The Future of Firefox 399
sebFlyte writes "As Firefox moves swiftly towards 1.1 and Internet Explorer keeps trundling towards IE7, ZDNet UK has an interesting set of articles about Mozilla. Among other things, they look at the history of Firefox all the way from the pre-phoenix days, and have an interview with chief evangelist Asa Dotzler looking at what has driven the browsers success and why he thinks the release of IE7 will cause a massive boost in the uptake of Firefox."
firefox (Score:2, Insightful)
Main advantage (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:firefox (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:firefox (Score:3, Insightful)
Continuing diversion of standards by MS (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe one innovation which MS wants to use, but which is patented by the mozilla foundation, effectively blocking MS from using it, just to get some negotation leverage to force MS to stop adding nonsense & bad implementations of standards to IE.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Women in OSS (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is this seen as a problem? The open source community doesn't really try that hard to encourage *anyone* to participate regardless of gender or race or nationality. It just is what it is. Those who participate decide to do so on their own and there's virtually no barriers to doing so. The way that question is phrased it is almost as if there should be some kind of OSS organized effort to specifically attract women to the community. What would be gained by such a movement and why is it even implied to be necessary?
Extension security (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not terribly concerned about extension security or performance. Most extension developers host their code at Mozdev and the bad ones get weeded out quite quickly. It's unlikely that a malicious extension will get popular as you can view the source of extensions. You can't view IE's source.
Was this interview before or after the GreaseMonkey debacle?
Re:Dicey logic? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, the follow on question to this, is how many installs aren't documented? ie: The NT Admin downloads it once, and pushes out the changes to 500 desktops.
Stick to standards (Score:3, Insightful)
somebody made an extension which works well in firefox, but not good in IE. More of that is needed to fight on equal terms
No, please, do not wish for this. It would only lead back to the way it was a couple of years ago. We should just stick to standards and in the long run this will win by itself. Developers are the ones driving this market, they will enjoy the standards, standard-compliant browsers will be more appreciated, we will win. But if we start playing like MS does, we won't. And in the process the web will suffer greatly.
Component Model (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Trundling? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:boost leads to more exploits (Score:5, Insightful)
More likely, the open-source approach, meaning the pride developers take in making good (or at least decent) code, the peer review of said code, and quick fixing when a bug is found, will prevent a decline.
Microsoft bought Spyglass and started flinging shit at Mosaic until they got a working browser in a short time to kill Netscape. Then they flung more shit at it to corner the browser market, then they kept on flinging shit at random, to add this and that feature and eye candy. Since nobody really checks the code outside of Microsoft, and since they don't (didn't?) really care about security as long as nobody finds the flaws, there you have it: IE pisses people off and people switch to the first decent alternative.
That's why I think IE will keep on declining, and Firefox won't.
Re:Main advantage (Score:5, Insightful)
When competition disappears from ANY market, that market stagnates. For the moment, I'll follow your example and continue to pick on Microsoft, but it's by no means limited to them. Way back in the early PC days, DOS advanced fairly rapidly to DOS 3.3, driven by hardware introductions. There was also a not widely used or known multitasking version of DOS (4?) as well as IBM's much-maligned DOS4. But basically, DOS stagnated after V3.3.
That is, until DRDOS 5.0 came out, offering much better value. (More features, not sure if it cost less.) Then Microsoft followed, and brought out their own DOS 5.0, and the stakes were upped again with DRDOS 6.0, etc. Somewhere in there, Microsoft slipped the legendary AARD code into Windows 3.1 to chill the DRDOS uptake, and also around that timeframe they "incorporated" disk compression, courtesy of Stac Electronics. (lawsuits followed, on both counts.)
But IMHO, if DRDOS 5 hadn't appeared, it would have stayed DOS 3.3 under Windows until the whole Windows vs OS/2 battle started. Also IMHO, lacking competitive pressure in a given market, a company will invest its development dollars elsewhere, and milk the stagnant market for all it can.
Re:boost leads to more exploits (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, negative feedback from the mods because you spoke ill of FIREFOX even though it was a valid point. Same happens with Linux and Google. Oh well.
Your point is valid though.
The larger Firefox's market share become, the larger a target they become.
Right now, exploiters hit IE because it's the most efficient way to screw over a lot of people with a browser. Exploiting Firefox would effect a whole lot less people, possibly with more effort.
The true strength of Firefox is that the community stands behind it, and can change it to fill hole. So the open source community can put their geek where their mouth is, and make a browser as good as the community can. If it sucks, then it's nobody's fault but our own.
Re:Main advantage (Score:4, Insightful)
Firefox hasn't innovated anything yet.
Innovating is coming up with something new based on something else. Firefox copied almost everything it's popular for from Opera, then zipped past it in userbase, and claimed Opera's innovations for its own. No matter what the fanboys try to tell you, it's still just copying.
