Firefox-Based Start-Up Gets Off The Ground

rudy_wayne writes "ZDNet is reporting that a new version of the Firefox Web browser is coming your way, but not from the Mozilla Foundation. 'When we launch our own services, in about a month or so, we'll be looking to offer the must-have companion to Firefox,' said Bart Decrem, Round Two CEO and a former staffer at the Mozilla Foundation. 'We see tremendous room for innovating on top of the Mozilla and Firefox platform, and we see ourselves as the first company outside of the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation that's fully dedicated to serving Firefox users.' Round Two planned a corporate launch Monday night with the promise of bringing 'a new crop of products and services that will enhance your Firefox experience.'"

Re:Want to bet?

[Compenguin]

Well his last company, eazel (who developed nautilus) didn't last long either

Start Up - Shut Down

[bheilig]

I hope they have some good ideas for innovations. But if they do, MS will eat them into their `free' browser and subsequently shut down this start up.

right... so in summary,

[Machine9]

they want us to pay for extensions that were previously available free of charge.

These include FlashGot, which lets Firefox work with third-party download managers; Bandwidth Tester, which lets people determine their connection speed; and SwitchProxy, which lets people surf anonymously with Firefox by configuring Firefox to work with multiple Web proxy servers

I know I'm not paying for any of those.

Chicken Shit (was Re:Want to bet?)

[samfreed]

Hey, Got any Chicken Shit? It is really good for the garden, and not so easy to come by any more around here. It is considered such a potent fertilizer that one should not use too much of it, or it will "burn" the roots of your more delicate plants....

Re:right... so in summary,

[David Ziegler]

Right, except you only copied/pasted the part that you wanted to. The quote is actually talking about how they are sponsoring those projects, providing servers, bandwidth, and money.

While Round Two--formerly known as MozSource--puts the finishing touches on its own products, the company is sponsoring development of several other Firefox extensions.

These include FlashGot, which lets Firefox work with third-party download managers; Bandwidth Tester, which lets people determine their connection speed; and SwitchProxy, which lets people surf anonymously with Firefox by configuring Firefox to work with multiple Web proxy servers. Round Two is providing developers of these extensions with technical resources including Web servers, bandwidth, project management resources and some financial support.

(Emphasis mine.) They're also supporting (again, from TFA):

Round Two also said it was supporting StockTicker, TinyURL Creator, Copy Plain Text, Extension Uninstaller, Lorem Ipsum Content Generator, OpenDownload, Open Long URLs, Search Plugins and Secure Password Generator.

They're also developing their own extensions (which presumably you can buy):

As for Round Two's own extensions, Decrem said the company was considering antivirus software to integrate with Firefox.

Now, whether that (and possibly other future products) is useful, sure, let's debate that. But don't read the article and completely misrepresent what's written.

Re:right... so in summary,

[2*2*53*4127]

thats what I thought at first... but:

While Round Two--formerly known as MozSource--puts the finishing touches on its own products, the company is sponsoring development of several other Firefox extensions

Funny, the entire article simply doesn't say what this miraculous "must-have companion" is... simply that they are sponsoring several other extensions while we wait with baited breath... worst... journalism... ever...

About Bart Decrem

[praseodym]

Bart Decrem was actually one of the founders/maintainers of SpreadFirefox.com. He left a week ago or so.

Re:Uh yeah

[cloudmaster]

The in-store version of Netscape included an HTML editor. The browser was always free.

I still run Mosaic on my NeXT machine...

Re:Open Source Competition

[xenotrout]

The commercial Wine forks are able to use restricted licenses because Wine used to be licensed under a BSD-type license. Though Wine is now licensed solely under the GNU LGPL, the commercial versions used a BSD licensed version as their code base.
The Mozilla license (MPL [opensource.org]) requires availability and redistributability of source code (BSD licenses do not). It seems legal, though, with a program under the LGPL or MPL, to create and not provide source for add-ons which can run with unmodified binaries (or modified binaries with source code available).

Re:Where's the content? - Its there, but "hidden"

[phrozen77]

Well, it has, but you have to _read_ the whole article...


Mozilla development ecosystem. While Round Two--formerly known as MozSource--puts the finishing touches on its own products, the company is sponsoring development of several other Firefox extensions.

Ok, what do we have here? Aight, a companys name, even two since it has renamed itself..

These include FlashGot, which lets Firefox work with third-party download managers; Bandwidth Tester, which lets people determine their connection speed; and SwitchProxy, which lets people surf anonymously with Firefox by configuring Firefox to work with multiple Web proxy servers

Yay! Products!!!111!11!

