MS .net & Firefox
A few months ago I was blogging about the then heating up browser wars fairly regularly. Happy to report that to begin with Firefox finally started behaving for me and I am using it most of the time again. I am still using IE in those places that require it (ASP and .net back ends). And of course, if I want something with minimum features that loads quick, especially in like a coffee shop setting or trying to hit one of those silly online games (that I never ever play) I love the nimble quickness of Chrome – and am actually finding it mostly stable these days.
One of the major complaints I had at the time was that I suspect that Microsoft was somehow inserting something into the Windows operating system to cause Firefox to wig out. I had said that really joking and then of course a few weeks later they did the sneak attack on Firefox and us unsuspecting users and slipped in the .net framework support without even giving a clue that it was occurring, much less a prompt to deny the installation.
I questioned at the time the wisdom of this move. It was two-fold of course, as the .net framework support is a very powerful tool. Used wrongly or without adult supervision it can cause or be used for a lot of malicious activity. That kind of security hole is a huge part of the reason that a lot of us do not typically use Internet Explorer. Add to that, my bigger concern that Microsoft has such a target on their back to begin and the stick this code in a piece of software that does not even belong to them. I figure that made just enough of the right people realize that this was something they could get to work on and gig Microsoft over that one in a major way.
Sure enough, it happened. Just last week a security breach in Firefox browsers were found if you had the .net support installed on as an add on. You may recall part of my gripe too, was Microsoft, in infinite wisdom only gave a disable option, not an uninstall your contamination. Well, my was disabled already. The folks over at Mozilla took it one step further though and put the plugin on the blacklist. This in effect, while only blocking the one tiny part of it, stopped that part from working for the world the first time they made a connection to the internet with their browser.
I still wonder about the nature of the plugin provided by Microsoft. Personally, I can see, especially with an open source product like Firefox and particularly the plugin system that is really opened for development to have to allow MS to do what they will. However, I think that not a single plugin should be added without my consent. Actually I personally believe that nothing should be added unless I specifically seek it out for inclusion. Beyond that, I think the agreements should be no plugin will ever be approved that will not specifically allow for both a clean uninstall and a disable option.
I would take it one step further and suggest that maybe the EULA for GPL/GPU licensing should provide for a provision that restricts a competing company from adding a plugin. It would be fine if someone else is allowed the code print from MS to right a plugin that makes the .net stuff, but there is just too much conflict of interest to allow MS to plug something into a competitive browser. Clearly I think there is too much temptation, but as I noted before, it is all too easy to have a mistake in the code (on a forced non user update) to include something that crashes all the Firefox browsers out there, leaving us all to use IE until we get it figured out.
I would pose this one question to Microsoft, would you allow a major Firefox developing to force install an add on into every Internet Explorer? I will hazard a guess on this one of a resounding NO as the answer. And for those that do not really care, sorry for getting back on a technology soapbox, but that is only as good as the timeliness of the comments – I will return to more interesting stuff for that part of you on the morrow.