Re:Dicey logic? (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux that use central repository package management use Firefox versions which were never downloaded from the Firefox site, and were never counted.
Anyone who uses The Open CD, or Knoppix, uses Firefox but hasn't "downloaded" it.
OEM CDs, as well as ISP's CDs contain Firefox, and are not counted.
And lastly, as the post above mentioned, corporate rollout of the browser will never have a number of downloads equal to the number of computer upon which the program is installed.
In others words, your point is perfectly valid, but only serves to show that the whole "counting the number of users" idea is actually quite a challenge.
Re:Women in OSS (Score:2, Insightful)
Wait.. they did the whole women in the workplace thing in the past and I haven't once heard of an office wet t-shirt contest anyplace that I've worked. This clearly needs remedying...
I wonder how quickly a guy would get fired for hanging up posters on the office fridge advertising such an event? (As an aside, I wonder if it was a woman doing the organizing if there'd be any firing at all...)
The reason he thinks IE 7 will spur more FF growth (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure about that logic. When MS puts their mind to it, they can make a fine browser. They jump from IE 3 to 4 and then to 5 was impressive. My guess is that IE 7 will not be as bad as expected, and they may sneak in a few features that the Firefox team hadn't anticipated. Microsoft wants to push users to upgrade, so if they can create even one little "must have" feature in IE 7 that Firefox doesn't already use, they may succeed in enticing more than a few Win 2k users to buy XP.
Even if Microsoft doesn't roll out a blockbuster with IE 7, I doubt that the release of a *competing* browser is going to somehow push people to switch to Firefox. With all the press Firefox has been getting, if you haven't at least tried out Firefox by now, you're not likely to so unless IE leaps out of your browser and stabs you in the forehead.
IE bundled with Windows (Score:5, Insightful)
I work as a consultant for many IT firms, and even though they are perfectly aware of IE's limitations and security problems, they do not make the change to an alternate browser simply because it is far easier to stay with the one already installed on the system.
Inertia means that Firefox will always remain a fringe browser until some anti-monopoly law makes MS remove IE. And that will never happen. No matter how awful IE becomes now or in the future, sheer laziness means it will always be the predominant browser.
Re:firefox (Score:3, Insightful)
(I bring up this example because it's a problem I'm dealing with now.)
So while there are plenty such web apps written by no-talent hacks, there are also apps that push the limits of web standards and require something more powerful.
Firefox better than IE? Not saying much... (Score:3, Insightful)
The Firefox team is pretty full of themselves-- it will take the attention to detail to make Firefox better, but I don't get the sense they are aware of that. Things like the annoying way it incessantly steals your input focus while you're typing, the fact that the Open New Window feature is virtually useless due to the Home Page feature which is itself useless (two areas where IE is actually better). Features that should have been worked out before the "sexy" features like popup blockers which can be done externally (and better, too). But users can always be retrained anyway, because We Know Better(TM).
Firefox should remember that they don't have to add sexy features every release like Microsoft does, and in fact that is Microsoft's biggest problem-- they have to add new features because they need you to update. Unfortunately, the Firefox team apparently also needs you to update in order to sustain the overinflation of their egos.
Both teams need a draconian Steve Jobs to force them to improve the usability first (and I don't even use a Mac). Someone who will take them to task over the little things. Otherwise creeping featurism and bloat will kill them off. The problem is, the little things just aren't as exciting to work on or talk about, which is a big reason why Microsoft's products are so lousy. Here's hoping it isn't becoming Firefox's reason too...
He said... (Score:4, Insightful)
GreaseMonkey is not malicious. It is insecure. Yes, a third-party GreaseMonkey script could be malicious, but that is like saying Firefox is malicious because it has a security bug. Personally I prefer extensions that do nothing but passively manipulate my pages. We've finally gotten rid of most JS/Java bugs, and I sure as hell don't want to add another script language *cough* vbs *cough* activex. But I guess people want that kind of stuff...
Kjella
Re:Security (Score:3, Insightful)
Many of Microsoft's security problems comes from initial poor design decisions AND that those design decisions are not easily revoked once put forth because of backward's compatibility.
ActiveX is an example of this. It was made before internet security was much of a concern but to this day MS cannot easily revoke it without breaking apps left and right and pissing off Developers.
They would have to keep the API and rewrite it under the surface while having it react the same. Not an easy task nor guaranteed possible.
On the other hand, Open Source has several advatanges - one of which people complain about - their are redundant APIs and programs galore in several areas. The strength of this is that sometimes overlying programs are programmed to be use a more generic interchangeable API.
