| reply to tcp1
Re: Thank You.... Yes. Everyone switching en masse to Firefox or Mozilla or Opera or [insert browser here] will not solve the problem. Any single browser that gains the same market dominance IE has will surely be subject to the same problems. However, if some of the competing browsers begin to gain a foothold, and gain users, then we might see improvements.
First, it will dilute the numbers of IE users, and result in smaller numbers of problems. The reason I say this is, while there very well may prove to be as many flaws in the alternative browsers (nobody shoot me, I don't honestly believe this to be the case!), the resources of the people authoring these exploits will be strained, as there will be more code to examine, more languages to learn, etc.
Second, the effect of exploits that ARE written will be mitigated by the fact that it is fairly unlikely that any two products will be vulnerable to the the same exploit.
Third, Open Source groups are proven to be much more responsive with regards to publishing patches than Microsoft. IE vulnerabilities have gone for months after publishing before a patch is released.
Furthermore, given a real competitive threat, Microsoft might actually DO something with IE..like make it more secure, patch it more quickly...um, actively develop it (imagine that, right?). We might wind up with a more secure IE than the one which exists now.
Merely the act of switching to an alternative browser won't fix the problem. The market forces created by more people switching away from IE might. |
