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Firefox Exec Says Windows Bundling Is a Bad Idea
eldavojohn writes "The Firefox executives say they don't want to be bundled with Windows. Firefox architect Mike Conner also said this of Opera, 'Opera's asserting something that's provably false. It's asserting that bundling leads to market share. I don't know how you can make the claim with a straight face. As people become aware there's an alternative, you don't end up in that [monopoly] situation. You have to be perceptibly better [than Internet Explorer].' He also told PCPro that they are worried about becoming the next monopoly just like Microsoft is now."
what's even good about windows, except that you can play some shitty games on your pirated copy?
Smile, don't click...
Kind of interesting how he says bundling does not lead to market share advantages. I wonder what he thought about IE being bundled with Windows? Didn't he think that was a bad idea? And if bundling doesn't lead to any advantages, what would the objection to IE bundling be?
I think Mozilla in a monopoly situation would be an interesting case study because it would be completely unique - somehow it manages to dominate market share, and yet its competitors can copy any of its features or redistribute their own flavor of the same product?
Is a monopoly even possible for an open source company? Is a monopoly possible for anyone possible when everyone is using a share-and-share-alike license like the GPL?
"Bundling" is a lie. OEM manipulation and technical sabotage are the truth. Calling Mozilla a "Monopoly" is just plain stupid.
So bundling doesn't provably affect market share? For example a certain operating system comes to mind.
On the other hand I can well understand they wouldn't want to be bundled with the operating system of the beast.
Mozilla execs have absolutely no business-saavy or sense. Are they joking? They couldn't have a monopoly considering their business model. Their product is free, and does not prevent competitors from entering the market. Someone in Mozilla's PR department needs to shut these clowns up.
Similes are like metaphors
Opera's asserting something that's provably false. It's asserting that bundling leads to market share. I don't know how you can make the claim with a straight face.
"...they are worried about becoming the next monopoly just like Microsoft is now."
I'm not sure how either of these statements can be made with a straight face.
First of all, how are browsers being measured in terms of market share? What happens when there are multiple brands installed in the same seat? How about VM images?
And how twisted is logic of "we don't want to be offered with the most dominant OS ever produced because we may become the most dominant browser, which would be bad"...?! What's up with that?
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
Tell that to anyone who refers to the blue 'E' as "The Internet".
TODO: Something witty here...
If being better than IE at the same price (free) leads only to a 20% marketshare, then to me this *strengthen* the argument that bundling is an effective way to assert a monopoly, not disprove it.
Beside given the size of Firefox or Opera, users on dialup may feel quite annoyed by having to download them..
Like MS or not, bundling has made MS the company they are today, with more than enough money to pay fines from those who object... as for Mozilla becoming the next big monopoly, they are getting ahead of themselves. They need to keep doing their good work to keep growing the business... dream big, but keep doing the little things... they have along way to go
More like the Mozilla folks are lacking some strategic business sense and they made a statement that is either wrong or could be construed as such.
That wouldn't surprise me one bit, but then the Mozilla Foundation is not exactly a business powerhouse. They're bound to make mistakes like these. No need to go berserk with the "M$ IS TEH GHEY" routine. No one is dumb enough to believe that you can make a monopoly with free software.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
I Believe Conner's somewhat contrary to himself in his overall viewpoints. He claims that one of the challenges of Opera is that it is a bit to technical and "gets in the way," implying that it is geared towards a more technical user. However, I am not aware of that many non-technical users who go out looking for alternative browsers.
My own experience thus far has been that without bundling Firefox, it is primarily technical users who are encouraging the non-technical to actually use it. I know my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, etc. all generally use whatever comes with their computer, which is Internet Explorer. They knew nothing about Firefox until I heavily promoted it and provided easy to access download links for them. This was only done because I grew tired of trying to explain why they kept getting infected with malware and viruses through IE. Most did not even know it is possible to browse the web with anything else.
By bundling an alternative, the masses have access to choice. I don't agree with Conner that we should simply expect people to want to go out and research and naturally find Firefox. Bundling does not imply stuffing an alternative down someones throat. It merely provides an easy mechanism towards an alternative. And for the non-technical, just awareness of an alternative is a huge win.
