[OT] Free software versus software idea patents

[Roy Smith]

In article <4da7a8f5$0$29986$c3e8da3$5496439d at news.astraweb.com>,
 Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info> wrote:

> On Thu, 14 Apr 2011 13:50:24 -0700, Westley Martínez wrote:
> 
> > Also, why aren't Opera and Google criticized for their proprietary
> > browsers (Chrome is essentially a proprietary front-end)? Is it because
> > their browsers follow web standards, or is it because we have demonized
> > Microsoft?
> 
> A little of both.
> 
> Personally, I think it is *good* that there is a plurality of browsers in 
> the market. In my perfect world, no single browser should capture more 
> than 20% share of users.

I was just thinking about this the other day.  The browser space is 
currently a perfect example of why competition is good.  Just a few 
years ago, IE dominated the market to the point where people developing 
web applications could completely ignore all other browsers.

Now, while IE may still be the most popular, they've dropped under 50% 
share, and falling, while Firefox and Chrome are still gaining.  It 
won't be long before the three pretty much reach parity.  And, yeah, 
Opera and Safari will continue to survive down in the single digits.

The upshot of this is that people writing web apps these days are much 
more likely to be going for standards compliance then for "Works with 
IE".  This is to everybody's benefit.  The app developers can 
concentrate on building their apps, without wasting time fighting the 
browser wars.  The browser makers are free to innovate in all sorts of 
ways while having a fixed HTML target to shoot for in their rendering 
engines.

Since everybody is working on the same HTML (yeah, OK, big handwave 
there), new browser projects have a reduced barrier to entry.  I can 
take a flyer and install some new browser to try it out, with a 
reasonable expectation that it'll render the pages I go to in a 
reasonable fashion.  It's been a long time since I've run across a page 
that I just couldn't read in my favorite browser d'jour (modulo any 
internal apps from Big Company IT Department that depend on Active-X).  
Even if these projects fail, they sometimes have good idea which get 
incorporated by the Firefoxes and Chromes of the world.