Hakon Lie, CEO of Opera, nails Bill Gates to the wall using his own claim to support interoperability. [here]
This is a brilliant rant on Microsoft and they’re lack of support (or half-baked attempt to support) Web Standards initiatives. MSIE is a six-year old engine, groaning under the weight of it’s own bloated code. Lightweight “skin” browsers using the MSIE engine can’t, and shouldn’t, save it.
I can’t wait to see MSIE 7, because no one is going to wait for Longhorn. By Longhorn MSIE’s market-share will have dropped below 50%.
Collaborate or die.
Hakon Lie Apparently said the same thing directly to Scoble. [here]
A more complete commentary here.
2005-02-13 — 21:48
I will agree with your comments for sure. IE is a 6 year old browser and its the fact that its six years old and MS has continued to stand behind its claim that they will not be creating any fixes to IE 6 outside of the extension framework. In fact this is what caused me to question as to whether this was simply arrogance on MS’s part (and if so a HUGE mistake) or simply the inability to make upgrades based on government mandates, written or implied, such that competition such as Mozilla is given a chance to catch back up. While there is obviouslt no way you are going to see such an obscure demand written up into legal text and signed it wouldn’t surprise me if this was something that was spoken over the table to “let them recover or else”
I’m not a conspiracy theorist so I am not trying to suggest that this type of thing falls into that category. In fact this could very easily just be Microsoft stating “We’re not going through this crap again. We’re done!” silent though such a statement would have to be. I really am just trying to understand why there has always been such a hard dotted stance on the subject of future upgrades to IE 6 and simply wonder if there are other ideas or even facts that need to be considered before we point the finger at the proclaimed Evil Empire as yet another reason why Gates and Company inherently hates us, the consumer and would prefer us to pay our licensing fees and then go away for 2 years until they tell us we can come back for a visit as long as we bring $99 dollars and something to burn as an offering before we leave again.
More than anything I am hoping to gain a better understanding and if turns out that the reason is simply because they won the war and no longer care then I will most defintely change my overall viewpoint to accept the fact that maybe there is a bit of evilness over yonder in Redmond, WA. But, again, I completely agree with your points so thank you for bringing these to light a bit more as I had kind of set them aside when I took up points against Mr. Lie which he has since very graciously responded, even with a bit of humor or at least accpeptance of my comment regarding his name. Gotta’ respect an executive who can roll with the punches and still stand his ground. Very commendable for sure!
Thanks for helping me to keep things straight
Best regards,
<M:D/>!
2005-02-13 — 21:48
I’m not a conspiracy theorist so I am not trying to suggest that this type of thing falls into that category. In fact this could very easily just be Microsoft stating “We’re not going through this crap again. We’re done!” silent though such a statement would have to be. I really am just trying to understand why there has always been such a hard dotted stance on the subject of future upgrades to IE 6 and simply wonder if there are other ideas or even facts that need to be considered before we point the finger at the proclaimed Evil Empire as yet another reason why Gates and Company inherently hates us, the consumer and would prefer us to pay our licensing fees and then go away for 2 years until they tell us we can come back for a visit as long as we bring $99 dollars and something to burn as an offering before we leave again.More than anything I am hoping to gain a better understanding and if turns out that the reason is simply because they won the war and no longer care then I will most defintely change my overall viewpoint to accept the fact that maybe there is a bit of evilness over yonder in Redmond, WA. But, again, I completely agree with your points so thank you for bringing these to light a bit more as I had kind of set them aside when I took up points against Mr. Lie which he has since very graciously responded, even with a bit of humor or at least accpeptance of my comment regarding his name. Gotta’ respect an executive who can roll with the punches and still stand his ground. Very commendable for sure!Thanks for helping me to keep things straightBest regards,M:D/>!