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RSSMartian mindsets
I like Joel Spolesky. He’s a great writer, and he’s got a good head for managing software. But he is blind to Microsoft’s insanity, taking the agnostic-zealot position. I can forgive him, though, as he writes passionately and is willing to question the other zealots.
What Joel and the other flamers have missed is that standards conformance is easy, if you can pull your head out of your ass long enough to realize that it’s already solved. If Microsoft could place nicely, they would be able to cooperate and join the Webkit fray. The world would be a better place.
Apple, Nintendo, and others have figured it out. Why build your own browser? Why not just pitch in to an existing effort, or license something? Standards are easier if you don’t insist on building it yourself.
Standards are easy. It’s NIH that is difficult.
March 20th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Hmm, while I have written against Joel’s opinion on Web Standards on my blog, I don’t really think you get the point here.
The reason for “building your own browser” and the NIH, especially in the case of Microsoft is controlling the whole widget and customer lock-in. They cannot do that with WebKit.
March 20th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
I get the point, and was adding my own. Standards are even easier when you become part of the group interpreting them. Microsoft stands on the outside here, they chose to make it a hard problem. The rest of the browser makers don’t fight it, they just work together.