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Microsoft Businesses Apple

Give Mac Explorer to the People? 242

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the zen-and-the-art-of-public-image dept.
An anonymous reader writes "In an article on the BBC News site, Bill Thompson suggests that Microsoft release the source for IE:Mac to the world so that others can continue to develop the product. While this may be a pleasant fiction, Microsoft does seem to be making an effort to change their image. Could we see more OSS interaction from the software giant in the near future?"
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Give Mac Explorer to the People? More

Give Mac Explorer to the People?

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  • Or not? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by shut_up_man ( 450725 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @08:47AM (#14344115) Homepage
    How about we just let Mac IE die and keep gathering support for Firefox?

    • Re:Or not? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by polyp2000 ( 444682 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @08:51AM (#14344137) Homepage Journal
      lol, i think you've found the only possible reason that Microsoft might even consider releasing the source code to IE.

      • I wouldn't touch it with yours (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        If it is MS and your serious about working in that area then seeing thier code could at a later stage contaminate any chance of doing serious coding elsewhere.

        The reason why some aren't too keen on thier shared source license.

    • Re:Or not? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by vertinox ( 846076 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @09:21AM (#14344234)
      Apparently, whoever modded you flamebait never had to use IE for the mac. It is a horrid wretched peice of software that should die like the rotting beast of Golgamathea that it is.

      It is like a program with all the problems and stability issues of IE 5 (sans Active X because there is not Active X for the mac) with none of its benefits that you would get on a PC version. Hell... Most of the pages rendered nothing like their windows counterpart. The program was made from scratch using a totally different team not related to the IE team for the PC.

      As soon as a better alternative came out (Safari) I dumped IE.

      May it burn in hell and let us not metion it ever again.
      • I've heard that some aspects of the rendering engine, particularly the CSS support, is ahead of the Window s version of IE. Of course, I would still encourage people to work on Firefox, especially given the license people would likely be operating under if MS released it.
        • They were well ahead of Windows' IE for a long time. Back when IE for Windows was at 5 and 5.5. The things Mac IE did well have long since been done by Safari, Firefox/ Camino and Opera. There's no reason (in my mind) to try to catch the Mac IE codebase up to present day. Why not hack on some open-source browser?
      • never had to use IE for the mac. It is a horrid wretched peice of software that should die like the rotting beast of Golgamathea that it is.
        For those who are unaware, Golgamathea is Bill's pet name, as used by his wife, and a few sycophantic Vista and X-Box users.
      • It is a horrid wretched peice of software that should die like the rotting beast of Golgamathea that it is.

        The Netscape 7 series was a much better browser for the Mac (Specifically Classic).
        It had proper CSS support, popup blocking, and the mail client didn't suck as well.
        There are much bettter choices available for OSX.

        Outlook Express that was bundled with IE couldn't open hyperlinks.
        I'm just glad that I don't have to code to it anymore.

      • Re:Or not? (Score:5, Informative)

        by steinnes ( 774991 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @10:50AM (#14344634) Homepage
        I agree. IE for mac is buggy, ugly, renders badly, has terrible support for non ascii characters (at least 90% of icelandic webpages that I viewed with it had little diamonds with a question mark inside them, instead of all the icelandic characters). My dayjob is running iceland's most popular website (mbl.is) and trying to keep support for IE:MAC was just a complete nightmare, whilst we could easily maintain correct rendering for Netscape 5+, IE5+ (for windows), Opera 7+, Mozilla 1.4+ or Firefox 0.8+. IE:MAC is terrible violation against the internet, and the notion of extending it's life and furthering the pain and misery it brings down on users is just preposterous. If Microsoft by their own accord want to park this weapon of bad rendering and vileness, please please please lets not give them a game plan to continue! Someone should smack the proposer of this idea on the top of his head for being a big doofus. People should rather focus on making the already better, already open-source browsers for Mac OS better!
        • If Microsoft by their own accord want to park this weapon of bad rendering and vileness, please please please lets not give them a game plan to continue!

