Mozilla: Microsoft bans Firefox on ARM-based Windows
news.cnet.com
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1. Apple gratuitously locking down every last detail of their platform and cudgeling competitors with that control.
2. Microsoft playing me-too to Apple as fast as their little brother legs can carry them.
3. Oracle buying Java and going patent troll.
4. Google basically lying about the reasons for their real names G+ policy and working hard to be the one ring that binds the net.
All of these companies produce some technically excellent products but I have to hold my nose to use any of them. The sad thing is, I think all of these companies could succeed solely on the strength of their work.
They are the king of doucherocketry. Just less noticeable because it happens in the boardroom and not the living room.
I don't mean to contest it. I feel like I've lost touch on much of the public communication since I started working there.
"The ARM version of Windows 8 will not support desktop applications. So if you want to write an app and you want it to work on any version of Windows then it has to be a Metro app." -- http://stackoverflow.com/a/7426405/507950
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/2012/05/firefox-...
"Here's what's going on. For Windows on X86, Microsoft is giving other browsers basically the same privileges it gives IE. It's not great that you don't get those privileges (certain API access) unless you're the default browser and I think that's deeply unfair (a post for later,) but at least we're able to build a competitive browser and ship it to Windows users on x86 chips.
But on ARM chips, Microsoft gives IE access special APIs absolutely necessary for building a modern browser that it won't give to other browsers so there's no way another browser can possibly compete with IE in terms of features or performance.
This is in direct violation of the promises they made to developers, users, and OEMs about browser choice in documents which mysteriously disappeared from Microsoft's site -- remember this? I sure do."
There is a clear difference between downloading and opening documents vs downloading and executing code in Apple's book. (If it's turing complete basically). They just don't want you downloading new functionality into the app without them getting to test it and approve it.
It's just really hard to write a web browser that doesn't use javascript. You might be able to hide a little UIWebView off somewhere executing the downloaded javascript but something about violating the spirt of the rule makes me think Apple might still say no.
Long long ago Apple didn't even allow other webkit based browsers. They loosened up to apps replicating built in features though over time.
Now Microsoft's rule is a little different. It's worse even. They just seem to want other browsers either way.
This sounds a little foggy to me. Why exactly wouldn't they want that? What exact kind of harmful functionality would they not be able to predict a third party JavaScript engine be able to cause, that webkit cannot?
I'm not convinced that this isn't just another excuse to stop competition. Similar to the whole, amazon cannot sell ebooks "for the good of our users" rule.
Opera Mobile doesn't run on iPhone, only Opera Mini does.
>Now Microsoft's rule is a little different. It's worse even. They just seem to want other browsers either way.
Err what? Do you have any reference as to how it's worse? Windows Phone with similar rules allows browsers to use IE's engine, just like iOS allows browsers to embed the Webkit based Safari engine.
Apple - we don't want you executing code we haven't reviewed.
MS - only we can understand and code securely enough for this.
Warning: speculative prediction follows.
Now that Apple is the monopoly in the mobile world, they are the ones who have to answer to anti-competitive practices. Microsoft is what Apple was in the 90s. Microsoft right now is where Apple was in 2001; making a clean break from the days of old, using the same tricks the dominant player is under legal investigation for. If history repeats itself, Apple will be pinned for the same things Microsoft was, and Microsoft will be able to leverage that for a fair bit of marketshare.
End speculation.
Whether or not the above comes to play, Microsoft wouldn't be pushing Windows 8 and WoA if Apple hadn't laid down the red carpet for this kind of behavior. Microsoft's internal position is likely more along the lines of "lockdowns are fair game again!"
Not really. CSS is Turing complete, technically. So is XSLT, which doesn't even need user interaction for the computations. What Apple is banning is something a lot vaguer than "Turing complete", and worst of all they don't even clearly define what it is. They've made it clear that a JS JIT is completely out, and a JS interpreter is probably out (though there have been other interpreters sometimes allowed and sometimes banned, seemingly at random). So actually writing something browser-like is likely to run afoul of Apple randomly deciding that it's not OK even if it's crippled in various ways like Opera Mini.
It's clear that more and more people will use devices like iPads
So when both Msft and Apple ban other browsers and their app stores are making a ton of money for them. The next logical step would be to make even more money from the app stores and slowly drop support for the browsers to do this.
I hope that Chrome OS takes off. I wish that Google and Facebook would team up together on this and make it happen.
People don't want windows running their tablet/phone/media center.
