Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft is Losing the Web, But Promise of Interoperability is Already Broken

Timely reminder of why Microsoft's promises are worthless

Apache



Here is why Microsoft is so desperate to intervene with Apache's direction [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. The latest report from Netcraft suggests that Microsoft continues to fall, perhaps having exhausted its ability to pay/influence large hosts like GoDaddy, which help the gaming of statistics.



In the latest report, everyone can see that Apache and other FOSS-based servers are up, whereas Microsoft's IIS is down.

In the August 2008 survey we received responses from 176,748,506 sites. This month's overall growth of 1.3 million sites reflects Apache's growth of 1.2 million and Google's gain of half a million sites, but a loss of 760 thousand sites using Microsoft IIS.


Opera, Inter-Opera-bility and Antitrust



This situation was previously discussed in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. Antitrust action if how far the war against Microsoft has come. Microsoft has, for many years, deliberately and knowingly ignored and/or subverted Web standards. As soon as the legal burden appeared, Microsoft suddenly made some promise of compliance. To nobody's surprise, Microsoft seems to have lied. It broke its promise.

This week, the promise was broken. It lasted less than six months. Now that Internet Explorer IE8 beta 2 is released, we know that many, if not most, pages viewed in IE8 will not be shown in standards mode by default. The dirty secret is buried deep down in the €«Compatibility view€» configuration panel, where the €«Display intranet sites in Compatibility View€» box is checked by default. Thus, by default, intranet pages are not viewed in standards mode.


Should people trust Microsoft with its vague ODF promises [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]?

Compatibility Issues (the 'Vista Effect' equivalent of Web Browsers)



Just like Windows Vista, as soon as IE7 came out, software that worked perfectly well with predecessors and other Web browsers simply ceased to work. It's a backward compatibility nightmare and the same thing is now happening with IE8, by Microsoft's own admission.

Microsoft Corp. yesterday warned users of Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) that they won't be able to uninstall either the service pack or Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) under some circumstances.

The warning was reminiscent of one Microsoft made in May, when Windows XP SP3 had just been made available for downloading. At the time, the company told users they wouldn't be able to downgrade from IE7 to the older IE6 browser without uninstalling the service pack.


The following one is a better story:

It may be a Microsoft creation but it doesn't play well with other Microsoft products.


Bugs, Competition (E.g. Firefox)



Yesterday we wrote about Microsoft's reinvention of the browser privacy 'wheel'. It's already failing.

Privacy feature in Internet Explorer 8 leaks private data



[...]

Forensic experts however found it trivial to retrieve the history, according to a test by Webwereld, an IDG affiliate in the Netherlands, and Fox IT, a Dutch firm specializing in IT security and forensic research.


Microsoft's products are designed to eavesdrop and enable forensics [1, 2], so this may be no accident.

DRM: Poison on the Web



Just have a look at what Microsoft wishes to do to our precious Web.

Will W3C Accept DRM For Webfonts?



[...]

Microsoft has submitted Embedded OpenType (EOT) to W3C and a slimy campaign for EOT has been launched. EOT is a DRM layer on top of normal TrueType/Opentype files; EOT ties a font file to a certain web page or site and prevents reuse by other pages/sites.


Microsoft labels DRM technology using the word "Open". How familiar.

The above is a "slimy campaign" by all means. The campaign cited contains nothing but glorification of DRM and IE. Another example of pseudo-grassroots support? If Microsoft cannot replace (X)HTML with XAML, it wishes to at least ruin the standards and 'extend' them its own way.

"The Internet? We are not interested in it."

--Bill Gates, 1993

Recent Techrights' Posts

They Say I'm Mr. Bombastic
They didn't take good lawyers
Linux Foundation is a Mediator for Microsoft et al, Not for Small Companies That Support Rather Than Attack the GPL
Many people still wrongly assume that because it is called "Linux Foundation", then it is pro-Linux and represents the same mindset
This Past Friday, Confirming What We Said All Along About Brett Wilson LLP: It's Shrinking, Has Considerable Debt, Loss of Net Assets Despite the Microsoft SLAPP Money
The documents only became publicly available less than 2 days ago
 
GNU/Linux Grows at Windows' Expense and Microsoft Trolls Infest and Maliciously Target Articles About It
Microsoft is - and has long been - organised crime
Links 09/06/2025: Windows TCO and Many Data Breaches
Links for the day
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part VI: Political Stunts by Former President Edyta Demby-Siwek and the Connection to Profound Corruption at EUIPO
it's like a money-laundering operation where one politician rewards another at taxpayers' expense
Gemini Links 09/06/2025: Pipelines and Splitgate
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, June 08, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, June 08, 2025
Links 08/06/2025: Tiananmen Carnage Censorship Persists, North Korean Goes Offline
Links for the day
Gemini Links 08/06/2025: Love as an Ethnographic Method and Monitorix Gemini-Frontend v0.1
Links for the day
Links 08/06/2025: Exposure of More GAFAM Surveillance and Social Security Records Compromised
Links for the day
Some of the Many Reasons We Sued Microsofters for Harassment
perpetrators of harassment
For 20 Years Many People Were Sharecropping for Canonical's Oligarch, Now He's Deleting All Their Contributions
"Ubuntu has erased instead of archiving the trove of material at Ubuntu Forums"
There Was Always Too Much 'Crazy Stuff' Going on Around Freenode
What many IRC users lost sight of
Exposing Crime is Not a Crime (It Never Was)
In the eyes of rich and powerful people, those who speak about their crimes are the "criminals"
GNU/Linux Distros Abandoning Microsoft GitHub
Will curl be next to leave Microsoft GitHub?
Expect More XBox Mass Layoffs Soon If the Rumours Are True
From a Microsoft media operative
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 07, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, June 07, 2025
Europe Needs to Move Away From GAFAM; The Sooner, the Better
Europe - not just the EU - must abandon GAFAM as soon as possible
The Issue Isn't GNOME's Promotion of Diversity But GNOME Corruption, Abuse, Censorship, and Worse
So-called "Conservative" (republican, pro-Trump, bigoted) people want you to think the problem with GNOME is politics
When the News Sources Become Scarce and Increasingly Full of Polluted/Contaminated 'Content' (With LLM Slop and Slop Images)
Integrity matters
"Linux" Sites That Spew Out LLM Slop
We're lacking enough material for another "Slopwatch"
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part V: Breaking the Law, Just Like EPO
We'll hopefully cover some of the pertinent details later this year
Links 08/06/2025: Security Lapses, CISA Cuts, and More
Links for the day
Gemini Links 07/06/2025: Mime Types and Geminisphere Introduction
Links for the day
Links 07/06/2025: Slop Companies Retain All Private Data, More Books Banned in the US
Links for the day
Gemini Links 07/06/2025: "A Monk's Guide to Happiness" and "Wireless Earbuds"
Links for the day
Links 07/06/2025: More Rumours of Mass Layoffs in Microsoft's XBox Division, New COVID Variant
Links for the day
Drug Addiction is a Real Problem, It Destroys Families
a rather sensitive matter
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part IV: Political Scrutiny and Errors/Inconsistencies in Official Documents
When such organisations receive scrutiny they start focusing on cover-up and muzzling of facts (or crushing people who say the truth)
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, June 06, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, June 06, 2025