Firefox and Open Standards the Way Forward 254
lamasquerade writes "A major Australian newspaper has a lengthy and detailed feature on open source/standards, avoiding vendor lock-in, and specifically the increasing uptake of Firefox by major organisations' IT departments. It touches on security and price advantages of open source but mainly focuses on open standards -- the perils of vendor lock-in, and their importance to technologies like the Internet and digital music. Linux, OpenOffice.org and even Bugzilla get a mention and all told it is a very pro-open source/standards article, especially considering it is in a mass-circulation publication."
It's all about standards... (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if people don't care about any of the end-user features, it's important to support a more open Internet by using clients that at least make an attempt at conforming to standards. Many people may not care about this but there's no way they can care if they don't have the chance to hear about it.
It's all about the new car smell (Score:5, Insightful)
There are a variety of orgranizations, large and small, that utilize open source technologies. As was pointed out in a recent thread about the looming IE7, the lack of a centralized, push-button management tool for corporate customers is one thing hampering Firefox. Another thing are applications that utilize Active X and are dependent upon an MS browser as part of their platform. Isn't a lot of high tier banking and insurance software like this; I've read that anyways?
I don't think it's timid IT people. As frightening as it may be, folks who are of my age bracket (28 this summer) are now being put into positions of leadership in technology. People who've spent 5 to 10 years with Linux and accept it. I can't imagine life without Perl and Apache. Simply unthinkable. Firefox and Google are part of this scenerio as well, which is what the author of the article is alluding to: a culture of open source software and open standards.
What I think is so great about Firefox is that it shows the promise of open source in full bloom and it speaks for itself. Nothing's worse than an OSS nerd trying to convince a normal person why they should switch to XYZ program or platform. Not that the reasons lack legitimacy; I'm just saying it's physically painful to watch because most folks don't want to hear it.
But plop a slick "modern car", as the article puts it, in front of them and they immediately reach for the steering wheel.
Re:1998 called.... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's Aussie (Score:1, Insightful)
This is soon to fall. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It's all about the new car smell (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's all about buzzwords... (Score:1, Insightful)
Enjoy your progress, you've earned it!
Re:eh (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is Firefox really more secure than IE (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Kind of vague article (Score:1, Insightful)
Mods: When somebody is being a dipshit by putting down mods for modding up something she doesn't understand, feel free to mod her down.
Re:For those who don't know.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Take another look at *how* it's rotated. It is, of course, the Firefox down under.
That second paragraph not mine... (Score:3, Insightful)
On standards, Firefox has an advantage over Explorer. That gives organisations latitude to commit to standards rather than to products. That in turn reduces the leverage that vendors have over customers.
Microsoft has hampered standards support in Explorer for five years with its go-slow campaign against the web. Standards-oriented page layout is not possible on most versions of Explorer (CSS box model). Explorer has never met standards for web document identification (HTTP MIME content types), or if one is supported, then simultaneously the other is not. Microsoft has shown an antipathy to web standards, because in the view of many they provide an alternative to the Windows desktop - Microsoft's core business. The success of web-based applications such as Amazon, Google, eBay, the open source Wikipedia encyclopedia and online banking point to the decreasing importance of Windows in a world where a web browser is sufficient.
That'll teach me not to always use Preview...
Re:Is Firefox really more secure than IE (Score:5, Insightful)
The preceding has been a waste of nearly everyone's time. You, being a troll, are uninterested in relevant facts. You are also unable to spell correctly or even to operate a spellchecker. Nor, apparently, are you capable of offering anything of substance to a conversation, and so you simply spout meaningless and poorly-constructed garbage in a feeble and pitiful attempt to garner the attention of your betters. The fact that the few responses are invariably negative serves, amazingly enough, to whet your appetite further. Why do you torture yourself so? Why do you yearn for the disdain and scorn of others? Can you not see that this path inevitably leads to a complete loss of self-esteem, and that you'll eventually wind up behind the counter at a Radio Shack (or [shudder] Best Buy), pushing cell phones and overpriced cables to the techno-retarded? You are truly a conundrum, o slashdot troll.
Microsoft wants to control the web as a platform (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft has always been a software company. And they may put out operating systems and be most-known for Windows, but really their goal is just to control software platforms. The reason they sell the X-Box at a loss is to push the DirectNext platform. They sell Windows, no matter how insecure, just to push their APIs.
Avalon and its related technologies are Microsoft's long-planned attempt to finally gain control of this Internet thing as its own software platform. It's the final fulfilment of the process that started way back with IE4, when Microsoft decided to do anything and everything to get rid of Netscape and prevent the Web from becoming its own software platform. Microsoft ignores web standards because that takes the control of the platform away from them. Right now, if you run a major website, you code for IE hacks and all and hope it works for "fringe" browsers.
