[Sussex] Some info on IE.

[Geoff Teale]

Adam wrote:
-----------
> Interesting read even at 8:30 on a monday morning!  Another Microsoft
> conspiracy to take over the world with IIS or something less 
> sinister do you
> think?

Whoooa, hold on there Adam, conspiracy is a strong term, a lot of companies
pull things like this in search of "competitive advantage".

I think Microsoft's engineers just thought this was a good way of improving
performance for web-browsing by controlling both ends of the trnasaction.
It's not innocent, it's a definite, concious effort to give a Microsoft to
Microsoft link a performance boost, but, as the article says, plenty of
companies are out there trying to sell you bits of software that don't
comply with the RFC's that the IETF  put out.

Frankly the idea that Microsoft might veer away from the standards slightly
in the pursuit of "enhancing" their applications or adding new "features"
really isn't a suprise.  It's testament to the power of Apache in the web
server market that Microsoft don't think they can just change the IIS/IE
coupling so they can only talk to each other - now that would the time to
call in the law.  

Currently what they are doing is perfectly legal unless you can prove that
Microsoft are trying to leverage their monopoly in the web-browser market to
grow their market share in the web server market.  Frankly the kind of
people who buy IIS are not people who are actually likely to be influenced
by any technical aspect of the product anyway!

-- 
geoff.teale at claybrook.co.uk
tealeg at member.fsf.org
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