Hakon Lee's open letter to web developers

For many years I have been an active participant in the ongoing and still ongoing struggle for open and compatible web standards. I have always opposed those who have implemented proprietary technologies where there have already been open (and often the best) alternatives. From 1994 to 1999, I worked at CERN and W3C, taking part in creating good web specifications. In 1999, I came to work in Opera Software to make sure that there is at least one browser that fully supports these specifications and standards. We put a lot of effort into doing this. Unfortunately, the authors of the world's most popular Internet Explorer browser from Microsoft did not follow our example.

Today we have expressed our position. The company Opera Software filed a complaint with the European Commission to force Microsoft to provide full support for web standards in Internet Explorer. We believe that Microsoft is doing significant harm to web standards by refusing to support them; Microsoft is often involved in the creation of standards and even promises their full support and implementation. However, despite all their abilities, they refuse to maintain standards correctly. For example - today Internet Explorer is the only browser in the world that does not support Acid2.


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Also in this complaint, Opera Software suggested separating Internet Explorer from the Windows operating system. We see that they used their monopoly position for unfair competition, limiting the freedom to choose browsers for their commercial advantage.

But now it is time to act. Developers and web designers create increasingly powerful applications and websites. But the lack of full support for web standards in the Internet Explorer browser makes their work very difficult, sometimes even forcing them to give up. Web developers are forced to spend many hours solving problems arising from poor standards support in IE, instead of devoting all their efforts to implement their own ideas. We do not ask for money from Microsoft. We just want Microsoft to use maximum resources and strengths to help the web community.

And I am waiting for support from you - those who today create with their own hands the modern Internet and who will do it in the future. It is you who will be the winner if the Internet will use only open and accessible to all technologies that make it equally easy to access the network from any devices. This day is already on the horizon, and together we can quickly enter a new time.

Thank.

Håkon Wium Lie
Chief Technology Officer, Opera Software
2007-12-13

The translation is taken from the Russian Opera Team website.

The original open letter is here.