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Firefox Breaks 25 Million Downloads

Posted by Zonk on from the thats-a-lot-of-firefoxen dept.

certron wrote to alert us that earlier this week, Mozilla passed the milestone of 25 million downloads. From the official site: "With a minimal set of tools--an affiliate system, a small donations fundraising system, blogs, galleries, forums, and the good old human larynx--you all are spreading Firefox to a quarter of a million people a day. More than 500,000 sites now link to Firefox according to Google--a fivefold increase from six months ago. What was just a small flame 100 days ago has since exploded into a phenomenal demonstration of the power of open source. Tens of thousands of devoted users and fans are a powerful and capable force of change. We have created a special commemorative image if you would like to mark this milestone on your own site." Reader asa also wrote to mention an interview with Bill Gates from this week where the mogul was asked directly what he thought of Firefox.

6 of 392 comments (clear)

  1. Interview with Bill Gates by Walkiry · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Problem is, he doesn't really say much other than "we have competition in many places, we'll keep working to be the best". Typical marketdroid stuff. The funny thing is that one of the things he mentions is that they'll be trying to be #1 in "Security". Heh. One can only hope...

    --
    ---- Take the Space Quiz!
  2. Power of open source? by suso · · Score: 5, Interesting

    has since exploded into a phenomenal demonstration of the power of open source.

    I see what you're trying to say, but I don't know whether you can call this newfound popularity due to open source. When I think of firefox, It doesn't even occur to me at first that its open source. I mean, I know that it is, but thats not the first thing I think of. When I think of something like Gnome, I think of it as open source. Mozilla and friends just have a different feeling. Does anyone else think that too?

  3. Nice of Bill to take all the credit by grandmofftarkin · · Score: 4, Interesting
    "There's a new technology that is an industry standard we created called Sender ID"

    No mention of SFP or the guys behind it.

  4. Re:The difference is simple :) by suso · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Hmmmm, this is interesting. You might think that the parent comment is flamebait or a troll, but I think this person has a point. As an open source community, I think we can learn a lot from how firefox has succeeded so well and so quickly, analyze it and apply it to a lot of other projects. Much like how the FSF originally redid all the unix applications before rewriting the kernel, maybe the goal could be to redo all windows applications and then subplant the underlying OS.

  5. Re:What bill says by confusion · · Score: 4, Interesting

    They have to dust-off the old 'anti-netscape' playbook now. FF has risen to a level where MS is very concerned about losing momentum and support for their proprietary IE extensions. I know many software vendors have it on their near term road maps to inter-operate with Firefox (they don't now, due to the use of proprietary extensions in IE). MS really hasn't had to deal with any competing products taking up market/mind share so quickly in the past.

    Jerry
    http://www.syslog.org/

  6. Sounds familiar... by oldosadmin · · Score: 4, Interesting

    That's exactly what OpenOffice.org has been advocating for months, but nobody seems to listen.

    --
    Jay | http://oldos.org