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Open Letter to Microsoft’s CEO: Don’t Roll Back the Clock on Choice and Control

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Re: Open Letter to Microsoft’s CEO: Don’t Roll Back the Clock on Choice and Control

#101

Post by brighteyes »

Lazare wrote: post #98
brighteyes wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you fix WebSQL? Writing a from-scratch implementation of SQLite seems like the only option, and I don't think Mozilla had the resources for that at the time. I agree the situation sucks, but I'm not sure how to fix it even today.

Like I said, I'm not sure this was a winnable fight. And yes, writing a good DB implementation from scratch is really, really hard. But... First, keep in mind that lot of this decision was political; if Mozilla had lobbied for it a lot of fudging could have been done. Instead Mozilla made sure that a strict reading of the rules was used by which, yes, WebSQL clearly failed. And no, Mozilla probably didn't have the re…

I guess I just disagree that it would have been good for Mozilla to fudge the standardization rules.

The rule of having multiple implementations is an important one.

And it might have been possible - surely Google and Microsoft, who supported IndexedDB, had the resource to write an alternative implementation. I don't know the history enough to know why they didn't.

Re: Open Letter to Microsoft’s CEO: Don’t Roll Back the Clock on Choice and Control

#102

Post by AnimalMuppet »

anotherangrydev wrote: post #99
brighteyes wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your sarcasm is entertaining, but the big difference is that while neither company/product is perfect, Microsoft still essentially owns the desktop with Windows. While Mozilla's Firefox is just one among several choices of web browser, currently #3 in the rankings. It is extremely easy to switch web browser. It is not easy to switch OS. On a Windows machine, if you are savvy enough, you can install Linux, but otherwi…

>Microsoft still essentially owns the desktop with Windows So what? That doesn't mean they are obliged to comply with whatever you think is "the right thing"®. I'm gonna highlight another another big difference that you seemed to overlook. Microsoft is a company, their mission is to generate profits for their shareholders and they are the owners of Windows 10, because they developed it. Mozilla is a non-profit corpor…

How about this: It was wrong for Microsoft, and it was wrong for Mozilla. But it's worse when it's Microsoft, because it's easier to move to a different browser than to move to a different OS, and so it's harder to escape Microsoft's attempts to force you to do what they want you to.

Also, Microsoft has much more of a history of deliberately doing this to people, and so the suspicion is higher with Microsoft. Mozilla might get the benefit of the doubt; Microsoft does not.

Re: Open Letter to Microsoft’s CEO: Don’t Roll Back the Clock on Choice and Control

#103

Post by brighteyes »

anotherangrydev wrote: post #99
brighteyes wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your sarcasm is entertaining, but the big difference is that while neither company/product is perfect, Microsoft still essentially owns the desktop with Windows. While Mozilla's Firefox is just one among several choices of web browser, currently #3 in the rankings. It is extremely easy to switch web browser. It is not easy to switch OS. On a Windows machine, if you are savvy enough, you can install Linux, but otherwi…

>Microsoft still essentially owns the desktop with Windows So what? That doesn't mean they are obliged to comply with whatever you think is "the right thing"®. I'm gonna highlight another another big difference that you seemed to overlook. Microsoft is a company, their mission is to generate profits for their shareholders and they are the owners of Windows 10, because they developed it. Mozilla is a non-profit corpor…

I actually didn't say that what Microsoft did was wrong. It's a complex issue, and you can see multiple points of view in the HN discussion here.

I am not convinced that what Microsoft did was wrong, or that it wasn't wrong.

I am just sad to see people try to divert the conversation from the topic of Microsoft and Windows 10.

Re: Open Letter to Microsoft’s CEO: Don’t Roll Back the Clock on Choice and Control

#104

Post by scholia »

jd3 wrote: post #55
rhaps0dy wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well then, Netscape would exist. Which was pretty neat.

yeah, perhaps I worded that I bit strangely. I was just commenting on how Microsoft's monopolistic behavior caused Netscape to open-source and eventually get bought out by AOL, thus forming Mozilla through the open-source release.

AOL open-sourced Netscape because it lost, for a wide range of different reasons. They included trying to charge for browsers while giving away free betas, not letting PC magazines distribute the code, not letting ISPs customize the branding, discontinuing Netscape and replacing it with Commander (? this is all from memory), buying a whole bunch of server companies (thinking it could use its client to sell server software), behaving with extreme arrogance to the rest of the web industry, using Netscape to feed users ads on its home page, various bits of really crap marketing and a lot of crap code. I could go on.

Netscape was really badly run.

Apart from all that, Microsoft just outsmarted them by rewriting IE in parallel (ie two project teams) to componentize the code, and by making IE more standards compliant than Netscape, and by some really good marketing.

Did you know that AOL continued to distribute IE even after it bought Netscape?

In fact, Microsoft had more and better programmers and just out-iterated and out-distributed Netscape in a fast-moving market. Netscape didn't have a clue until it was too late.

When Netscape was the best browser, it had an 80% market share even while Microsoft was bundling IE. It really wasn't the bundling that killed it.

Re: Open Letter to Microsoft’s CEO: Don’t Roll Back the Clock on Choice and Control

#105

Post by ikeboy »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #89
Animats wrote: post #74

I am writing to you about a very disturbing aspect of Firefox 38.0.5. Specifically, that the update experience appears to have been designed to throw away the choice your customers have made about the Internet experience they want, and replace it with the Internet experience Mozilla wants them to have. When we first saw the Firefox upgrade experience that strips users of their choice by effectively overriding existin…

Cute, but Firefox doesn't revert you to defaults and having a button that does nothing but offer a signup is not 'forced integration'. You may not be able to delete it but it doesn't do anything whatsoever by default.

