Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sat, 7 Nov 1998 20:05:53 -0800 (PST) | From | Tim Smith <> | Subject | Re: Comments on Microsoft Open Source documentA |
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On Thu, 5 Nov 1998 ralf@uni-koblenz.de wrote: > Makes me think of writing application proxies that trash any attempt to > use M$ proprietary extensions.
A more productive thing to do would be define and implement open extensions that have the same functionality as any proprietary MS extensions to standard protocols.
In many cases, the standard protocols aren't optimal. E.g., if one were designing the web from scratch, one could do a lot better than HTTP. If Microsoft picks some place where the standard protocols are not as good as they could be, and defines a Microsoft protocol that performs better, then what we need to do is define an open protocol that addresses the same deficiencies in the standard protocols, and make that open protocol the new standard.
Then, rather than subverting standards, all Microsoft gets to do is pick the order in which deficiencies in the current protocols are fixed.
As far as the web goes, if Apache and Netscape can do this, I don't think Microsoft can harm things. Apache, because it is numerically the most popular server, and Netscape, because it seems to be the most popular server at large businesses (Apache has more overall, but a lot of those are small non-commercial or hobby sites...if you weight each site by how important it is, Netscape is probably the most popular server).
--Tim Smith
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