*nix has lack of integration. This is IE's and outlook's greatest strength but fatale flaw in some regards. Other OSes, the mail client and webbrowser and filebrowser can be ripped out and exchanged much more easily or not have one at all. Microsoft's Windows tends to be hardcoded to IE/outlook and the otherway around. This non-modular design is a nightmare.
General politics. While I'm sure Linux programming groups have this too, it's a much larger degree where Microsoft's design decisions are often political with their business in mind while OSS tends to be more engineering minded.
Re:Main advantage (Score:3, Insightful)
Asa's blowing smoke (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:boost leads to more exploits (Score:2, Insightful)
In practice, though, this doesn't happen as often as you might want to believe. If this were true you'd think we wouldn't be finding the same exploits cropping up in every brand of software X (especially things like forums).
And for every OSS trophy project you'll find a thousand half-assed weekend hacks that never make it past Alpha stage because, to the developer, posting it on sourceforge or whatever is more important that making a program usable to more than just himself. That's the reality of OSS development and that's what you're going to have to deal with. Everyone wants to be the one with the big idea, and be the one in charge, and so they all spend their time reinventing the same crooked wheel.
=Smidge=
how IE7 will help firefox (Score:2, Insightful)
We have high hopes that we'll do better and better in that space with Windows 2000 users. If users don't upgrade to Windows XP they won't get IE 7, but 50 percent of businesses are still using Windows 2000.
If a site looks broken in IE6, win2000 users will be annoyed with Microsoft (no IE7 for win2000).
Market segmentation is a good thing: it will keep people from designing to a single browser. The more different browsers have a significant market share, the more likely the internet will look good for me in Lynx.
Re:I think I prefer opera (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah, you could, like, pay for the product?
Re:boost leads to more exploits (Score:5, Insightful)
As a _very_ part time open source developer I think this is fine.
I personally have published a couple of my own weekend hacks in Alpha stage... never to touch them again. I still recieved a lot of feedback... most of which was "Thanks!". Why? Because it gave people something to start from, or an example to use for a different implementation. I'm sure no one used anything in a "production" environment but that was never the purpose.
Publishing an open-source project is _never_ a bad idea. The more code and collaboration out there the stronger the community is. I never wanted to be the best at making program X... I just wanted to be helpful.
I think people have a hard time understanding that you don't always have to "win" at everything. Sometimes just being nice, or helpful can be its own reward (both to you and the community).
Friedmud
Re:boost leads to more exploits (Score:5, Insightful)
All developers in closed-source companies that I've known would *like* to take pride in their code, but they always have to respect tight schedules, and end up writing "good enough" code (good enough meaning, sure, there are bugs, but no show-stoppers).
I'm quite sure Microsoft developers aren't told to take the time to do things right. They're told to hurry the hell up and make it work. I'm also quite sure most of them would prefer taking the time to do things right, but their employer doesn't pay them to do that.
i'd advise you state your views on your resume. employers will probably want to know about that.
You misunderstood my views. My view is simply that not release the source code makes it easy to hide bad code, and even the best engineers can't go against their management's wishes and constraints.
As for me, I was a developer, so I should know what I'm talking about. Not anymore though: in my new line of job, I can tell the customer to get lost until I'm sure everything's done just right, and he's usually happy with that, because my products cost well over $10k a pop and he prefers waiting than having a botched-up result
How does that differ from commercial or in-house? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes you will. Just as for every succesful commercial or in-house app you'll see a thousand failures. But at least OSS failures are ones generally based on technical merits, and not so much based on a company running out of money or a project being killed for political reasons eeven though it's quite good.
Not to mention that each of those thousand failures is a learning experience for the next one. Remember Edison saying he didn't mind thousand unsucessful attemps to make a light buld because he now knew a thousand things that didn't work? It can be (not saying it always is) the same with OSS. You can actually see what people pick up and use, and try to understand why.
You do see some simialr bugs cropping up across a lot of different forums, because programmers make simialr mistakes and a lot of software is being written and re-written for a huge range of platforms - like Java or PHP or Ruby. So sharing cannot happen quite as much as would be ideal, but at least sharing can happen in the form of UI sharing - if you like the way a user interacts with some piece of software you can replicate that.
Many eyes, but not all of them friendly (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Open source means that finding holes is a lot easier
2. Open source means more eyes spotting and fixing them
So there's a curve: a small open-source product has as many holes as a small commercial product, but those holes are wide open in public. I'd be reluctant to run something from Sourceforge from a tiny community of programmers, because it doesn't actually have many eyes on it.
Your only saving grace is that no hackers are out there targeting you. You survive on security by obscurity.
The ratio of evil eyes to good ones is probably constant, but it takes only one malicious coder to spot an error in open source. So Firefox may be safe, but that doesn't mean that open source in general is safe.