Web developers will need to do absolutely everything they can and speak very LOUDLY to prevent the Web from becoming closed. Fortunately, it appears that Longhorn will not be as successful as it was hyped in previous years, but the fact Microsoft is porting a lot of Longhorn's technologies to XP just to get people to use it all is something to keep an eye on, as is the sudden announcement of a new version of IE7 which will no doubt take advantage of Avalon.
Don't rest on your laurels (Score:4, Insightful)
Extensions for IE such as Avant and Maxthon can do pretty much everything that firefox can do (tabs, popup blocking, gestures), so don't get too comfortable with catching up based on a few features missing in the de facto standard.
Not everyone, sadly, cares about the free principles, open standards, etc.
P.S. (Score:3, Insightful)
create an XUL plugin for IE (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"Open Standards" != software freedom (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is that if Photoshop ceased to exist tomorrow or had a licence change that conflicted with your business practices/moral code, you have the option of changing to a different piece of software that supports the same file formats, etc. The same cannot be said for software with closed file formats - (ok, not entirely true since people _do_ reverse engineer closed standards, but generally because a lot of the support is guesswork they're not going to do such a good job. An excellent example is OOo, which opens and saves word documents but often gets the formatting slightly (or massively) wrong).
The next generation is *now* (Score:4, Insightful)
But, on the other hand there is a reason I am writing a point of sale system with mysql and gtk on Debian:
1. I can be confident that the system I am using is totally open to my every whim.
2. I can implement whatever feature I need/want.
3. My data will be in a format *I* want, and open to me for as long as it exists.
4. I can have an operating system/distro which suits my business (and not arrange my business to suit somebody else's product). (I am surprised at list of software I have patched/modified to behave the way *I* want and I am not even a great programmer).
5. I *own* my system in every sense of the word, one can only "license" a MS product for a non-specific amount of time.
I have been using Linux for seven years and still find new things and new ways of doing things. The flexibility and abilities are apparently endless, not last week I built my own very small distro just for kicks in an existing install, a single file including it's own filesystem and linux distro which I loopback mounted and chrooted to work on/run. After all these years I am still grateful I don't have to use inferior products anymore. I haven't even begun to touch on stuff like virtual machines but they look... well they are just amazing
Just think: People all around the world are working/developing on some great stuff *right now* , the possibilities truly are only limited only by *us* and not some company who mandates how/what we can do.
Re:It's all about the new car smell (Score:5, Insightful)
It's true that many older guys are too conservative. In part this is experience -- we've seen too many better solutions get crushed by herd -- at some point you begin to question the wisdom of not being part of the herd. The other reasons guys get more conservative is that they have more to lose. If you're a young guy starting to climb the ladder of status, you don't have much to lose, and you can find another junion position easily. If you're older, you quickly realize the ladder of IT status only goes so high, and there's a lot more rungs below you than above. If you lose your position, then that could be it -- there aren't that many senior positions and nobody wants to hire somebody overqualified for a junior position.
It's easy to take risks when you don't have much at stake; taking risks when you have a lot at stake takes real guts. That said, this is an explanation, not an excuse. Which is why when you are a bit older, you should examine your youthful idealism and examine it on a regular basis. Sometimes it isn't "If I only knew then what I know now." Sometimes it should be "If I only knew now what I knew then."
Will somebody shut up these ignorants? (Score:3, Insightful)
Firefox is safer because its design is ROCK SOLID. While it may have one or two buffer overflow bugs lurking in the shadows (and when discovered these get fixed rather quickly), but that's very different from saying it has a structural flaw *cough* activex *cough*, which allows REMOTE CODE execution. To have remote code executing in a buffer overflow, you have to CAREFULLY CRAFT the overflow. It just doesn't happen like magic. Buffer overflows are the hardest kind of attack to do on a certain software.
However, when you run an activex control (i.e. media player), that's remote code being executed directly. No "careful craft" and guesswork is needed. You compile your code and let IE run it. That simple. Whether IE considers it safe or not, that's a very different matter.
Firefox, on the other hand, has only ONE way to install "remote code": Firefox extensions. And these don't get published on a website on a daily basis. Have you ever seen a website saying "This website requires Firefox extension XYZ to be seen?
No, this is a habit inherited from Internet Explorer's activeX. As for flash, etc. running in Firefox, that's "plugins", not "extensions", and they're all provided by THIRD PARTIES, not the website in question. How are they executed? By handling the MIME Type for a certain object. And these are managed by Firefox, not the website.
In summary, saying Firefox is as insecure as IE6 is like saying that the three little pigs made all their houses with straw.
I wonder if you still use IE because "Firefox is as insecure, so what's the difference if I switch?" Yeah, great wisdom, indeed.
Re:Is Firefox really more secure than IE (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, I think it's probably more to do with the fact that IE versions 4 and 5 were far better than Netscape 4, and the fact that Netscape (and then Mozilla) took far too long to catch up. Sure, alternatives to IE are better now, but there was a period when IE was simply better than the competition. Since they gained enough market share, there has been little incentive to improve. Hopefully pressure from FireFox / Safari / etc. will change this.