          I agree. This is like the Soviet Union saying "Okay, we give up on this communist dictatorship thing. How about a capitalist democracy for a change?" and the USA stepping in and helping them stay communist. In a cold war, when your opponent bows out, you do not force him back into the ring.
        • I am forced to use IE for Mac for work as the entire California State University system requires professors to interact with database software to check records, enter grades, for scheduling, etc. That software - a closed source program from PeopleSoft I believe; everyone calls it SOLAR - does not work well with any other browser (and even on IE/Mac it is horribly slow) and our technology support staff is powerless to suggest anything other than that the user use IE to access the database. I was thrilled w
      • "Apparently, whoever modded you flamebait never had to use IE for the mac. It is a horrid wretched peice of software that should die like the rotting beast of Golgamathea that it is."

        Have you ever tried running FireFox on a 1Ghz eMac with 768 megs of memory? Let me tell you, it is no speed demon either. FireFox runs better on my old pc with an AMD AthlonXP 1600 with 512 megs than the eMac...

        I haven't found Safari to run fast either. Maybe on a G5, I guess.

        • Browsing is slower on the mac to some degree. Safari in panther was quite peppy, but 10.4's incarnation sucks. They tried to speed it up at the price of web page compatibility and its a nightmare. I used to run KDE inside x11 on my mac (using fink) and its browser was faster. Sadly safari was based on konquerer so you'd think it would be comparable. Netscape and Firefox have always ran slow on macs. Thats why so many people loved IE on the mac. It was very fast and had a small footprint. It also cra

      • Dude, Mac IE rocked (Score:3, Informative)

        by Aqua OS X ( 458522 )
        Several years ago Mac IE 5 was one of the best browsers on any platform. The tazman layout engine was great, and the application had some well executed features. IMHO, Mac IE still has the best download manager out there... even if the OS X version is buggy.

        Unfortunately, aside for some security updates, Microsoft more or less stopped development after their half ass OS X port. IE 5 was a GREAT web dev tool when it was good. It significantly limited (not eliminated) my need to run over to a networked PC to

      • ActiveX on Mac (Score:3, Interesting)

        by SimHacker ( 180785 ) *

        Actually, ActiveX does run just fine on the Mac, and has for a long time. I used it in 1996 to develop a plug-in system for a visual programming language called Bounce, and Mac Common Lisp [donhopkins.com]). Metrowerks actually modified their C++ compiler to support it (adding a _comobject magic class that you can inherit from to get the vtable pointers formatted in the right place so multiple inheritance and QueryInterface worked together properly). Microsoft used it to port IE to the Mac, and paid Metrowerks to make the

    • Other Suggestions (Score:5, Funny)

      by BodhiCat ( 925309 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @09:36AM (#14344302)

      Other Suggestions:

      China should withdraw from Tibet and allow the Tibetans to construct a Disneyland in Lhasa, since Tibet is already becoming little more than a tourist trap.

      Bush should withdraw from Iraq and let the war be carried out by our powerful allies from Togo and Lithuania.

      The Road Runner should let the Coyote have him for dinner.

      They should develop a snow ball in hell that would survive for an extended period of time.

      Etc.

    • Already dead. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by SatanicPuppy ( 611928 ) <Satanicpuppy.gmail@com> on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @09:49AM (#14344347) Journal
      They haven't updated it in forever, so IE mac is really so old as to be useless. If you use a Mac, you're probably using Firefox, Opera, or Safari, and much happier anyway.

    • Re:Or not? (Score:2, Funny)

      by hzs202 ( 932886 )
      How about we just let Mac IE die and keep gathering support for Firefox?

      I think Mac IE is already dead which is the only reasons M$ would allow its source to be Open. To illustrate this picture the situation similar to "the viewing" of the body before it's burial.

  • You don't wanna do that! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ochu ( 877326 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @08:48AM (#14344119) Homepage
    Surely the reason why microsoft would never do that is the fact that not in a million years would that product stay on Mac. I would give it two weeks before it was given enhancements, ported to windows, and released as a compatible alternative to IE 7, eating away at ever more market share.

