On 4/1/07, Michael Madigan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I still don't understand why one would develop > firefox, since Microsoft's browser is free.
Trollbait. But "one" didn't develop FireFox. Thousands did. They started with Netscape. MS didn't invent IE out of the blue, either, of course. They bought an existing browser. And IE doesn't run on Unix, Solaris, Linux, OS X. Why is it that you think choice is a bad thing? And "IE is free?" I do believe that Microsoft spent millions, probably tens of millions, developing Internet Explorer. Just because they don't charge you to download or install it, does that make it of no cost to you? The millions MS spent, they took out of their bottom line. The millions they spent they recouped in WIndows licenses. It wasn't free, it was bundled. > I understand why one would develop linux to save > server OS costs I'm not sure that was the original motivation. > I understand why one would develop OpenOffice to save > on Microsoft Office costs. Again, not the original motivation. StarOffice had a different mandate, too. > I understand why one would develop The Gimp to save on > Photoshop costs Or maybe to bring new image manipulation capabilities to platforms that didn't have it. > I understand why one would develop Thunderbird to save > on Outlook costs Why is this all about Microsoft? I think you're looking at this from a very distorted perspective. There are dozens of email clients, most of them preceding Microsoft's(yes, the several mail clients they bought and merged into Outlook Express and Outlook). There are dozens of browsers (Safari, Konqueror, Opera, SeaMonkey,...). They're not all about "saving costs." > But I don't understand the reason to develop Firefox. FireFox has a long heritage. It comes from Netscape [2]. Which in turn came from the first browsers. FireFox has been a platform for experimentation and innovation, especially important after Microsoft "cut off the oxygen supply" to Netscape and coincidentally stopped innovating in IE. XUL, RSS aggregator in FireFox, plug-in development for development toolbars, security, lots of cool stuff came out of FireFox and Mozilla. It could be argued that AJAX came about because of the other platforms (besides IE) on which it would work. (Props to MS for XML in the browser, though.) A better question might be to ask why Microsoft felt they had to "develop" Internet Explorer (buying Spyglass [1] )? There were already decent browsers - several of them - running as user applications on top of their operating system (as well as the several other operating systems out there). Before IE, browsers could be cross-platform. Before IE, there wasn't a divide between ActiveX content and the rest of the web. Before Microsoft made the leap that the browser was "an integral part of the operating system" and opened up the world to a whole new variety of security exploits. MS did it for one reason: to control the platform. But it's not all about Microsoft. That's the wrong perspective. There's the advance of IT and computer science. Vendors come and vendors go. Platforms, languages, OSes appear, mature, decline. It's not all about Microsoft. It's about progress. Microsoft is just an era along the way. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyglass [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_Navigator -- Ted Roche Ted Roche & Associates, LLC http://www.tedroche.com _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[EMAIL PROTECTED] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
