Re: tlug: Can you believe this?

[Adrian Havill <havill@example.com>]

On Tue, 14 Dec 1999, Fredric Fredricson wrote:
> And MS _did_ port IE to some UNIX (Sun Solaris, I believe) a
> while ago. Don't know if it reached the market, though.

IE and OE for HPUX and Solaris.

===== conspiracy theory not based on any facts follows =====

Depends on what you feel is MS's strategy. MS really wants the high end
Solaris market bad. By putting IE in there, a MS guy can say to the PHB,
"your Unix heads are already familiar with IE and OE. So migrating them to
Windows should be a snap."

There real reason may never be known, but that's a theory.

MS tends to design it's products so they read in competitors formats and
standards real well, but output proprietary data. Example: IE reads and
handles standard HTML 4.0 WAY better than Netscape. And many of the office
products will read in a variety of formats and do a good job. But the user
has to go through considerable hurdles to get the program to produce
output that can be used by other systems, if it's even possible.

And if you do manage to find the "export" function or the "Save
As... File Type..." to save in "standard" formats, the produced
"standard" output is often inferior... encouraging you to use the
"proprietary" output format. Ever seen the HTML that MS products
produce? Since most of it (esp. PowerPoint and company) can only be run on
IE, there's really no point in saving in HTML, which is supposed to be a
lingua franca, at all. One could argue that the Solaris/HPUX versions of
IE allow the PHBs to save in HTML format and not have the Unix heads
complain they can't read the non-standard format.

The cynic (like me) would argue that the purpose of this is to get those
not using Windows to easily "switch in", but make it hard to "switch out".

MS's strategy for porting IE to Solaris works, btw. Back when I worked at
a Solaris shop, I used in instead of the other proprietary
standards-disrespecting browser, Communicator, because it was way more
stable (IE 4 for Solaris was still kinda shaky, but IE 5 for Solaris
was pretty solid, esp. compared to Segfaultagator) and did a better job
rendering standard HTML.

This is why the Mozilla project is so important. The browser is such a
killer app (more of a environment now than just an app), that not having
an open source (and a high quality) one is probably the #1 reason for lack
of acceptance of Linux on the desktop.

Just as their are devs who spend 16 hours a day in EMACS and doing
everything through it, there are a lot of end-users/consumers/induhviduals
that spend their entire day in front of the machine either in their e-mail
or their browser. Sometimes just their browser if they use Hotmail, etc..

BTW, MS doesn't make a INTEL Solaris IE, just a SPARC Solaris IE. Despite
the "migration" plan, perhaps giving a solution for another Intel-chip
based OS hits just a little too close to home. :)

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