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Mozilla Chairman Speaks on Open Source/Microsoft
ChrisMDP writes "Tom's Hardware has an interesting interview with Mitch Kapor, the chairman of the Mozilla Foundation. They discuss, amongst other things, what it's like competing with Microsoft, and Firefox as an operating system." From the interview: "Pragmatically, I think we have to distinguish between a base set of extensions and everything else. It gets progressively more difficult to create seamless solutions when there are nearly infinite possibilities for customization and tweaking of settings. There's a basic tension in principle that can never be completely resolved."
It's called bloat. It happened to Red Hat. It happened to SuSE and it happened to Opera. You have to have limited objectives to avoid bloat. This is the key for browsers like Lynx etc. I would say Slackware Linux is one of the few distros that has managed to avoid bloat whilst still being very modern and "full of possibilities"...
Microsoft has never intended to compete on a level playing field. Instead they have tipped the field to favor themselves, sacrificing product quality and user benefit over and over again.
This is a great quote. It explains partially how Microsoft got where they are today, and why their current size and monopoly is unsustainable. Unless they make a fundamental change in their business model, something's going to happen to them.
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Q: how does it feel to spend 20 years being beaten^H^H^H^H competing with Microsoft?
A: Microsoft totally cheat. They don't play fair. OK, sometimes they can pull their socks up, like when they bought Spyglass and abandoned MSN version 1.
Q: Firefox is like... the new operating system?
A: Yes, and one day it may actually instal Flash support automatically. There's no end to what's possible?
Q: How's Chandler doing?
A: Who?
Q: You know, the open source thingy.
A: Ah, yes, very well. That's such a kind thing to ask. Any day now. There's no beating open source.
Q: so, since CPU's have passed 3Ghz, does it make sense to write better code?
A: better code is better code.
Sigh.
I love Firefox open source as much as the next righteous Slashdotter, and Kapor is a totally cool dude, but WTF? WTFF?
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The challenge is changing the end-user more than anything. I have tried for the longest to get my company to convert to Firefox, but users have integrated, in their heads, that to use the web is to use IE, and they can tell they're firing up another browser they get nervous, blame all problems going forward on the new browser, and simply don't like change. Microsoft did something very powerful by link IE to Windows. IE has become saturated within the minds of users. The few users I have converted over I have to change the new browser icon to the big "E."
People also have a great amount of grace for microsoft, excusing their security holes, making such statements as, "well, if another browser gets as popular as IE then it'll have the same problems, etc." And I'm talking about IT professionals not just end users. I try to explain that, no, Microsoft has been uniquely bad at security....
No matter what the browser, it has an uphill climb against IE....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
somehow I always think that this premise might actually be somewhat true for our society:
"Evil will always triumph because good is dumb."
Forgot where that is from (Spaceballs?), but sometimes I feel that evil does win out in the end. Companies that use evil tactics to get ahead may not win out in the long run, but really screw things up in the short timeframe.
Of course you could look at it this way, Firefox could be an example of Good winning in the long run because Microsoft was being evil 5-8 years ago. Wow, its been that long already?
Yes. It's a good thing we have a comercial product like Windows that is Bloat and Bug free.
No, it's called bloat when the nearly infinite possibilities are part of the default application - the base set.
That's why Mozilla and Firefox work with extensions. Users can personalise their application, add the missing features they need (or think they need). But without the overhead of the missing features they don't need.
That's particularly true for a light-weight browser as Firefox.
But because the fact that lots of extensions exists and lots of combinations of extensions are possible, the problem of the nearly infinite possibilities for customization and tweaking of settings is as real in such a customisable application with extensions as it is in a bloated application.
Had a hard time reading the article, with all the MS advertising in the page...
Dang, it looks like mozilla is going the way of emacs... "What? You're exiting mozilla? Why? It has everything you'll ever need for your entire computing experience! It debugs itself too!"
Microsoft releases products for its customers, which is what it should do.
/.'ers more than anything else is that most people don't care about merit. They just use products that are there, and which do the job required. This is something which most geeks don't get.
