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IBM to Hire Firefox Developers
ta bu shi da yu writes "According to news.com, IBM has placed an employment ad for a developer who would be responsible for 'enhancing the Mozilla Firefox Web browser with new features complimentary to IBM's On Demand middleware stack.' IBM might possibly be interested in FireFox integration with their Workplace software. The job is not for just anyone, however, as those who wish to apply for the job should have some cred with the Mozilla development community."
One must realize that the fact that IBM is showing the desire to produce technology using Firefox is incredible. When BIG corporations decide to make Firefox specific technologies, we can finally say "Goodbye IE and Hello Firefox." I'm not saying IE is bad, do not get me wrong. However, this will make competition in the browser wars improve SUBSTANTIALLY, as now IE really does have competition. No matter what you said before, 9 times out of 10 a computer you go to will, no doubt, have Microsoft Internet Explorer installed and used as the default web browser. However, with IBM throwing itself to Firefox, this may improve Firefox's race in the browser wars - leading to more competition - leading to both IE _AND_ Firefox improvement. Who knows - we may even see IE for loonix soon, after all, everyone knows Microsoft is the king of business. Maybe not software/whatnot. But, they are the kings of business. They will make sure they have a share in every part of the market. Why do you think they g0t a huge part in APPLE/Mac? =P =P =P
This is the ideal situation for an open source project. Big companies who use the software all pay developers to add features that they need or want. It results in more development, more developers with experience, and ultimately makes the software better. Now, if we can just get a dozen more major companies to each hire a developer.
What he means is that if a "decision maker" (ie someone who doesn't have a fucking clue about IT, but is put in a position of choosing what to spend money on) picks for example Gnome/KDE+OpenOffice or Macs, and for some reason or another it all fucks up, he/she can get fired.
If however, the same retard goes with an exclusively Microsoft solution (as all people who don't know their job will do without hesitation), then they will NOT get fired, because for some reason it's OK for Microsoft products to fuck up because that's the way all computers behave, and it's the industry standard.
(yes, I've seen it happen a few times)
It makes sense to me. IBM Rapid Restore & Recovery, at least on my boxes, uses Opera as the browser. It makes good business sense to switch to an open source browser with reduced licensing costs, and it's good for their developers because they can customize the browser in the recovery partition specially for recovery needs. By using Firefox, IBM can also score points with the open source community... evidenced by this posting on slashdot.
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
It seems hireing Firefox developers is the new fad. Google just picked up a few, and if I rember correctly, there's no shortage of other companies who have one or two.
I know alot of slashdotters are scared of big companies trying to grab up peices of open source - but I for one think that this is an entirely good thing. It removes some of the nesesity of the end users to contribute (We alwas should, but some of us aren't skilled enough to code, or fiscaly stable enough to donate).
I'm just waiting for the news to break that Apple is looking for some firefox developers. I know they're using KHTML for Safari, at least at the moment, but Mozilla is, in many ways, a better browser - it just needs alot of polishing for the Mac. For example, Safari with 10 tabs, over 3 windows uses just over 30MB of ram, while Firefox eats up nearly that much with just about:blank open, and once you begin to actuly surf the web, it climbs sometimes 100MB of use.
The opinions in this post are ficticious. Any similarity to actual opinions, real or imagined, is purely coincidental.
Years ago many of us would cringe at the thought, but these days Big Blue has taken on a certain cachet with their cozying up with Tux, sharing the wealth (IP, source and application contributions) and profit(!!!)ing (which many of us don't mind, because it helps promote the cause.)
Sun has made FAR more source and application contributions than IBM, yet too many people act like a vindictive bratty bitch that the nicer you are to her the more she'll want to step all over you. Too many people "cringe at the thought" that Sun may (.. *gasp*...) "profit(!!!)" from anything remotely open-source.
Yes, kudos to IBM for having known how to manage the suckers with little gestures while they reek billions.