  • Why? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by badasscat ( 563442 ) <basscadet75@NOspAm.yahoo.com> on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @08:50AM (#14344125)
    The real question is why? The Mac already has both a more modern Apple-produced browser (Safari) that MS themselves recommend, along with a true open-source alternative (Firefox), not to mention all the usual suspects if you're not a fan of either of those (Opera, etc.).

    While it may be a nice pseudo-political irony to have IE Mac go open-source, it is an old, outdated browser that was rendered unnecessary long ago in every sense of the word.

    • Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by 1u3hr ( 530656 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @08:54AM (#14344148)
      The real question is why?

      The stated reason in TFA is to allow use of IE-only sites. But of course it would be a lot simpler to fake and/or emulate IE's responses to sneak in; and to bitch loudly to the sites. A forked IE-Mac is unlikely to stay compatible with the latest Windows version, making it useless in short order for any purpose.

      • Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Mononoke ( 88668 )
        The stated reason in TFA is to allow use of IE-only sites.
        I prefer to just NOT use IE-only sites. If some business is so stupid as to allow their site to be IE-only, then they are too stupid to deserve my money/time.

        • Re:Why? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Professor_UNIX ( 867045 )
          I prefer to just NOT use IE-only sites. If some business is so stupid as to allow their site to be IE-only, then they are too stupid to deserve my money/time.

          That's easy enough for you to say, but some of us are required to use IE-only sites to do our jobs. I can't even fill out my timesheet without loading an IE-only site and our help desk system (Remedy) requires IE on Windows the way they have it setup. Yes, my company has drank the MS Kool-Aid and is 100% devoted to Microsoft only solutions, but the

          • That's easy enough for you to say, but some of us are required to use IE-only sites to do our jobs. I can't even fill out my timesheet without loading an IE-only site and our help desk system (Remedy) requires IE on Windows the way they have it setup.

            And that'd be a terrific and well-thought-out reason, except that IE5Mac is such a radically different beast from IE6.0 in terms of rendering and javascript support. While it may make sense for a company to choose one browser to support for their internal t

            • IE5.5mac is not a compatible browser solution, most of the time.

              I didn't say I use IE 5.x on a Mac.. it doesn't work with my company's apps either. I'm just saying that a true IE-compatible browser would be incredibly useful on alternative platforms. Unfortunately that requires implementing ActiveX and is a security nightmare. I guess the rest of us will just stick to running IE in Virtual PC or VMWare to get to corporate apps or use a Terminal Server.

      • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @09:27AM (#14344261)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • The university I work for has been switching all of its systems (e.g. webmail, registration, grading, etc.) to one of those portal packages, one with limited browser support. To keep the message simple, they just tell everyone to use IE for it. Which means that I (the techie for the off-campus art-and-design college) have to go around explaining to my hundreds of Mac users that this means they should be using Safari (which works) instead of IE:Mac (which doesn't).

          I've been longing for over a year for an

      • Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by linebackn ( 131821 )
        The stated reason in TFA is to allow use of IE-only site. But of course it would be a lot simpler to fake and/or emulate IE's responses to sneak in; and to bitch loudly to the sites...

        Exactly, Most sites that require IE for reasons other than a little bit of bad HTML usually only work on IE for Windows. If they happen to let IE for Mac in it is probably because they couldn't be arsed to test the site in IE for Mac (or don't even know Macs exist!) and forgot to block it. When IE for Mac get to the part that

    • Re:Why? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by stonebeat.org ( 562495 )
      I know some people will say that they need IE for browsing Active X enabled websites. This is a valid argument.

      However, I think, the bigger question is why do these website owners completely disregard the security architecture and Open Standards by using technology that is unsafe and proprietary.

      The most common answer to this question is: It is easier to develope websites that are only supported in IE i.e. Active X enabled etc. And I am quilty of that as well.

      So my proposal is: Instead of wasting t

      • Re:Why? (Score:4, Informative)

        by petard ( 117521 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @09:13AM (#14344211) Homepage
        And how would open sourcing Mac IE help this? The ActiveX-based sites in question do not work with Mac IE. Although it does contain a half-baked version of the ActiveX API, no one ever used it. Why not? No ActiveX controls that these ActiveX sites depend on are available for the Mac.

