However the bug still get fixed, in a month later.

Everybody hates IE, and 98% of people hate MS. This is a well known fact. No need to question that.

MS came to an established community called “internet” and basically attempted to subvert it, and in some ways, succeeded in subverting it, for their own interests. It’s not evil. It is simply self-interest that is in conflict with just about anyone participating in the community.

When someone’s self-interest of one is conflicting with self-interests of too many other people we conventionally call it “evil”. But it’s not really evil. Point well taken. But even if it’s not evil, I will respond to it in the same manner as I would toward a hungry cannibal staring at me with a fork. It wants something I don’t want to surrender. There is a conflict.

I like standards and I like open cooperation in the community. I am not ready to surrender those values.

Firstly, for any bugtracking to have any value, there would have to be someone actively maintaining the list of bugs, merging duplicates, removing non-bugs, asking for clarification on bugs, etc.

Secondly, it would also have to be used by the parties involved in the product, whose bugs are being tracked.

Getting a community effort to shame MS would be really, really stupid. Shaming is not constructive, and would just make the community look bad. Offering constructive advice, as has been done for years now, will get us far better results.

And yes, that page has been like that for a year now, just another testament that either MS has something really cool up it’s collective sleeves, or that they’ve put IE to bed again, and that we’ll have to live with that crappy piece of software for many years to come.

Quoting Hanlon’s razor: “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”

Somewhere in the IE food chain there is most likely a manager that is stubborn, ignorant, paralyzed by indecision or all three who is responsible for the current Cone of Silence over the future of the browser.

However, I think a lot of the issues that I (and others) have with MS is frustration that one of the most profitable software companies in the world can’t seem to muster an ounce of competence when it comes to designing a browser that the rest of the world can use as a webapp platform.

Have they really done anything worthwhile in web browsers since 5.5? They’ve even abandoned their own browser for their email client. If it’s not good enough for them to use, what makes them think that it’s ready for consumers?

One day the wave of winning salvo 1 of the browser wars will crest. Then, perhaps, a better market leader will emerge.

Or at least one that gives a hoot about standards and the web developer community.

Even though no one’s asking me, I’d say MS is leveraging it’s status in the browser community to put the brakes on RIAs — at least until it has a chance to catch up (or bury) that market. I see no other excuse for how horrible MS’ near-infinite development resources have performed with IE 6 *and* 7. And releasing a competent browser really would serve to help out competitors like Google.

There’s a difference between feedback and support.

Even though contributors might never see responses, it would be fun to contribute in order to shame the evil MS. In particular I’d like to shame them into fixing IE6 since that craptacular browser still accounts for 60% of the audience on one site I’m involved with.

Watching the total bugs grow daily would shame the hell outta them.