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Inquirer Blasts Mozilla for Microsoft-Style Bashing
DoubleWhopper writes "An article over at The Inquirer blasts Mozilla and "lead Firefox engineer" Ben Goodger for resorting to Microsoft-style bashing of Netscape for their recent flawed release. After posting excerpts if scathing comments from readers of Goodger's own blog, the author comments, "I wonder why should companies contribute or fund the Mozilla Foundation, if any derivative work or redistribution of the Foundation's browsers they create is going to raise the FUD mocking and anger of Mozilla's 'lead engineer'". This after Christopher Aillon's (of RedHat) reaction last week."
It doesn't have to be false to sow Fear, Uncertainty, or Doubt.
:)
There's another name for it when it's false. It's called Marketing^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hlying.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
There's a pretty big difference between bashing somebody for a malicious intent, and bashing someone because they need to get bashed. From the article, it seems like AOL put out a fixed version of the browser a day after he made the comments.
Perhaps if he'd known Netscape was going to put out a new browser, he'd have refrained from making those comments. But he probably didn't. Anyway, he was still correct (by a day)
Security is more important then people's feelings.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
... was hardly wrong. Here it is, verbatim from his blog:
If security is important to you, this demonstration should show that browsers that are redistributions of the official Mozilla releases are never going to give you security updates as quickly as Mozilla will itself for its supported products.
Now, if it is true that Netscape is a "redistribution" of Firefox (Netscape says it is), its only fair to comment that if FF is updated, it will be some time before Netscape is. I wouldn't call it Microsoft-style bashing.
I don't want to read
It doesn't matter if it's true, if it's neither relevant or nor politically expedient for him to make the remarks. I'm not sure what it gets the Mozilla project as a whole.
See, this is one of the perils of individual/employee empowerment through blogs: yes, they give you a unique voice (and I do enjoy most blogs at Mozillazine, especially Dave Hyatt's), but, like it or not, there is a point at which what is written in a blog can cross the line, and become detrimental to the company or organization for which the person in question works.
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
This was taken out of context.
8 .html
Ben was likely annoyed about Netscape.com's alert about Firefox 1.0.4 being out of date. The alert told users to install 8.0 which was based on Firefox 1.0.3 which had securtiy issues.
Netcape.com has resolved the issue of telling Firefox users to update their browser.
Asa's post about the alert with screen shot.
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/00817
These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based upon the order I joined. -Homer Simpson
From TFA:
The Mozilla Foundation got in touch with me to let me know that Ben Goodger currently is not an employee of this organization, something I've heard before. [...] It shouldnt be surprising then that due to Goodgers past at the Foundation and his involvement in leading the Firefox browser development, his words are often misinterpreted as representing the project.
When an open-source project grows popular (and therefore its community gains some power) the press will begin to pay some attention and publicizing quotes and statements. Unfortunately, the press usually represents any community as monolithic entity. Often, it's not such a big problem, but here Mozilla is competing with giant corporations and so the press tends to equate the mozilla community with a corporation.
Goodger make a perfectly valid statement which reflects his viewpoint of the Mozilla project. However, Goodger isn't a paid employee of the Mozilla Foundation. He is basically a highly involved community member. If the Register wants to report on his opinions, that's fine, but please don't presume that he is speaking for the community or the Mozilla Foundation.
Well, as a writer for the Inq, I can say that as far as I have seen, the answer is zero. We get nasty letters all the time, but nothing ever went to court, at least that I can recall.
Then again, what does suits have to do with anything? Does getting sued make a company bad? That would mean car companies must be evil because they get sued all the time, same with IBM. Now, the flip side of that arguement is that people suing must be right and viruous, so that would make SCO a champion of the truth, eh?
-Charlie
Something can be legal and moral and STUPID. Stating a truth isn't always smart or even necessary. For example, I don't go up to handicapped people and say "Pardon me, but you have no legs." Mainly because it accomplishes nothing.
When one feels compelled to make criticisms about something, one might question what the motivation is. Self-aggrandizement generally isn't be best one. In this case, no one using Firefox or Mozilla did so after seriously questioning Netscape. Netscape mainly sucks. Anyone reading his article would almost certainly 1) know this, and 2) agree. So what did he accomplish? No one was educated. No one was swayed. Not only that, his comments have been revealed as rather disingenious, being that the bugs are Firefox/Mozilla's to begin with.
Bottom line, he made himself look like a complete ass without accomplishing anything. Yes, as we all know and you really don't need to remind us, the 1st amendment protects his rights, but doesn't protect him from being an ass.
If security is such a concern, how come I keep clicking the "Check now" button for updates on my plain old 8.0 install and it hasn't informed me of an 8.0.1 update?
If security is such a concern, how come I keep clicking the "Check Now" button for updates on my Firefox 1.03 install, and that still hasn't told me about 1.04?
Want to know why? Apparently because those idiots at Mozilla have blocked old Firefoxes from accessing updates.mozilla.org. Unfortunately the effect of that is that they can't find the Firefox update either. This does not imply to me that Firefox is more trustworthy than Netscape.