        So while you may argue the need to access ActiveX sites as justification for using IE on Windows, that doesn't hold true for Mac IE.
      • HP had the bright idea to implement their scanning software with IE. I had to manually fix it to get it to work with my installation of IE.

        A weird hack.

    • The real question is why?

      I don't know if they should open it or not, but allowing it to die is a very bad idea and causes damage to Microsoft.

      It doesn't matter that no one would want to use a new Mac MSIE. Every time any proprietary application is orphaned or goes too long without maintainence, it sends a message to the world that it is foolish to allow oneself to become dependent on proprietary software. "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

      And of all proprietary apps, that it w

  • Well some of the middleware code might be useful.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MauMan ( 252382 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @08:50AM (#14344130) Homepage
    I'm not that interested in the browser but some of the middleware code to emulate windows calls on the Mac might be interesting to play with...

    • Re:Well some of the middleware code might be usefu (Score:5, Interesting)

      by vertinox ( 846076 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @09:23AM (#14344248)
      I'm not that interested in the browser but some of the middleware code to emulate windows calls on the Mac might be interesting to play with...

      There are none. IE for the Mac was built from scratch not using a single line of IE Windows code by a different team of developers who most likley didn't have any formal communication with the IE for windows team.
    • There're no Windows call emulation code in Mac IE. Like Office for Mac, it's written from the scratch for (the old) Mac OS.

  • Not gonna happen. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Noryungi ( 70322 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @08:51AM (#14344139) Homepage Journal
    Why? I can list several reasons for this:
    1. If there is something interesting in the code, Microsoft won't release it, because they don't want to help the competition (Firefox or Opera).
    2. If there are huge bugs in the code, Microfost won't release it, because that would be helping hackers.
    3. If IE/Mac and IE/Windows share code, Microsoft won't release it, because that would be even more help for hackers.
    4. Finally, Microsoft won't release the code because that would be helping Apple. And helping Apple (and/or Open Source) is helping the enemy that stands between Microsoft and Total World Domination(tm).


    Not gonna happen. Not in my lifetime anyway.
    • Look at the Help -> About for IE. There's a load of licenced tech in there - what do these licences say about releasing the code?
    • You left out:

      5. Intellectual property concerns. In its current state the code may contain code which is subject to patents owned by Microsoft or in turn licensed from another company. The effort to purge the code of such dependencies for public release might not be worth their effort.

  • free "developers... developers... developers"... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Gopal.V ( 532678 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @08:52AM (#14344141) Homepage Journal
    If you've seen the microsoft censorship [geekz.co.uk] on Everybody Loves Eric Raymond, you'll find this announcment a little disturbing.

    After all from what I understand, Microsoft is looking at exploiting the open source model of development for getting free developers. I very much doubt they would go down a path where they transfer the entire copyright of the codebase to a non-profit organization (like Netscape/AOL and Mozilla Foundation).

    Then again, with Safari working very decently - who needs IE on Mac ?

    I can almost picture Steve Ballmer - "developers ... developers ... developers *aside* heh, suckers"

  • Short Answer : No Way. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by aepervius ( 535155 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @08:55AM (#14344149)
    Long Answer : They probably have (or should have) a "core" which is identical to any system, only the system dependant api, or itnerraction of that core renderer with the system, would change from IE mac to IE Win (read file, allocate memory, render window, call external program etc...). There is no way they would open their "IP" (the core) to the world.

    Now it might be that the core is compeltly different from a system to the next. Then I will probably be the first to yell "what the hell were they thinking ???".
    • > Then I will probably be the first to yell "what the hell were they thinking ???".

      They were thinking that they didn't need to have a mac version with the same legacy cruft as the windows version and it ended up better than the windows versions at the time. But that is in the past now.

      What is more important when looking at the about window of MSIE for mac is you see how many other copyrights and patents and various things that are owned by other people licensed to Microsoft are in MSIE for mac.

      MS has han

  • Oh please, god, no! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @08:55AM (#14344151)

    Let it die, let it die already!

