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Which Organizations Have Standardized on Mozilla?
andy brunetto asks: " We are investigating email clients to deploy as our "standard" at the college where I work. I'm trying to find out who is using Mozilla for their email. When I say "who" I mean organizationally, as I realize 99% of us geeks already use it. What organizations out there are rolling out Mozilla as their standard web and/or email client, and why? Yes, we are considering using Thunderbird, once it is final. Thanks!" Hopefully this will make companies realize that the Internet isn't comprised of just IE users.
Ideally yes, but 99% is a bit generous. I know quite a few it gurus that just use IE. I mean mozilla is the politically correct thing to do, but you know, IE is pretty familiar to most people. If we could see the logs at Slashdot, I'm sure that IE would have a commanding lead.
Purdue used Netscape 7 as the standard browser and mail client on over 3000 lab machines.
The main reasons we're sticking with Mozilla and not going IE?
Platform availability. It's available on Windows, Linux & Irix.
Not MS
Spam filtering
Doesn't propogate virii
Low/No cost
Why are we going with Mozilla instead of Netscape?
Available on all above platforms.
Doesn't have the AOL marketing embedded in it.
Windows installations will be WinInstalled, so all plugins & customizations can be centralized.
Hope it helps.
You forgot to point out that Sun's current browser standard is Netscape 4.7 (at least internally, which I assume is what you're talking about.) It has been for years, though Netscape 6 and 7 are also available if you know where to look.
There are many, many internal applications at Sun that are written for Netscape 4.7 and don't work in NS6/NS7 (don't ask me how, but it's true. It boggles my mind, too.) So yes, Sun has 40,000 employees still using the broken, non-standards-compliant Netscape 4.7 as their primary browser, and they've been trying to "transition" away from it for over 2 years now.
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C'mon, I understand using it for web browsing, but email?
Most of the posts that I see in mailing-lists are written with Pine, gnus (emacs' mail thingy), Mutt, KMail or MS Outlook. Maybe there's some Mozilla too, but it's not near "99%", not by a extremely long shot.
Ob-"I use": I'm very happy with Mutt myself, and my friends use also Mutt or Pine. Maybe we're all oldschool guys :-)
Ob-"Kids these days": Kids these days! When I was your age, we didn't have email. We had to shout to each other from miles and miles of distance! Sore throats were quite usual, trust me :-)
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Here at Wake Forest, we have a program where all students receive IBM laptops through the university (it's included in tuition). These come preloaded with a lot of expensive commercial software that most students couldn't afford to purchase legally if they weren't going through the university. The interesting thing is that this gives the university a great deal of control over the initial setup of students' machines (including those who are non-CS majors). We can customize them all we want or delete Windows and put Linux on there but the vast majority of students are just using what comes on there.
Until now, the Windows machines were actually all set up to use Netscape 4.79 and its mail client and to hide IE and especially Outlook. This was done (I assume) for security reasons, especially considering that virtually all the virus email I've received from on-campus mailing lists, etc is from people who ignored the preconfigured setup and installed Outlook Express anyway.
This fall, they are moving to Mozilla 1.4 (I'm guessing that the reason is the similary to the old Netscape interface). They decided that Mozilla 1.4 was superior to the newer Netscapes and are deploying it over a year on about 5,500 installations.
Combined with another new pilot program to preinstall Linux dual-boot setups for CS students here (and give us bigger hard disks than other students), open source seems to be on the rise here.
Besides, is their a huge advantage to centralizing on only one email app?
:). But, for the time being at least, we are still using Exchange for the mail server. I use Moz Mail to interface with Exchange strictly via IMAP, but there are still some here who use Outlook and interface "natively" with Exchange.
Well, many large enterprises standardize on Outlook because they use Exchange as their mail server. They do this so that they can use extra mail features that Exchange provides, like marking messages for follow-up or recalling messages. Admins at my former employer used follow-up flags to remind us that, say, we had to fill out an HR form by a certain date. The e-mail would be flagged for follow-up by such-and-such a date, an appointment would be added to the calendar (if memory serves), and the admin can configure a reminder to pop-up on my screen if I don't clear the follow-up flag by a certain amount of time before the deadline.
The real biggie is the ability to see everyone else's calendar and schedule meetings based on that. You can also do things like marking individual attendees as optional or required; setting up a uniform reminder time that will appear on all attendees' screens; replying to a meeting request as confirmed, tentative, or decline the invitation; proposing a new meeting time; etc. It's actually pretty powerful, and works well in large, beauracratic organizations. You can do similar things with tasks and the journal.
However, I have recently jumped ship to a small company, and much to my delight they are getting off of Outlook and onto Mozilla Mail because the "desktop engineering team" (two guys) are big into OSS
We are investigating email clients to deploy as our "standard" at the college where I work. I'm trying to find out who is using Mozilla for their email.
Do you know why IExploder and Outlurk have %95+ market share? It's not because Microsoft is a monopoly, or because they are better products, or because Bill Gates is a member of the Trilateral Commission or the Bilderbergers. It's because of the herd instinct. People want to use the same software that other people in their group use. Corporations use IE/Ol because other corporations do. Geeks use Linux because other geeks do. There are rare exceptions, but by and large human beings rival cattle in their ability to be molded by the opinion of their peers.
I get the impression from your question that you're seeking to follow the herd. If you were one of the rare exceptions then you wouldn't care what other companies are using, and just deploy Mozilla. But since you're asking, it seems to me that either you or someone above you needs the assurance that using Mozilla in an organization isn't new, innovative or radical.
You're not asking about problems others have uncovered while deploying Mozilla in an organization. That's not your concern at all. Instead you merely want to know who is using it. If you want to be a individual unswayed by the unthinking opinion of your peers, then just go deploy Mozilla. But if you just want to make sure your head isn't sticking above the level of the herd too far, then stick with the Microsoft products that all the other organizations are using.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
If you think the answer is zero, or that commercial software is any better you would be mistaken. The only difference between Mozilla and other software is you can read the bugs and therefore gauge the risk and even produce workarounds if necessary. With commercial software bug reports disappear into a black hole - they might be fixed or they might not but you'll never know until an update appears and you can try to replicate the problem.
I sat down in front of a computer in a public lab at my local college campus last semester and did the following:
Downloaded Pheonix (it was not yet FireBird) and unzompressed it.
Ran Phoenix and installed the IE skin.
Edited the Phoenix toolbar to be quite a lot like IEs.
Set Phoenix as the default browser.
Deleted the IE links from the desktop and start menu.
Added links to Phoenix using the IE icon with the text "Internet Explorer" to the desktop and start menu.
Quietly left.
I'm not sure what impact this really had, but I did it on 3 computers at differing times. I do hope I caused some havoc, but not as much as I hope nobody noticed.
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Funny you should mention speed. I was doing a demo of pop-up blocking for someone. I loaded a site I knew used them in IE, then in Mozilla (with blocking turned on) The Mozilla page load was noticibly faster. Mozilla was started later yet was finished while IE was still loading the page. Now this is hardly a scientific experiment or benchmark, but it impressed the user. The fact it loaded faster and no pop-ups to deal with made an excellent demo. The blocked pop-up may be why it loaded faster though, but hey, a good demo is a good demo.