Firefox Mobile unlikely browser on Windows Phone 7 after dev comment?
by: Bradley Wint on March 20th, 2010 at 11:36 pm
Making a joke with your competitor is always a risky thing, and taking a joke too far can put yourself or your company in between a rock and a hard place. Just ask Mozilla Platform Engineer Rob Sayre. Earlier today, he posted a letter to Microsoft’s crazy dude, Steve Ballmer. I’m not sure if he actually emailed it but I’m pretty sure Steve saw or will see it. I highlighted some of the funnier comments.
Dear Steve Ballmer,
Hola, amigo. I know it’s been a long time since I rapped at ya, but I been puttin’ out fires left and right. I have a great idea. Vlad and the mobile team here have Firefox acting pretty awesome on Android using their NDK.
What’s this got do with you? Well, you have this new Windows Phone thing going on. Tufte slammed it a little, and maybe the cropped UI is kind of busted. I’ll give it a shot, though. I think a head to head comparison makes you look pretty good. It makes the iPhone UI look like it’s made of ugly jelly beans. I’m kind of surprised–the allegedly cool Cocoa Touch stuff is reminding me of 90s Unix window managers. Oh wait, that’s what it is. haha.
So, anyway, you guys don’t have an NDK for Windows Phone. But I think there’s an opening here for everyone to do what they’re best at. I suggest you clone the Android NDK API, and add some stuff to make it better. Microsoft rocks at that. We’ll port Firefox, and I’m sure a bunch of games will come along too. It’s gonna be awesome.
The NDK (Native Development Kit) is a companion tool for the Android SDK toolkit, which allows programmers to write code in Native language for the Android. Anyway, back to the main story. Moments after he posted it, it seems the mouse in his brain that controls reasoning finally jumped on the treadmill, making him post this.
Blog posts that sound like Jim Anchower really irritate people for some reason. I won’t do it again, I promise.
Open letters irritate people. I won’t do those anymore either.
Calling anything done in Cocoa ugly irritates people.
Encouraging a classic embrace-and-extend maneuver irritates people.
So that last post was something of a grand slam. Sorry. A Windows Phone NDK would be cool though, right?
Seems Firefox won’t be coming to Windows Phone 7? Honestly Microsoft may still develop the kit to allow other modders such as Mozilla to port their apps over. However, there is a fine line between humor and plain “stoopid.”
Have something to say? 3 others did.
Noor – March 21st, 2010 – 9:21 AM
If this shit’s for real, this Mozilla guy lacks professionalism. Windows Mobile 7 may not everyone’s cup of tea, but Microsoft is a respected enterprise in the software business, whether we like it or not. Microsoft should never be underestimated. Sure sometimes they copy cat (without breaking any copyright law), but also they’re sometimes copy-cat-ed. For instance, AJAX was invented by Microsoft for their Outlook client, and Google copied the whole think to Gmail.
Bottom line? Respect everyone if you seek respect from others. I hate it when engineers act like teenagers/fanboys and forget the ethics of engineering. Btw, I’m a huge Mozilla supporter, and I use Firefox ever since it was released… But that’s a lil too much.
mikelieman – March 21st, 2010 – 11:56 AM
>Microsoft is a respected enterprise in the software business, whether we like it or not.
Hilarious…
>Microsoft should never be underestimated. Sure sometimes they copy cat (without breaking any copyright law),
Except when they do break copyright law, for example, the whole XML/Word thing.
Noor – March 21st, 2010 – 2:36 PM
Yes… 95% of OS usage share is hilarious