Bundling isn't the biggest reason IE users switched to IE, it was because IE4 was better than Netscape Navigator. I'm writing big and long posts about Vista being better than Ubuntu, and I think that it is, but I would never in my right mind use IE7 over Firefox. Although, frankly, right now my favorite browser is Google Chrome. In any case, this isn't like 1994 when people did not know how to download software. Right now, people download stuff all the time, from chat programs to games and utilities, and wallpapers, songs, and more. None of that is bundled, but people manage fine. Same thing with browsers.
I mean, Paint is bundled with Windows, but that hasn't stopped anyone from making their own paint programs, now has it?
This is my sig.
...users of the Windows version. It's certainly not all the Mac and Linux Firefox users. For the typical "big-blue-e = Internet" household, if any of them get Firefox, it's because their tech family member hooked them up with it. You could, in a sense, say that Firebox was "bundled" for these types of households.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
If Mozilla were to end up with 95% of the market like IE once had, Opera would no doubt accuse them of price dumping. Not to mention going after them as a non-profit saying that they are a sneaky business masquerading as a non-profit a la the "Church" of Scientology!
I used to like Opera, but they just strike me as a pack of whiny bitches complaining about how it is unfair that Microsoft is so successful. It should be disconcerting to the regulators in the EU that Firefox is also better off, Safari is probably there too and Chrome is also in a position to move past Opera in marketshare. The reason, I think is simply that Gecko and WebKit have become incredibly powerful and between them and IE's rendering engine for desktop Windows developers, who needs a fourth?
Able to be proven.
What's with all the unsourced PCPro stories lately? Now the architect for FIREFOX, posterboy of the open-source world, is giving an exclusive interview to anyone?
after all, look how miserably microsoft failed trying to dent netscape's marketshare when it started bundling internet explorer with windows
will anyone ever take netscape down as top dog of the browser wars?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I agree with the majority sentiment here - bundling definitely helps market share, but with regards to the anti-trust stuff, how exactly do you decide what to bundle?
If the logic of "IE has too much market share, we should bundle other Browsers to compensate" is used, then surely we shouldn't bundle the other popular browsers, rather we should bundle the ones with almost no market share since they need it the most?
Of course, that's a ridiculous argument, but I can't really find a way to justify installing Firefox and MAYBE Opera without installing Lynx and a few other obscure browsers. Where do you draw the line? Who decides what % market share a browser must have before it's forced to be bundled within an OS?
And is anyone going to tell Apple that Safari needs some competition on OSX?
No
Way to miss the issue there, PC Pro.
The courts have found that the bundling of MSIE is anti-competitive and in violation of antitrust laws. Just how would bundling Firefox on Windows remove MSIE from the base sysem? Oh, I see, it wouldn't.
Look if the remedy for anti-competitive and predatory business practices is to remove MSIE, then just remove it. It doesn't matter how many other similar applications are pre-installed, when it is the presence of MSIE, not the absence of other applications, which is in violation of the law.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
'Opera's asserting something that's provably false. It's asserting that bundling leads to market share.
Go on then. Prove it.
there are millions of people in each country that have NO idea of what does even a 'web browser' mean. for them, they open up windows, and then connect to 'internet'. internet explorer is 'internet' for them. leave aside trying out new 'browsers' ...
and no, you cant discount these people. for, these are the masses.
Read radical news here
They're already out shilling for fun and profit. Expect a few more to jump in shortly.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Sadly he is correct about IE being better than netscape at one point in time. Netscape after being bought by AOL went down the tubes and IE was one of the best that was available for Windows in my opinion. Unfortunately there are still a few sites that do not work in firefox for me and I have to suffer through IE, but other than that I never use it anymore.
Vista for some uses (users) is better than Ubuntu. There are games that do not run on Ubuntu, I cannot easily update my blackberry (without hacks anyway) on Ubuntu. I still have to dual boot my laptop for a few things. It doesn't mean that Vista is a superior operating system, it just means for somethings/people it is better. If I get marked troll so be it.
I would like to see the EU or some other entity force Microsoft to develop a package manager. The first time you start up Windows and you connect to the internet it asks you which browser you'd like to download and install.
MSIE has the largest installation base because MS Windows has the largest installation base. If you don't think that this constitutes a biasing force, you are not thinking... and you are certainly not a Web developer who has had to deal with MSIE 5 and 6.
MS Paint is next to useless. Mentioning it does not support your position. MS Notepad has not stopped people from using real editors, or MS Word, either.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
Access costs are a big part of value. I know many users who simply use what is easily available to them.. And the thought of seeking out and installing an application is daunting... Anyone who thinks bundling an application will not increase market share is simply misinformed.
