Open letter to the Web community from Opera’s CTO
9 CommentsPublished December 13th, 2007 8:54 AM EST By Daniel Goldman
In light of Opera’s complaint with the European Commission against Microsoft, Hakon Wium Lie, the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Opera Software, wrote an open letter to the Web community.
Hakon was involved in the very early days with creating CSS; he’s known by many as ‘the father of CSS.’
(Read Håkon Wium Lie’s open letter)
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I note the the contact info in that letter was commented out. Is that only for curious web developers to find?
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Well done!
One of the main causes of my interest in Linux is that it doesn’t have IE (and Opera can be used). I treat IE as a form of dictatorship – and also use my firewall to block its access to the web.
Coming after Megaflab’s ‘troubles’ with the EU, this should prove ‘interesting’!
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Unfortunately there are a few false statements in his letter. Internet Explorer has a market dominance due to most people not caring which browser they use. They want a transparent web experience on their computer and for most that would be any browser. Windows uses most of the same code to browse anything be it your file structure, FTP, or the web. I’m tired of this insistent whining on behalf of the 3rd parties due to Microsoft’s “monopoly”. We live in a capitalistic society that has chosen Windows and Internet Explorer to be their software. It doesn’t matter that it doesn’t adhere to standards and that should be a free choice of any company that releases a product. In no place has Microsoft stated Internet Explorer is a “standards compliant” browser. This lawsuit is annoying and pretty disgraceful for a company I used to admire. If they were serious about it, Opera would sue Apple for bundling Safari and Mozilla for their Firefox browser, both of which are “modern browsers that fail the Acid2 test”. Please drop this suit and win the right way, with a better product, better product awareness, and better company morals.
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You forgot a “to” in the last link.
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Hahahaha. That’s funny Daiwai.
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With Apple we have the choice of browser, as we do with Windows, but Safari and Firefox can be removed completely woithout affecting the OS (the same goes for *nix distros). Try running Windows without any trace of IE – sort of possible but…
How can ’society’ have ‘chosen’ IE (or, for that matter, Windows) when almost all users of PCs don’t, as you say, care? Dumb acceptance isn’t chosing, it’s suffering in ignorance.
Opera is actually protecting the ignorant masses from sub-standard software that has shown itself to be acutely and chronically insecure.
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“Internet Explorer has a market dominance due to most people not caring which browser they use.”
Some people don’t know other browser even exist.
“It doesn’t matter that it doesn’t adhere to standards…”
No? The hardest thing when I create a website is to make it work… in internet explorer. Firefox and opera do it correctly 99% of the time… Then I have to make a fix (or 2 or 3…) for internet explorer 6 and 7. (Most people still use IE6 because windows is installed with it, so it’s hard to just drop support for it). If it would adhere the standard correctly, it wouldn’t give as much work as it does now!
“…and that should be a free choice of any company that releases a product.”
True, but you must be able to uninstall a product you don’t like. Are you able to remove IE in an EASY way? It’s not because someone else on the other side of the world uses IE that I need to have it on MY computer!
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This “capitalistic society” is is, in reality, a regulated market, and we see a convicted monopolist in this regulated market abusing its power to prevent competition.
HardRoc, you should read the official press release and get your facts straight. This is not a lawsuit, nor is Apple relevant since Apple does not have a market position to abuse.
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Hakon – +1000