iMav said:
IE 8 will follow all standards yet the standards issue being raised as the major reason as to why IE is bad and leads to improper competition
IE8 will not follow all standards. It may improve somewhat, but Microsoft's history shows that they are all talk and no action in these cases.
Still, it doesn't matter if we think IE8 might do things right. The fact is that Microsoft is doing bad things right now, and they should be forced to stop being anti-competitive. By doing this, we will be absolutely sure that IE8 will be standards compliant, and will not just have to rely on a promise by a commpany which is known to lie.
Firefox or Safari havnt had an issue with it
They have. Many sites block these browsers too.
all of a sudden Opera rises from sleep when MS has announced that IE 8 will follow "the standards"
No. The reason Opera does this now is that right now an investigation is already underway in the EU.
firefox has been fighting on these so called un-equal terms yet has managed to clinch itself a position in almost every Linux distro
IE is not available for Linux. And besides, even after a decade and lots of money spent on trying to win over IE, IE still has a market share of more than 80% globally. This would not be the case if IE actually had to compete on equal terms as everyone else!
opera wants to sue MS coz it cant beat firefox and suing canonical for bundling firefox would result in major consumer backlash
This comment shows me that you don't understand what this case is all about.
1: This is not a lawsuit.
2: Canonical is not a monopolist, and neither is Firefox.
3: Firefox is actually standards compliant.
Plainly put, "suing" Firefox or anyone else was never an option, because only Microsoft is being anti-competitive due to its domination of the desktop market.
and as far as that comment by opera with regards to stifling compettion is concerned ... firefox and safari have acceptance in the market
But only limited such, and only after over a decade and billions spent on the whole thing. Again, if the competing terms had been equal, Firefox would have had a much greater market share and would have had to spend a lot less money to achieve that.
And even after all this time, IE still has more than 80% market share globally.
The reason Safari is growing is because Mac has gotten slightly more popular, but not enough to become a real threat to Microsoft's dominance.
so much so that el jobso decided to come up with a windows version ofthe browser which clearly indicates that there is room for competition
The reason Safari was ported to Windows was to make sure people could develop for the iPhone.
but the cheap publicity hunry pera decided to sueMS .... why didnt apple sue MS when they came out with safari forwindows
Again,
it is not a lawsuit, and it is not a publicity stunt either. It is an antitrust complaint which actually benefits everyone, including Apple and Mozilla. And normal users.