    Yes, Mac IE was fairly advanced for its time, but the quicker it disappears from the face of the planet, the better! All the techniques on which modern web design rely that work reliably in all the major browsers have major issues in Mac IE. Floats and clear in particular - these just require such awful hackery when Mac IE specifically needs to be supported... it's worse than IE 5 and Netscape 4 combined! (Okay, so that might be a slight hyperbole.) ;P
    Yes, it's very understandable that the behaviours of these properties weren't well defined back then, and compared to the Win IE of its time, Tantek and team did a superb job with this browser... but that was years ago. It's dead now, and needs to be forgotten as quickly as possible!

    • I second that!

      IE5.x on the Mac *does* have a different engine to its Windows counterpart. In some ways better (it supports PNG alpha and did a better job of CSS back in the day) and in some ways worse. However, for a few years now it has been out of date and other browsers (even IE on windows) have long surpassed it.

      Several better and open-source browsers / HTML rendering engines exist and I really can't imagine there would be any fancy stuff in the code worth salvaging (no, there is no mapping of windows c

  • Doesn't really make sense, does it? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by QuatermassX ( 808146 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @09:00AM (#14344163) Homepage

    I'm no techical wizard, but the article really doesn't make a whole lot of sense, does it? As far as I know, the rendering engine is totally different from Mac to Windows. It isn't as though they're using the MSHTML dll. Hell, doesn't Safari use WebCore for display and WebKit for their plugin architecture? (again, I'm not really up on this, so feel free to correct)

    IE5 for OS9 was a fairly nice piece of software, but the OSX version was always ghastly. If the rendering engine is passé too, then ... why release the code? I'd suggest the effort is better spent getting Microsoft to release a standards-compliant "browser" with be done with this particular era in the history of the internet.

  • Microsoft is trying to change their image (Score:4, Insightful)

    by QuietLagoon ( 813062 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @09:06AM (#14344188)
    Microsoft does seem to be making an effort to change their image.

    Yes, they do seem to be making that effort, and it does appear to be working on the surface. However, beneath the surface, the same Microsoft is still in business.

    Unless Gates and Ballmer relinquish the throne, the real Microsoft (not the Microsoft that the image-makers paint for us) will not, and can not, change.

  • Image (Score:4, Interesting)

    by n0dalus ( 807994 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @09:07AM (#14344189) Journal
    Microsoft does seem to be making an effort to change their image.

    And that's about all; Microsoft is all about marketing. They can change their image by putting millions of dollars into ad campaigns, without having to change the way they run their monopoly. It is very expensive from a marketing perspective to change the opinion of anyone that has caught on to what they are really doing behind the scenes with all their OEM contracts and extending of protocols -- so they are only interested in beguiling ignorant people and management-types.

    Statements like this that put an arguably misplaced faith in giant multinational monopolies are nothing short of propaganda and free marketing for Microsoft.

  • Potential copyright issues here (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Mister Mudge ( 472276 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @09:13AM (#14344213)
    Microsoft could open-source some of the code - what they wrote themselves - but there's still code in there from Mosaic, which MS licensed from Spyglass. Not sure if Spyglass owns the rights or has just licensed them, but the ownership seems a little murky to me. Does UIUC own it? NCSA? The citizens of the USA, who paid for much of its development?

    I dunno, but I'm betting that MS couldn't easily release IE as OSS even if they were so inclined.

  • MSN explorer (Score:3, Informative)

    by metricmusic ( 766303 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @09:24AM (#14344252) Homepage Journal
    Microsoft still makes MSN Explorer for the Mac and that is wher I think Microsfot wants its existing IE users to migrate off to. By opening the code for IE up they creating competition for MSN Explorer as well as risking people improving IE for Mac and then porting it over to run on Windows.

    • Re:MSN explorer (Score:3, Informative)

      by metricmusic ( 766303 )
      Edit: nevermind, it seems microsoft killed MSN Explorer for the Mac in May 2005. Seems they really are ditching Apple. All the shares they held in the company were long sold off too.

