As long as we're ranting on this subject...
Can sombody kindly explain to me how on the one hand Mr. Gates can assert
with a straight face that the "browser" is an integral part of the
operating system, and then explain how MS' Internet Explorer is
more-or-less a "plugin" for Apple's operating system? Like, if Apple had a
choice of browser (didn't they used to use Netscape?) and they got $175M
from Bill to influence their decision, does that mean that IE is an
integral part of OS-X now? In that case, does MS perhaps now "own" OS-X?
Oh, yeah, and what about their noise about being so paranoid about "open
source" licensing and how it's a "cancer" and virtually forces you to open
source EVERYTHING that touches it -- that would mean the fact that since
OS-X is mostly open source (derived from BSD), it would force MS to open
source the entire code base for IE!
I think people should start making requests of this (give out the source
code for IE) to MS muckey mucks who bad-mouth open source. If what they're
saying is correct, they'll admit they have to give you the source.
Otherwise, they might just correct themselves in public.
-David Schwartz
(text/plain)