[Sussex] Yet Another Windows Bug

[Geoff Teale]

On Monday 05 May 2003 8:56 pm, Mark Harrison wrote:
<snipped>

Generally I'd agree with you here.  It is petty to jump on bugs like this.  No 
matter what we Linux/UNIX zealots like to believe there is no such thing as a 
complicated application without bugs.

The reason UNIX is often more stable than some other OS's is that it is the 
result of an ingenious yet simple design, a number of small components built 
on top of it and 30+ years of debugging and improvement.  

However in this case I do have a feeling of "they had it coming".  The bug 
occurs because of functionality added by Microsoft that perverts the HTML 
standard.  No matter how great some of the additional functionality they 
added may be there is no justifiable case for deliberately encouraging users 
to break an open standard in order to allow one player in a market to seaze 
control.

It is fair to say that nothing damaged the internet (as a social phenomena) 
more in the 1990's than first Netscape and then Microsoft adding proprietary 
functionality inside the structure of HTML.  We are slowly getting over those 
problems now.

-- 
GJT
Free Software Foundation
tealeg at member.fsf.org