      Edit: Edit: stupid slowdown cowboy message

  • Why would you want to....? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by RobMongoose ( 884600 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @09:24AM (#14344253) Homepage
    I've never understood why people would want to use any MS product on a Mac. Whether it be IE, Office, or whatever - surely one of the points of using a Mac is that it's an alternative to using MS products. Would you consider running IE on Linux? Probably not, theres no point.

    • Re:Why would you want to....? (Score:4, Informative)

      by ErichTheRed ( 39327 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @09:49AM (#14344348)
      Office is what keeps Macs alive in the corporate environment. The fact that I can take my Excel 2003 spreadsheet home and use it on my Mac is a major convenience. It's been speculated more than once that MS continues to develop Mac Office so that the platform doesn't go away because of interoperability issues. If the file formats weren't proprietary, this would be a non-issue, but such is the world we live in.

      The fact that Entourage supports Exchange environments is another big telling factor. The art and scientific users in your company can use their Macs to check their Exchange mail just as if they were using Outlook.
    • I can think of one and it's not because you like microsoft products enough to install it. There are some webpages out there coded by lazy programmers that only work with IE. Even worse some try and detect what browser you have and will deny you the page even if it could load correctly with it.

  • damn! (Score:4, Funny)

    by porkThreeWays ( 895269 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @09:26AM (#14344258)
    Damn, it's like right when they just give out the foot in mouth awards we get a gem like this.

  • Can't and won't happen (Score:3, Informative)

    by randomErr ( 172078 ) <.ervin.kosch. .at. .gmail.com.> on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @09:30AM (#14344275) Journal
    This can't and will never happen. Internet Explorer, until 5.5 was mostly written in C++ with MFC (Microsoft Foundation Class Library). With MFC you could, in theory, write your code on one platform and run it on almost any platform. If they release the Mac version to the public Microsoft would release at least half, if not more, of its IE source (even from current development branches.)

    A lot of that technology is either licensed from other sources, regional and is under local governmental control, or is closed source because it is under court order because of past law suits. In other words much of Internet Explorer isn't a Microsoft product; it would a nightmare for Microsoft to make it such.

  • IN NAME ONLY (Score:2, Informative)

    by BushCheney08 ( 917605 )
    I know a lot of people have already stated this here, but it needs to be reiterated ad infitum, since so many of you can't seem to get it into your heads. The only thing that IE for Mac has in common with IE for Windows is the name! That's it. It's not a common codebase. It's not the same developers. They both just happened to be made by the same company and given the same name. Got it?

  • Who would want IE on the Mac? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ErichTheRed ( 39327 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @09:42AM (#14344321)
    Admittedly, I can see why someone would want IE on the Mac; there tend to be way more "legacy" pre-OSX Macs than Windows PCs out there that can't run the latest and greatest. Lots of Mac installations tend to be task-based (running a piece of scientific equipment, desktop-publishing the same publication month after month, etc.) or they're simply in non-profit organizations that can't afford to replace them every three years.

    However, without that exception I can't see why anyone would want IE on OS X. Maybe for compatibility with a web application that only works with IE?? I installed IE on my Mac when I got it a year ago, and I don't think I've ever opened it. Firefox is capable of handing most sites now. Even "IE Only" sites at least render OK.
  • Seriously. IE for Windows has hella security holes as it is. Releasing the source code for Mac IE, which is also widely used, would only open up more security holes than already exist in public knowledge.

    Besides, it would take months for any initiative to start and release a "patch" to fix said new holes.

  • Um, no. Just no. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by saterdaies ( 842986 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @09:51AM (#14344355)
    First, as many have pointed out, Microsoft doesn't have the right to open up all the code.

    Second, the code isn't really worth anything at this point. The rendering engine in Mac IE has nothing to do with the rendering engine in Win IE and it's easily the slowest rendering engine out there (well, it's definitely a ton slower than Moz, IE Win, KHTML. . .).

    Third, the author says that his reason for wanting Mac IE is for some random website that will require it in the future. Unfortunately, while a website may require IE, it won't work with IE Mac. IE Mac has nothing to do with IE Win. It can't run ActiveX. It doesn't render things similarly. If a website requires IE, Mac IE users are out of luck.