For example http://blogs.computerworld.com/19966/windows_phone_market_sh...
(Windows phone market share is so small, Nielsen don't list it separately).
For the record, my name is Freeman. You now know someone who owns a Windows Phone. And when I bought it last year, the salesman at AT&T flat out refused to sell it to me until I called a manager, convinced I was making a huge mistake.
And of course you don't know anyone who has purchased a Windows tablet.
Yes, maybe after 10+ years of having negligable market share Microsoft will suddenly pull something awesome out of the bag and people will suddenly forget about the horrible experience of using Windows on the desktop, and start wanting that on their other devices.
But I doubt it. The most surprising thing about this story is that mozilla care about it.
That'd be bad for Microsoft.
1) Mozilla complaining about not being able to run Firefox on iOS or on Chromebooks even though the situation is exactly the same as with Windows RT.
2) IE team complaining that Firefox is the only browser allowed by Mozilla on Boot2Gecko.
On 2, I'd bet that Firefox won't be the only browser allowed on Boot2Gecko. I'm not saying that getting an alternative browser on there will be pretty (the browser would have to provide an unusual amount of support infrastructure, most likely), but, given Mozilla's principles, I don't expect them to actively block you from doing so (the way Microsoft and Apple do).
(Disclosure: I'm a B2G team member but these are my views, etc etc...)
Also, one of the key things about Boot2Gecko is that it's intended to be reimplemented. You could make a Boot2IE phone or Boot2Chromium phone; you swap out the low level but keep everything on top of it the same. Everything is built on real web standards that are free to be implemented by all. It's truly open, top to bottom and bottom to top.
The answer is no because third party B2G apps cannot be written in C or C++.
Chromebooks and Boot2Gecko have minuscule marketshare. However, you can root chromebooks and B2G is all open code, so nothing is stopping Microsoft from developing for those linux-based platforms if they want to.
In order to begin to have a valid complaint, Microsoft would have to offer IE for full-userland linux desktops and laptops, which they haven't done.
If those stripped down linux platforms became near-monopolies, and if they didn't have open specifications, under the Sherman Act they could conceivably be required to open their APIs for other browser makers to compete.
In a world without Android, Apple might be in danger of violating antitrust law with iOS development restrictions, if they had a near monopoly on smartphones and tablets.
Just because it has Windows in the name doesn't mean that Windows RT is the same as Windows. It won't run a single app runs on Windows 7. How is it even remotely similar?
1. Microsoft is already suspect because of antitrust violations in the past.
2. Their development tools will certainly eventually allow simultaneous windows x86/amd64/arm builds, which could allow them to bootstrap windows RT marketshare.
[1] For example, see http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/27/firefox-iphone-2/
Useful for those who found themselves trapped on corporate Intranets based on MSIE-only apps.
Though IE8 and possibly IE9 work in Wine, yes, that's not what I meant. I meant that Microsoft was actively developing and supporting native ports of IE 3 through 5 on Solaris, HP-UX, Xenix, and maybe possibly Linux (I couldn't find evidence, but I remember seeing something about it.)
Where's the entrepreneurial spirit?
Mozilla are a non-profit. They came into existence because round about the year 2000, Microsoft had a monopoly in browsers and operating systems.
It's hard to express how extreme this was, if you didn't live through it. Basically, the rest of the IT industry was being strangled to death.
Two companies turned things round - Google and Apple. Both depended on, and encouraged, the open web. Google fundamentally built all their products on the web, and Apple relied on the web being open so that OSX and iOS could compete with Windows. (Would people really have brought the original iPhone if 99% of websites hadn't worked on it?)
The only reason the web was good enough to allow new companies like Google and Apple to thrive against Microsoft, was because of Firefox (which created Mozilla-the-non-profit).
Firefox was THE project. It was a non-profit project. It could not have been a for-profit project (well actually, someone like IBM or Sun or the like could have done it in a visionary way, but they didn't).
Firefox was basically run by volunteers, including a massive, complex marketing campaign, which involved not just geeks persuading their friends and parents to upgrade to Firefox, but also people asking website owners to make their websites work with web standards, and hence with Firefox (at the time many websites only worked on Internet Explorer).
So apedley, your criticism utterly misses the mark. Sometimes there are factors outside of the control of the entrepreneur. Microsoft's monopoly of the operating system and web browser was such a factor.
It can happen again. (Likely some kind of oligopoly of Apple and Google :)
I think we shall agree to disagree on this one :)