However, the reason Microsoft is deemed evil by some is because it uses its power in order to capture marketshare. This is a huge faux pas in geekdom, which is traditionally a meritocracy.
What annoys
Whassat? Firefox as an operating system? You mean a program that was cut off from the "bigger" mozilla to be "just a browser"? Hm.... When a new Firefox's Firefox is due to fork out? :-)
He talks about it taking just a "few clicks" to get Flash, RP, and other plugins working. Obviously he's not talking about Firefox on Linux. Flash, sure. It's probably the single easiest plugin to get to work. Most other plugins cannot be installed with the "follow this link to install the plugin" option at all. If they do manage to install, they don't seem to be able to find your plugins directory. Don't get me wrong, I love Firefox (though those 1-2 second pauses are annoying) but there needs to be some type of search in the installer to find the plugins directories. Couple that with Real Player unable to give me video on half of the Real Player content I find and you wonder what's going on. Though, that wouldn't be a Firefox issue, I know.
The chairman of the Mozilla foundation is Mitchell Baker, not Mitch Kapor.
from Securityfocus.com: as of January 2005, SecurityFocus readers using Firefox (46%) eclipsed Internet Explorer users (44%) in our traffic logs for the first time ever. I just can't wait for similar numbers hitting msn.com -- I must be a zealot for bashing microsoft.
Mitch oughta know this by now. Product is just the wrapper for the business plan. Product is just a carton you put on a shelf to aim your markeing at. Product really doesn't matter all that much. If it did then Firefox and Openoffice would have been able to charge $5 for their product and make billions doing it. And Bill knows this too because the great genius of Bill Gates is understanding that if you talk to your competitors about 'product' it will distract them from looking at your business plan. And without a credible bizplan, products like Mozilla are essentially interesting experiments that demonstrate how close you can come to MS's product. In other words they are triumphs of reverse engineering. But as I said, 'product' really doesn't matter so those organizations have spent all their time and effort to replicate a wrapper, a box without having anything to put in the box.
Back in the day of good old DOS, the Un*x and Vax guys reminded all the DOS guys, that DOS was just a program loader and not a true operating system.
Doesn't this apply to browsers as well?
I just don't see how refering to these application's as "operating systems" helps any cause they are working twards, and it would seem to add a stigma that is perhaps not necessary.
Firstly I don't understand your problem with the interview (I get that it's a little thin, but so what)...
I mean, "better code is better code" - that's not really a paraphrase of what he said, is it? He said that speed wasn't the only issue, maintainability is a biggy, which is a good answer to a rather dull question.
Second I don't understand why someone has moderated your comment funny. It wasn't supposed to be was it?
J.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
Owwch.
"and Firefox as an operating system."
Doesn't Mitch know that it's almost exactly that statement that caused Microsoft to launch its slaughterfest against Netscape when Marc Andreesen said it?
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Eh eh. You have to be careful though when getting into this though. If you play dirty and don't have the money or connections (like Microsoft) to pull yourself out of trouble, you can really spoil things for yourself. Its not quite as simple as just starting a FUD throwing campaign or breaking compatibility with Microsoft.
If you haven't learned it yet, people are rather unforgiving if they have already judged something to be not worthy. It wouldn't matter if it is better or not, they will just not use it on principle. Just look at what happened to EV1. They might have a good product, but when they associated themselves with SCO, people here shunned them for life I think.
Now give me a ide and some documentation so that I can create xul apps. The biggest push should be to get a xul ide together to help extend and push the platform. I don't care if it is written in xul or python or whatever, don't point me to xul maker either it looks like ass and is being developed way to slowly. I love firefox now make it damn easy for me to build cool xul apps.
Got Code?
Wouldn't it be interesting if the future of real competition to MS consisted of Vietnamese programmers working for pennies on open source code which is then thrown over the wall to Bangalore who staffs the help desks to support it? Wouldn't it be interesting if the only credible response to MS's dominance was to cut the cost of development and support to near-zero and pray that no one makes a breakout development. In other words, what if the only way to fight MS is to completely destroy all innovation and fight purely on crappy service and low cost?
