Back in August, Ars reported that Sam Ramji, Director of Microsoft's Open Source Software Lab, invited members of Firefox's development team to the Microsoft campus. At the time, it was unclear whether the Firefox team would actually accept the invitation. Now, roughly one month later, we have discovered that a handful of Firefox developers did journey to Redmond, and one member of the team kept track of the experience in his blog. Over the course of three posts, Mozilla's Vladimir Vuki?evi? blogged about what he expected from the visit and what actually happened.
The team's basic goal for the trip was to learn about the issues that they might encounter when trying to make Firefox Windows Vista-friendly. Before liftoff, Vuki?evi? said, "We hope to get a chance to talk to People Who Know about all sorts of issues surrounding Vista, including figuring out how to work with limited user accounts and UAC, various compatibility issues, and how to take advantage of certain Vista integration opportunities." As you will see, Vuki?evi?'s wish came true as the Firefox team was met with several informative presentations and Q&A sessions.
During Vuki?evi?'s first day with the Microsoft gang, he (and colleagues) were given two presentations: one discussing Vista's compatibility issues and one detailing User Account Control (UAC), a new technology in Vista that adds a layer of security to the OS by limiting what a user can do without warning. Although Vuki?evi? said he was "very excited" about UAC, he also stated that it would create hardships for Firefox when the browser needs to automatically update, install plug-ins, or write to the registry. Nevertheless, Vuki?evi? said that all of the issues in question could be overcome with Microsoft's help. "These are all solvable problems, and they’re very willing to find answers to our questions and to help us solve all this, but I can’t help but think that UAC is fundamentally flawed for anyone but corporate deployments where normal users won’t have admin rights," he remarked.
The following days were spent working through more Q&A sessions. The visitors were able to meet with members of Microsoft's CardSpace, Windows Installer, Windows Error Reporting, Shell, and Internet Explorer teams. In terms of Internet Explorer, Vuki?evi? was particularly interested in finding a way for Firefox to run at a low integrity level in such a way that Internet Explorer 7 does in Vista.
Of everything that Vuki?evi? reported about the trip, there was one thing that he mentioned which could open up a world of possibilities, or Pandora's Box. During a meeting with Sam Ramji and Hank Janssen of the Microsoft Open Source Lab, the Firefox team was told that not only could Microsoft's open source developers help the Firefox team with problems in Vista, but they could also contribute source code to the project. While this could be a Firefox fan's worst nightmare, I'm going to say that Microsoft's developers could only help enhance new generations of Firefox.
After hearing about the trip, do you feel that the Firefox team should continue to seek Microsoft's help? Does it seem as though Microsoft is genuinely interested in helping Firefox evolve in Vista? Or does the thought of Microsoft developers touching the Firefox code base send shivers down your spine?
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