And that's without even bringing up the nightmare that malicious contributors can do.
Re:Women in OSS (Score:4, Insightful)
The more people involved in open source development, the better. Slightly over half the population are women. It would be nice to have more women involved in open source development, simply because it would be nice to have more people involved in open source development.
It just is what it is. Those who participate decide to do so on their own and there's virtually no barriers to doing so.
Are you sure about that? Perhaps girls are being pressured by their peers, parents, the media, etc. that doing geeky computer things isn't cool, and they should look down on geeks with disdain instead of aspiring to become one themselves. Perhaps boys aren't being pushed away from it as much. Or perhaps because girls just naturally learn differently, the things that get boys interested in programming don't work for girls, and we need to figure out a different way to welcome girls into the fold. Or perhaps girls just aren't interested and we should forget about it. I think it's an issue worth looking at.
The way that question is phrased it is almost as if there should be some kind of OSS organized effort to specifically attract women to the community. What would be gained by such a movement and why is it even implied to be necessary?
Same reason there should be an organized effort to attract men to the community. The more skilled coders with itches to scratch, the better software we all get.
Re:boost leads to more exploits (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft bought Spyglass
No, they royally fucked over Spyglass. They made a deal with Spyglass so that Spyglass would get a cut of all the profits made from Internet Explorer as it was based upon Spyglass Mosaic. Remember, this was back when web browsers were something you could buy in a box. Getting a cut of all sales for a flagship application sold by Microsoft? Spyglass must have thought they really lucked out!
Then Microsoft illegally dumped Internet Explorer on the market for no cost in order to kill Netscape. 5% of zero profits isn't a lot of money, is it? Spyglass no longer exists.
Re:false (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:boost leads to more exploits (Score:4, Insightful)
I was in this industry long enough to make such statements. Apparently, you seem to be working for a sensible company where engineers are listened to, and I'm glad that you do. However, I can assure you you're in a minority.
i know you're looking for mod points, but don't you think you've speculated enough for today?
Do you really think I'm looking for mod points, after having posted on this here board for 6 or 7 years and gotten all my karma on the first two days?
Besides, you don't have to be hostile...
Firefox update BROKEN (Score:3, Insightful)
I just (3:45 PM USA Pacific Time, GMT-7) tried it with Firefox 1.0.4 and it said "Firefox was not able to find any available updates".
Even though 1.0.5 is out with critical security fixes and has been for at least 2 days!
Good work Firefox!
Re:boost leads to more exploits (Score:3, Insightful)
With all the "unusable by most people" stuff out there, someone just coming into the OSS scene is going to be very turned off trying to find something usable. This is especially important when it comes to businesses looking into possible OSS solutions.
Unfortunately the "bazaar" method leaves no room to separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were.
=Smidge=
Re:boost leads to more exploits (Score:4, Insightful)
What I was trying to get at is that a lot of open source developers don't have end users in mind at all when they create the software they do. I certainly don't have any goals of winning anyone over to OSS. I use it because it fits my needs and I don't mind all the diversity.
For people that "Just want stuff to work" there are other options out there (Windows, Mac). For people who like to hack around and find new things and collaborate/cooperate to build better environments _for themselves_ we have OSS.
What I'm trying to say is don't corrupt my open and collaborative environment just because it doesn't suit your needs. If people don't like the diversity then they can look elsewhere.
OSS has ALWAYS had diversity and it ALWAYS will. I personally see this as a strength (OSS becomes a melting pot of ideas, where everyone learns from eachother). Again, the goal is not to conquer the world, but instead to make ourselves happy.
When you say "having thousands of distros,f ew of which work well, is a bad bad thing"... who is it a "bad bad thing" for? The people making the distros are (for the most part) doing it because it is interesting _for them_. If people use it then that is great... if they don't then that person still had the experience of creating something... something which appeals to all scientific and engineering types.
This type of argument reminds me of when people criticise other people for having odd hobbies. "What an idiot! I can't believe he spent 2 months designing and building that case mod!" In general humans are very diverse and have lots of different interests. Some like to collect beanie babies, some like to code up pet projects on the weekend (regardless of whether or not something already exists that does the same job).
In essence I'm saying that for most OSS developers it is a hobby. As such let us do what we like. If you don't like the way it turns out then use the other alternatives.... no skin off our back.
Friedmud
Re:boost leads to more exploits (Score:3, Insightful)
You state: "If open source wants to survive we need more focus on a narrower range of products"
Again I ask.. Survive what? Hobbies don't die. You can't kill my ability to collaborate with people across the web and create a good environment for myself.
No amount of people claiming "OSS Sucks" can do anything... it's like telling a coin collector that "Coins are dumb!".... if the person enjoys what they are doing they will continue regardless of outside criticism.
Friedmud