No really, they have. They sacrifice proper quality to get 'first to market' time and again. Then they build on that with marketing or freebies till they are the de facto standard. That's called lock in, and it doesn't benefit consumers at all.
Have you ever used a MS product that didn't piss you off in some subtle way? Apart from the MS keyboard, which is a lovely piece of kit.
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
That's particularly true for a light-weight browser as Firefox.
I don't know what exactly is your criteria for calling a browser a light-weight, but as for the memory footprint firefox is surprisingly similar to IE
The following statement is true
The preceding statement is false
I respectfully disagree. They release a product that will enter the market and is "good enough". Sometimes they miss this mark (3rd times the charm!) and sometimes they exceed this mark. For example, they were the first company with a suite of products that were bundeled together called office. And it was priced at a point that was below what it cost to get the pieces from a competitor. We can argue all day as to which product was technically better, but what cannot be argued is that the combination of price/features hit the mark. Hence Office dominating its market.
They realized that the user experience created a high barried to entry for new products, and a high barrier to exit for the user.
Bottom line, people care about what gets them most of the way there at a price that most can afford. MS hit that mark.
Yes, most MS products piss me off many times is not so subtle ways. But they get the job done. I can't think of any SW that doesn't piss me off in subtle ways (open source or otherwise).
Don't forget that Mozilla is descended from Netscape, and is anything but a "me too" IE clone.
If Firefox were reverse engineered from IE, we wouldn't be using it.
I have noticed that the teacher's computers where I am attending are loaded with spyware. They were all using Internet Explorer. A few switched over to Firefox right after I told them MSIE lets spyware in. But most couldn't care less. Finally, I found something that is getting the others to switch over. I ask them "Would you use a web browser created by a convicted monopolist?" They always say "No." Then I tell them they are using one (Internet Explorer). This gets there interest and then I get them to download and switch over to Firefox.
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It's funny about Microsoft releasing products for its customers. I look at my laptop...
Xp has this nice little feature called offline files. I figure, cool, I hate the briefcase as I have to update it specifically myself. I set it up, and lo and behold, it syncronizes. Excellent! Go on a brief jaunt with it away from home, and my fiance wants to use my laptop. Ok. Lemme set her up an account, too. What's this? Offline files trying to syncronize?
Dispite being a "multi user operating system", Microsoft failed to tell the Offline Files aspect of the system that Different Users might want to syncronize Different Things. I had to turn off 'fast user switching' so that I could turn on offline files, and yet it's just going to syncronize the same damn files. Perfect.
This isn't the only aspect that I've run up against, but it is my biggest gripe. If they released the product for customers, then they would've finished this feature as it should be implimented. As it is, they simply released it for profit, and because they felt they could.
"Mozilla Chairman Speaks on Open Source/Microsoft"
Mozilla chairman? Who's he? Ohhh MITCH KAPOR!?!?! The guy who developed Lotus 1-2-3!!!
I can already see a Slashdot headline from 20 years in the future. "Gates Foundation Chairman Speaks at AARP Convention."
Insert witty sig here.
open source software is inherently more secure and any problems that do come up will be fixed quickly.
I get sick of this claim as well. Open Source is neither a magic bullet for quality nor security. A project being open source guarantees nothing. I can point you at a thousand open source projects on freshmeat or sourceforge that are either crap, insecure, or both.
Firefox will most likely be more secure than IE even with similar market share, but that will be more to do with being engineered with security closer to mind (not a product of open source, more so of the developers who decided to work on it), and yes it will probably be slightly better at producing patches for problems, but that will be because it is popular with developers as well as users - and yes, open source is responsible for assisting there, but so is the actual quality of the Firefox codebase.
The key here is that it is not "an Open Source project" that is the key to quality and security, but rather the fact that Open Source projects are in the market for developers as well as users, and hence "a popular Open Source project" is the thing to look for. Even then that's no guarantee, but it is progress.
