This is a rebuttal-ish article in response to this article from yesterday:
<a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=138997" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=138997</a><p>I haven't been following the HTML5 effort, but I find it very encouraging to hear that there will be reference implementations for it. This Opera developer seems to imply that the IE team are collaborating on this effort, which I find even more encouraging, although I hope MS aren't playing their old underhanded "hostile cooperation" tricks here.<p>I think all the outcry over IE8 is probably going to turn out to be a non-issue when the final release is out eventually. It's prerelease software. Seriously, calm down. I don't think the IE team are doing themselves any favours releasing something this early, especially given the amount of negative feelings against previous versions of IE.<p>Recent versions of IE have been steps in the right direction. MS might be learning to play nice after all. Let's wait and see what the software is like closer to final release. And Joel should probably do a bit more research (re: HTML5, etc.) before trying to make a point.<p>Possible bias: I use Opera on Linux.