Round Two also said it was supporting StockTicker, TinyURL Creator, Copy Plain Text, Extension Uninstaller, Lorem Ipsum Content Generator, OpenDownload, Open Long URLs, Search Plugins and Secure Password Generator.

w00t? Even more of them! o_O

As for Round Two's own extensions, Decrem said the company was considering antivirus software to integrate with Firefox.

Oops? Future Plans omgwtfbbq!

So, ask again where the content is ;)

And, to give you some more reading...

http://www.google.com/search?q=MozSource

Re:Open Source Competition

[FauxPasIII]

> When I can have all my "new window" links open in a new tab instead,
> firefox will be more of a force.

You can:
http://hemiolapei.free.fr/divers/tabmix/tabmix.htm l.en [hemiolapei.free.fr]

Bookmark Synchronization

[bobdinkel]

You mean like this [mozilla.org]?

Re:Open Source Competition

[xenotrout]

Have you tried del.icio.us [del.icio.us] ("social bookmarks")? I haven't used it, but it might be worth a try. You add bookmarks by selecting a bookmarklet, and view them by visiting a webpage. Not the most integrated, but it's here now and might do the trick at least until real syncronization is available.
Another (too difficult) approach would be to have your Mozilla preferences/bookmarks on an NFS , SMB or other network-mounted partition.

Re:Where's the content?

[ggvaidya]

Products [roundtwo.com] and their front page [roundtwo.com]. Pretty website!

While I don't see how they can make money off this either, anybody making money off something like Firefox sounds like not a bad idea. I'll be watching. All the best!

RoundTwo is not for geeks!

[The One KEA]

Disclaimer: I'm one of the mods on The Extensions Mirror [extensionsmirror.nl], which is now hosted by RoundTwo.

Folks, from what I have read on their site, RoundTwo is not appealing to geeks. They're not trying to force geeks to pay for stuff that they can get themselves, i.e. extensions and support and the like. I get the impression that they are offering extension support and bundling for corporations which want to adopt Firefox but also want a centralized entity that they can moan at when it doesn't work.

Their stance of 'adopting' extensions and providing infrastructure for the developers to leverage for that purpose is genius, IMO - it gives the extension authors the resources to improve and maintain their extensions, and it gives RoundTwo a direct line to the authors, which makes it far easier to get the author's attention if something is broken, which is critical if they really intend on creating Firefox 'distributions' with extensions bundled in, like what bdeonline is doing with Black Diamond Firefox [mozdev.org].

Sure, they've got the usual amount of marketing jargon out there right now, but considering that they've been supporting Mozilla software [mozsource.com] for a while now, I suspect that this is going to be the core of their business model.

Re:Open Source Competition

[Myen]

Most of Mozilla is MPL [mozilla.org] / GPL / LGPL tri-licensed; so if they use the MPL option, they allowed to distribute closed-source software based on Mozilla as long as all hidden code are their own.

Remember - Netscape used to have an AIM component; I'm pretty sure they made sure they won't need to sue themselves...

Re:Open Source Competition

[IamTheRealMike]

That's correct for Cedega but incorrect for Crossover. Codeweavers base Crossover entirely on the LGPL version of WineHQ, and the vast majority of the work done goes back to HQ as patches. Crossover is rebased to a WineHQ snapshot for every major (3.x, 4.x, 5.x) release.

So yes, it's certainly possible to build a business this way. Hard but possible.

Re:How to make money off of Firefox

[Spy Hunter]

Firefox 1.1 will provide an MSI package.

Re:Open Source Competition

[ToeNipples]

you CAN have your "new window" links open in a new tab. just type "about:config" in the address bar (no quotes, obviously) and then in the filter box type "browser.tabs.show" and double click the only entry so that it goes from FALSE to TRUE. Now all you have to do is go into options, advanced, and click force links that open in new window to open in new tab. Simple as that...or you can just dl an extension that will do it for you but it is naitively supported by firefox. If you have problems with it you can even download QuickTabPrefToggle extension to toggle that setting as you wish.

Re:Open Source Competition

[chuonthis]

If you don't need all the features of that extension, you can also follow these instructions [mozilla.org] to reveal Firefox's hidden tab options.

Re:Open Source Competition

[alnjmshntr]

They are not extending the Firefox code directly. These are extensions, which are interfaces that allow you to plug your own code into firefox.

However the code is completely seperate from Firefox.