    Fourth, I don't think anyone would be impressed by releasing the source for an application that is so dead. Releasing the source for Win IE would be amazing - the community could clean up security holes, improve standards compliance, etc. and make IE a better browser. Mac IE, on the other hand, is long gone. It's just too hopeless to salvage anything useful. It would be like Microsoft open-sourcing Internet Explorer 1.0 - just too old to make anyone care at this point.

    Mac IE is dead. It's old. There's nothing useful there and open-sourcing it wouldn't help the Mac community or the open-source community. It wouldn't give any insight into the things that make websites IE-only since IE-only websites don't work with Mac IE. This article is just bad.

  • MS and OSS? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anne Thwacks ( 531696 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @09:59AM (#14344386)
    Could we see more OSS interaction from the software giant in the near future?"

    Yes - right after the FAA give type approval for flying pigs.

  • Only one reason to do this... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by pavera ( 320634 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @10:01AM (#14344395) Homepage Journal
    1) MS Releases IE for Mac as Open Source...
    2) Project goes no where, produces no new code, no bug fixes, because the code is open, hackers find holes and hack IE Mac...
    3) MS Starts FUD campaign about how open source is less secure, doesn't produce bug fixes fast, and doesn't add new features!
    • MS Starts FUD campaign about how open source is less secure, doesn't produce bug fixes fast, and doesn't add new features!

      Wrong! Anyone may correct the statement via the template below:

      _______________ is less secure, doesn't produce bug fixes fast, and doesn't add new features!

  • The fox wants to play with the chickens! That's so cute! How come we never let the cute fuzzy fox in the henhouse to play with them, Daddy? How come?

  • An alternative strategy: instead of open sourcing a microsoft application perhaps use an open source win32?

    Regular slashdot readers woule be aware that the 'red box' dream of rhapsody is to some degree being realised in the form of Darwine [opendarwin.org], itself based on wine [winehq.org]

    Don't hold your breath relying on Microsoft to be a good Mac community member and open sourcing this 'legacy' browser. If true IE compatibility is required then at least in theory it is possible to run the real thing under wine in OS X.

    The advan

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • one who has no idea what he's asking for, and why nobody else would ask for it.

      Actually, he knows what he wants and has asked for exactly what the EU anti-trust commission wants. The want M$ to publish useful documentation for interacting with their garbage. If they won't, fine they will pay millions of dollars a day. All this commentator wants is for his Mac to be able to work. For some reason, he thinks M$ will help him and others make that happen.

      M$ is going to sink in their greedy shit. More pe

  • New Year Wishlist (Score:3, Insightful)

    by FishandChips ( 695645 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @10:12AM (#14344442) Journal
    It's a nice idea but it's wishful thinking, surely. The IE stuff sounds too core and too controversional for Microsoft to play around with it.

    OTOH, it's possible that Micrisoft might start to become a little more open. They might decide to do so by making the best of what they regard as a bad job, for example opening up their server protocols with a song and dance about open saucery because they are in heavy trouble with the EU over the matter anyway. Or they might decide to make their browser a little more flexible, along the lines of Firefox extensions, etc.

    But it is easy to overlook that opening up anything could be fairly traumatic for Microsoft. It's not just the money, it's the whole philosophy of the company that would feel threatened. Microsoft is built on the notion that every single thing, right down to the precise shade of the last pixel, must be absolutely determined and controlled, and then parcelled out dollar by dollar. Only this, the theory must go, guarantees an acceptable "user experience" that can be replicated 100 per cent on any desktop anywhere in the world.

    Perhaps there are 500 business-school tomes which back up the idea. If so, they are history now. In many ways, a bold move Bill Gates could make in 2006 would be to accept that the philsosphy which built Microsoft may be becoming incapable of sustaining it, step back and let someone else take a crack. And that could really wrong-foot Google et al, too.
  • why would anyone in the right mind would want to develop IE5 for Mac? it's outdated, slow, supports the oldest of web standards, and has a minimal feature set. Developing on IE5 would be like writing a modern web brower from scratch ... while trying to learn the strange coding methodologies that Microsoft uses internally and intentionally to cripple the Mac version in order to make Windows look like a star.

    with Firefox/Mozilla, Safari, and Opera, to name a few, how many more web browers do we need?