Jedidiah.
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before i start my argument, here's my disclaimer: .
- i use firefox for all my browsing needs, on both linux and windows, been using firefox since it was in all its previous avatars - firebird, phoenix, mozilla, netscape...yawn, and the umpteen names. happy the way it handles things.
- i switched from thunderbird to opera 'cos thunderbird doesnt have a decent mbox import utility, and although complicated - opera mail is really cool - with plenty of shortkeyys to work with.
- i have a relatively decent config - amd 64 3000+, asus k8n, 512mb pc3200 ddr, geforce 2 gfx, soundblaster, 160 gb sata hdd - so its not like the machine might be an impediment for smooth running of firefox
------------------------here goes----------
- i have praised firefox enough to many people, i have evangelised firefox in browsing centres, replaced IE on many desktops at my friends and relatives' place. so why always, only talk good about firefox? there should be a fair share of critical reviews too! i have a few grouses to air, although, this is not the firefox forum.
1. the extensions management is really bad in firefox, i have been persistently having troubles with management of extensions - some of them refuse to get installed. changing versions - the plugins do not work on upgrading to the latest and the greatest release. the plugin/ extension writers are way too slow many times to upgrade. question of holes left by the extensions - lack of validity/ checks on the third party extensions. the recent inclusion of auto extension updation doesnt always work
2. bookmarks - why does the bookmark disappear when the browser crashes occasionally ? this is really hopeless. yes, i know there's an extension to fix it , bookmark backup - but why isnt it built in ? while browsing with multiple tabs, sometimes, the bookmarks in the toolbar act strange, and loads in a corner. the bookmark bugs have made many people go back to IE or switch to opera.
3. java is a pain - as it loads - is persistent. sometimes an impediment while opening multiple tabs. slows down the whole experience. the cache is like a giant leak. as you adblock many ads along the way - after a period the ad block management gets heavier, and confused sort of. (not really a firefox's fault)
these three have been a thorn in the flesh since ages. i will not be switching to any other browser, but its like - firefox isnt the undisputed king, nor is it enough to wish IE away. i hope that firefox writers will concentrate on fixing the issues - small number of manageable extensions, better plugin management, it has to be consistent even with point releases - apparently a large part of thier user-base - i am sure is an "intelligent" user - who upgrades with every point release - as shown by the large number of people who upgraded from preview release to final release. i hope mitch is listening!
Oh it basically is. The browser 'experience' is pretty much all the same with some subtle differences and varying degrees of clean and successful implementation. One is an Accord, the other is a Camry. But generally they both do the same things the same ways and what makes your experience hard or easy or interesting or valuable for one is equally true for the other. For something to be different it would have to function differently like the address bar in XP except after that the experience is still the same. If a 'browser' worked like the XP address bar and then popped the results in a translucent subwindow inside the application you were already using, that would be a differet experience, for example.
Stay tuned. Imminent increases in the price of fuel will focus your attention on eliminating the less valuable pieces of vehicle feature bloat.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
You do have a point. But the business world is also a form of meritocracy. It is just that /. geeks consider intelligence, consideration and community spirit worth merit.
The business world considers power, money and market share worth merit.
That is why meritocracies are flawed systems.
Who ends up with control all depends on who determines what is worth merit.
watashi wa bengoshi dewa arimasen!
I see a lot of IE versus Firefox comments, so I'll just get it out of the way now.
/leaner memory footprint, and renders CSS like a good webbrowser SHOULD, then firefox loses some of it edge.
Firefox renders CSS more consistently than IE. Developers like that.
Firefox uses about 2 mb less than IE while running in windows XP viewing the same slashdot thread.
Firefox allows window tabbing.
things not affected: Popup blocking, since SP2 does it. Plugins, since activeX is dead anyways.
Basically, if IE 7 uses tabs, has a smaller
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"They discuss, amongst other things, what it's like competing with Microsoft, and Firefox as an operating system."
