cardpics, savannah, sourceforge

ymettier at libertysurf.fr ymettier at libertysurf.fr
Tue Nov 13 14:01:07 UTC 2001


> Yves:
> > However, there is another dimension you do not 
mention.
> > We need to access to non-free software to see what is 
> > good in them. Would there have been a so good mozilla 
if 
> > there had not been msie?
> 
> If the "browser arms race" had not happened, hopefully 
they would have
> concentrated on the spec instead of introducing so many 
incompatibilities
> and inconsistencies.

Well, if we take msie into account, I fully agree with 
you.
If we only take mozilla, galeon, konqueror, skipstone, 
lynx and a lot of other ones, the race is about 
functionnalities and the one that gets closer to the W3C 
specs. At least I hope.
But isn't that a search for compatibility, something we 
learned from microsoft and msie and the try for having an 
uncompatible msie? If msie had not been there, would all 
the free browsers have tried to be as compatible as 
possible with the w3c recommendations (and all the 
concerned rfc of course).
Well, msie is there, so we'll never know.


> 
> Of course, you can speculate whether we'd have an open 
mozilla without
> Netscape falling behind in the arms race, but enough 
other browsers are
> being developed to suggest that we would probably have 
got there anyway. 
> Maybe it would have been faster because of not losing 
developers to moz, or
> maybe it would have been slower because people wouldn't 
have seen a need. 
> That's not a reality which is open to us now, so we 
shall never know.  We
> opened the box and Schrodinger's cat seems to be alive.

Right :-)

> 
> What really irritates me is certain people claiming 
that non-implementation
> of bugs in the major browsers is a bug in the compliant 
browser.

I had only heard this as a joke. I'm very disappointed 
that it's serious.

Are those people concerned in free software? If not, 
maybe someone could tell them that the key to 
compatibility is to follow the specs (rfc, w3c 
recommendations...), not the features&bugs of the other 
products!

Yves
--
homepage   http://ymettier.free.fr
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