    • "why would anyone in the right mind would want to develop IE5 for Mac?"

      Researchers suspect that these people share a common genetic mutation with the people who wish to develop BeOS and OS/2. Known as the "uber underdog gene", its sufferers appear normal until they stumble upon a lost cause. Once even a trivial amount of emotional investment is made in the lost cause -- typically before they realize it is lost -- the sufferers are unable to move on.

      The developers of FreeBSD (it's dead, I heard) are

  • Ahhhhhhhhh, Microsoft. I tell ya. If I were a tech columnist, I would have a whole backlog of MS-related stories that I could pull out at a moment's notice. Think about it. Editor wants column that gets people talking. Microsoft is a lightning rod. Take anything that Microsoft does and add a little commentary about Open Source -- PRESTO! Instant Column. And I didn't even have to interrupt my end-of-year vacation.

    So, for all you folks that keeping asking, "Why?" There is no Why.
  • Emphasis on the was part. IE5/Mac was a great browser when all you had was Netscape 4. Then again, Netscape 4 makes poop look like gold, so that's not that much to start with. At the time, IE5/Mac had rendering qualities and CSS support that outdid it's equivalent on Windows. Meanwhile, newer versions came out of pretty much everything (Mozilla grew up, Safari started up, IE/Win grew into IE6) - and the IE5/Mac team didn't do diddly-squat. That is why, in this age of Ajax and good clean CSS - IE5/Mac is n

  • Problem: IE/Mac is not very compatible with IE (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dpbsmith ( 263124 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @11:25AM (#14344888) Homepage
    If IE for the Mac were reliably compatible with sites that "require IE" this would be interesting.

    And at the time IE for the Mac came out, it was interesting. I, for one, found it to be much better than Netscape in numerous ways. And at the time, the Mac business unit was trumpeting how compatible it was with Web standards.

    Unfortunately, it was. And therefore is not particularly "bug-compatible" with IE for Windows.

    I'm very pragmatic about browsers. I don't care about purity, I just want to get my web purchases processed. Safari is very good. In fact, my experience so far is that it is very, very rare to find sites that a) do not work with Safari that b) do work with IE for the Mac. Specifically:

    a) If a site claims specifically that it "requires IE 5 or higher," it usually does not work with IE 5.2 for the Mac.

    b) If a site claims to require a specific browsers and any browser other than IE is on the list, it usually will work with Safari.

    c) If a site, for whatever reason, does not work with Safari, it is more likely to work with Firefox for the Mac than it is to work with IE 5.2 for the Mac.

    So... unfortunately... I think this is a non-issue.

    If IE for the Mac were a high-fidelity reproduction of vintage-2000 IE for Windows, it would be nice if someone had the source and tried to maintain it. As it is, I don't think there's any good reason to care.

    By the way: I found out the hard way that although IE for the Mac and for Windows both have a very useful "web archive" feature, the archive files themselves are in utterly different and incompatible formats, with no known conversion tool between them.
  • Oh man, this should be under "Funny" rather than "Microsoft". The next story should be: "Public wants DRM, says Microsoft".
  • I thought one of the main reasons for IE's demise was that it would take too much to port it to Intel? I don't see developers putting that much effort into porting Internet Explorer.
  • I think I can speak for 99% of other users and say: No thanks.........
  • The VERY LAST THING I want is for IE for the Mac to continue to live.

    Web development for sites with Mac visitors is dramatically hindered by this crappy browser. 80% of the hacks required are due to failings in IE 5 for Mac, the other 20% are for IE 6 for Windows.

  • Granted, I use the windows version, but I expect to find something similar on the mac. Select "Help | About" from the menu in IE. You will find:

    - Distributed under a licensing agreement with Spyglass, Inc.
    - Contains security software licensed from RSA Data Security Inc.
    - Portions of this software are based in part on the work of the Independent JPEG Group.
    - Multimedia software components, including Indeo(R); video, Indeo(R) audio, and Web Design Effects are provided by Inte

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