Wow. I didn't think Firefox had reached the functionality of emacs yet...
Sendmail is like emacs: A nice operating system, but missing an editor and a MTA.
Rather, I'd say that bloat is a question of architecture. The command line isn't bloat, since all the commands are properly seperated from the shell itself. If every command was a part of the shell program itself, then it would be bloat, even though it has the exact same capabilities.
That's why Firefox may be called bloated -- not because all the extensions are included by default (which they, of course, aren't), but rather because all the extensions that you choose to include run as part of the same program. They become part of the firefox program itself when you install them. That is also why "It gets progressively more difficult to create seamless solutions". Since the extensions aren't properly seperated from themselves or the core Firefox program (the shell, if you will), it becomes ever more difficult to avoid conflicts.
That's also why a Linux distro is often considered less bloated than Windows, even though it's capable of so much more.
Note again the parallel of the UNIX command line. There are even more combinations of programs (extensions, if you will) in the command line than there are for Firefox, but that's not a problem since it has a better underlying architecture. Not really part of the subject, but I can't help noting how "light-weight" is such a relative word... Firefox may be light-weight compared to IE, the Mozilla suite, etc., but can you really call any program that takes 25 MBs of memory just to start of "light-weight"?I see this atrophic concept of Market and Share coming up again and again, let's break it down shall we?
The word marketshare doesn't exist, though lately (interestingly enough) has been in wide circulation regardless.
People seem to forget this marketshare was once comprised of two words, Market and Share.
The first word 'Market' signifies an environment predisposed to maximal choice for the benefit of consumers, and also for the vendors who enjoy a large turnout on market day. M$'s concept of Market would be like going to buy fruit and vegetables on market day to find only one vendor. Disturbingly the previous vendors now all seem to be stacking shelves and helping you put fruit in bags..
The second word here is 'Share'. In the context of Market Share is perhaps best considered as the verb to share. 'To share' implicitly means 'to distribute ownership of - to partake, enjoy or suffer with others'. This word 'share' M$ simply has no concept of - except of course in the context of 'shares' (distributed ownership of the company not the market).
M$ doesn't seek Market Share, perhaps they seek this new thing called 'Marketshare' i'm not sure. One thing certain is that they seek 'Monopoly', the word I think the parent's author was looking for. Monopoly is also made of two words, Mono (a prefex signifying 'One') and Poly (also a prefix/adjective meaning 'of many atoms or parts).
It all depends which you put in front of the other and whether there's air in between.
Try 'Sharemarket' and 'Share Market' for instance, get it?
Silly---
Firefox is not an operating system. EMACS, OTOH.....
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The reason that most geeks are going for the 'smaller team' is that they know stuff that J. Random End-Luser doesn't: they understand why Windows is a bad choice, and why [generic unix] is better.
Making a choice depends on the question being asked and for what criteria. It's difficult to say what is a "bad" choice and what is a "good" choice when there was no question/criteria stated.
Many of the Linux folks pick the platform (Linux) and see everything else as being built on top of it. Most users pick the applications and see the OS as just something necessary to get their applications to run. That is one of the main issues that some don't understand.
It gets progressively more difficult to create seamless solutions when there are nearly infinite possibilities for customization and tweaking of settings. There's a basic tension in principle that can never be completely resolved.
Sure, it can be resolved: through proper modular architecture. The UNIX shell and its associated commands have such an architecture.
Mozilla and all the other Windows refugees, on the other hand, don't. The fault isn't Microsoft's or Netscape's, though: their programmers are just victims of a bad education. They actually think that building huge object-oriented architectures in which thousands of classes live all within the same address space is a good idea. That sort of silliness started with Smalltalk, which taught a generation of programmers that putting thousands of classes together and coupling them as closely as possible is a good thing.
There is a non-bloated, good, modular architecture for GUIs out there somewhere, but someone yet needs to find it. Perhaps the first step is for people to start realizing that it is worth looking for it and that the kind of bloat represented by Mozilla, MS Office, and OpenOffice is not inevitable.