I think Firefox sets itself as the default when you upgrade it and choose default settings.

Re: Open Letter to Microsoft’s CEO: Don’t Roll Back the Clock on Choice and Control

#106

Post by lawl »

brighteyes wrote: post #95
lawl wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sad how true this is. I still fondly remeber the days of Firefox 2.5. IMO the best browser ever. It feels like Mozilla is trying to shove more shit down my throat with every update. I'm by no means trying to defend Microsoft here. I installed Win10 yesterday, and they replaced my FF default with Microsoft Edge (which is arguably better than IE, but still not something I'd use voluntarily). Why can't Mozilla ship…

Mozilla did agree, following the criticism on Pocket, that shipping new things like Pocket should be done as addons, and would do the work to fix that.

Reacting to backlash isn't an argument.

Why would you (or anyone) downvote me for criticising things like integrating a social API[0] into the browser?

If you feel like downvoting opinions you don't like, by all means go ahead, I'm just not sure if that's the way to have a meaningful discussion. Pocket never bothered me because, honestly, I never saw it. But yes I dislike it's integration. Still no reason to reduce this to the "Pocket indicent" I never realized was a thing until I've read about it.

I still use Firefox.

[0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Projects/So...

Re: Open Letter to Microsoft’s CEO: Don’t Roll Back the Clock on Choice and Control

#107

Post by amatwl »

callahad wrote: post #94
amatwl wrote: post #77

I actually think Microsoft's change is better in regards to user choice. Either way, it still seems simple to me to change the default web browser in Windows 10. Here's a gif I made showing another way to change the default web browser to Firefox: http://i.imgur.com/FbdcfL3.gif (In the gif, both Cortana and Bing search is disabled, only standard Windows Search is used) Also, it's kind of embarrassing that Mozilla's o…

> Also, it's kind of embarrassing that Mozilla's official video for this shows an unactivated version of Windows 10. All pre-release builds of Windows 10 have that watermark. Why is that embarrassing? Edit: I stand corrected; there is an "Activate Windows" watermark distinct from the build identifier, which was added in the later preview builds. There was a window of time where new VMs couldn't be activated, since th…

Um, no. Not all pre-release builds of Windows 10 have that watermark. I'm talking about the "Activate Windows" message. Also, the final version of Windows 10 has been released (and the video was recorded after the final version was released), so no reason to use a pre-release version of Windows in the video.

Re: Open Letter to Microsoft’s CEO: Don’t Roll Back the Clock on Choice and Control

#108

Post by anotherangrydev »

oso2k wrote: post #57
verusfossa wrote: post #44

Mozilla hasn't made me very happy lately with their "choice" tactics. Resetting people's default search engine to Yahoo of all things on update was very opaque. Also the AMO signing fiasco, Pocket and Hello. Feels like an "It's only okay when we do it" kind of thing.

I agree. And I extend that sentiment to their approach to Web Standards a few years ago too, like WebSQL [0] and NaCl [1], Dart [2]. That felt like NIH [3] or some other non-collaborative or ultra-competitive motivation on their part. Not a place of "speak for the Web". IMO, the choice of IndexedDB over WebSQL set the Web back 20 years. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_SQL_Database [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w…

To add another example, I normally do JS using Node and there (and also in IE) you have a very useful function: setImmediate.

A few days ago, when doing some client-side JS I wanted to use it and I saw that it is not part of a standard, not only that, it has actually been REJECTED. It's really sad to see the development of the language crippled for a reason that basically boils down to "No, because it was proposed by Microsoft".

Re: Open Letter to Microsoft’s CEO: Don’t Roll Back the Clock on Choice and Control

#109

Post by brighteyes »

lawl wrote: post #106
brighteyes wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla did agree, following the criticism on Pocket, that shipping new things like Pocket should be done as addons, and would do the work to fix that.

Reacting to backlash isn't an argument. Why would you (or anyone) downvote me for criticising things like integrating a social API[0] into the browser? If you feel like downvoting opinions you don't like, by all means go ahead, I'm just not sure if that's the way to have a meaningful discussion. Pocket never bothered me because, honestly, I never saw it. But yes I dislike it's integration. Still no reason to reduce t…

I didn't downvote you.

I agree that downvotes are not conducive to a discussion.

Re: Open Letter to Microsoft’s CEO: Don’t Roll Back the Clock on Choice and Control

#110

Post by rhino369 »

fabrice_d wrote: post #88
akkartik wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also disingenuous to call Mozilla a non-profit, given its wholly-owned for-profit subsidiary: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/governance/organizations . Used to be that mozilla.com was the homepage for the for-profit wing, but I see now that it just redirects to mozilla.org. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla doesn't mention the for-profit subsidiary either. (I'm still a happy user of firefox. I just care…

Technically for profit, but with no external shareholders to bow to, no stock options for employees, etc. Don't be misguided by the administrative setup. Mozilla is earning money from partnerships, but the company goals are driven by the not-for-profit mission statement. It takes resources to stay in the game...

Exactly. It's a non-profit that owns a company. All proceeds go into the non-profit.
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