done. So now Microsoft is spending millions of dollars in IE development without really getting any major competitive advantage out of the deal. Sure you may have 90% of the market but only 5% of that market actually doing IE Only things you are just wasting your money.
Going to an open source rendering system just seems a way to keep up with the time. By joining the Jones you don't need to keep up with them. Just like with Safari or Chrome all the company needs to do is maintain the browser in features and UI (stuff that closed source companies have seem to shown they have an advantage over open source) and use someone else's Open Source rendering engine (Following specs and making things like rendering engines are what Open Source Developers are good at) So what Microsoft accomplish is a new objective. People will want to stick with Windows because they Like IE over the others.
Tags (Score:5, Funny)
itsatrapwhatcouldpossiblygowrongembraceextendextinguishrunrunforthehills
Battles. (Score:4, Insightful)
Features
Standards compliance
Speed
Security
MS can get features and even standards compliance through proprietary means, on the other hand, security and speed depend on lots of people looking through the code. So in essence, without an open source rendering engine MS can't hope to win. On the other hand, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome have made great leaps because they have all of the above.
chair (Score:5, Funny)
"Why is IE still relevant and why is it worth spending money on rendering engines when there are open source ones available that can respond to changes in Web standards faster?"
"That's cheeky, but a good question, but cheeky," Ballmer said.
What the story doesn't mention is that the developer who asked that question was found dead later that day with a folding chair wrapped around his neck.
Re:chair (Score:5, Funny)
Good thing the chairs in Sydney's Exhibition Centre are all bolted down.
Is any body giggling when you read this sentence from the article? I was imagining Ballmer looking around for a chair, and the expression on his face would be priceless when he found that all chairs are bolted down :)
Parent
Yeah, he's interested (Score:5, Funny)
He's interested in Open Source in the same way ticks are interested in dogs.
HEAR ME (Score:4, Funny)
I USE TEH LINUX AND I R ANGRY
Parent
Re:Open Source? (Score:5, Funny)
Deliberately fucking up/poisoning what everybody else is doing is the only thing they do well!
Parent
Re:Microsoft can't win evidentially... (Score:5, Insightful)
If your abusive spouse buys you flowers, you don't stop planning the escape.
Parent
Re:Microsoft can't win evidentially... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
What Microsoft did to Apple (Score:5, Informative)
So what did Microsoft do to Apple that was that terrible?
Got two words for you there: "look" and "feel."
MS was an early developer for Macs and had some of the first prototype machines. While assuring Apple that they weren't, they were using their knowledge of the thing that made a Mac a Mac, the Toolbox, to build a GUI on top of DOS. This GUI was released later as Windows, and although apologists try to play it off as based on Xerox's interface (whose designers were at Apple by then anyway), there is much evidence that they ripped Apple off. Apple put a ton of R&D into the interface, it was not much like Xerox's at all -- it was very much an "invented here" mindset as opposed MS's "NIH."
Thus was born the Look and Feel suit; Apple sued Microsoft for ripping off their interface, but in the meantime, Apple's then-CEO, John Sculley, had given Gates a badly-worded agreement that was construed by the judge to be a license to produce Windows using Apple's "intellectual property." Then again, part of the settlement was that MS couldn't use overlapping windows; that's why they were tiled until version 3.
All this actually didn't matter much; Apple made the bulk of its revenues on the Apple II line until 1987 or so, and Microsoft could likely have parlayed Apple's BASIC license into permission to use Apple's interface R&D anyway ("applesoft" BASIC was developed by MS, Woz did the superior "integer" BASIC but never upgraded it to handle floating-point math).
Here's what I consider the main point: Apple saw the Xerox work, and took some of the key people who created it, but they totally improved it. Quickdraw did real regions, roundrects, and other stuff the Smalltalk interface didn't. Microsoft may have seen the Xerox work, definitely saw the Apple stuff, and then put together a half-assed, hackneyed piece of shit.
This is what Microsoft has done ever since. Apple runs Microsoft's interface R&D, in a way. I think that's the real reason MS bailed them out in 1997. Bill Gates famously said, "I want Mac on a PC! I want Mac on a PC!" They always get pretty close, but somehow stay so far.
Linux seems to be much closer, using technology (X) that really was developed independently on a parallel track; thus they have their own thing that isn't some wanna be copy and stands on its own.
Parent
Re:What Microsoft did to Apple (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple were evil because they claimed they owned fundamental GUI concepts through copyright. They threatened to sue the entire industry to prevent any other computer from having a "WIMP" (windows icons mouse pointer) interface.
Microsoft didn't break the agreement. In fact, the courts found that Apple signed away certain IP rights to Microsoft in return for what turned out to be killer apps for the Mac Platform (Word & Excel). Therefore Microsoft won the case -- with some minor exceptions like the Trash Can.
Later on another court case (Lotus v Borland) ruled that "Look and Feel" couldn't be copyrighted, making the whole Apple legal effort irrelevant, and opening the way for other companies to make Mac-like GUI interfaces.
Parent