Let's face it, MS realized they missed a market (the internet) and leveraged Windows to take it over by bundling IE, destroying the non-free browser market. IE won the browser wars because users associated it with the internet, and since they already "had the internet", they had no reason to look for another one. Whether IE was better than Netscape is debatable, in my opinion.
Firefox has made inroads because tech savvy people finally had something they could evangelize, backed by an organization that realized it had to market their browser to users, and brought with it real innovation that was relevant to the users: addons.
IE is now clearly inferior to every other browser, but its share won't wane as quickly as it waxed. Should MS give up on IE? I think so... they've shown they have little incentive or ability to make significant improvements to what a browser is supposed to do: correctly implement web standards. Will they? Doubtful, until MS decides that playing in the browser market is a drain. Which they've already hinted at.
Because I also say that I think Ubuntu is better than XP. I like Ubuntu/Kdevelop for C++ better than XP/Visual Studio 2005. But, with VS2008 and Vista, its a different story. For me, I'm into desktop applications development, so I prefer Vista. It's pretty simple.
But if you wanted to just throw up some web pages with a bit of Java, NetBeans on Ubuntu would suit you fine, along with MySQL as a back end.
IE is a good product. IE4 was a GREAT product, but, as of IE6, I think FireFox is taken the lead, but right now, Google Chrome is my favorite.
That's the other thing too. Instead of saying, "this or that is the BEST", I say, "this is or that is my favorite for what I do." It's less confrontational and allows people to exhange knowledge of what they prefer, so that other environments can steal ideas from each other.
This is my sig.
When a Open Source product becomes a monopoly, that is not really a monopoly. Because it is open source any person and change or add anything they want to it. "Monopolies are thus characterized by a lack of economic competition for the good or service that they provide and a lack of viable substitute goods" Open Source allow for a huge number of viable substitutes. Also it take "goods" out of the economic area and puts it into the technical area. For the user there is always choice with Open Source.
I know you're joking, but it's been my observation that the opposite is true. If you say anything at all bad about Microsoft, no matter how true, you're modded "troll" or "flamebait".
OTOH look at the post you responded to: 2, interesting. And your post modded 2, insightful despite the fact that it is so obviously incorrect or the GP wouldn't have a 2.
There are a lot of people working at Redmond, they're all logged in to slashdot and many of them have mod points. I expect this (my) comment to be downmodded, but you never know.
Note: Uncyclopedia is "the content-free encyclopedia" and when they quote Gates as saying "Netcraft confirms it - Slashdot *is* filled with Linux fanboys" you're NOT supposed to take it seriously.
Free Martian Whores!
Maybe they want to make an application that gives you the chance (when you click for the first time the IE icon) to choose between more than two flavors of browsers you want to install, like an automated process...
For my dad's machine, I just delete the quicklaunch icon for IE, install FF, and tell him "just click this orange and blue thingie instead of the blue E. It's the same thing". Works fine.
Statement 1: Bundling does not lead to market share.
Statement 2: If we are bundled, we may become a monopoly.
Statement 2 seems to directly contradict statement 1...
I can't even get myself to read the article when I see quotes like this:
"It's asserting that bundling leads to market share. I don't know how you can make the claim with a straight face."
And if anyone falls for this, they need to look in the mirror and ask themselves, who they'll be suckered by next.
When you own the distribution channel as Microsoft does, bundling is _instant_ market share. And it helps when your have a very ignorant customers who take little to no time to try another product to see if it is better. _Better_ doesn't matter to most Windows users because they are mostly have very little understanding of the thing to begin with. And don't tell them that, they think they know everything there is to know about computers. After all, they know how to use MS Office. IMO.
LoB
With apologies to Loctus. I just thought more people should read it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'd love to see windows have a file manager that doesn't require internet explorer as a nice start. I don't know if that will ever be technically feasible for both political and technical reasons, but that'd be a bigger issue.
It's not the bundling that people want, it's the unbundling that people want more. So that you don't HAVE to have IE. This would of course cause MS some difficulties with the WGA program/active X as well.
That or something that says "pick your browser" and provides some choices. However, I don't know how reasonable this is either.
... a virus doing just that?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
did you ever consider that bundling firefox might keep people from using firefox as people upset with firefox being forced on them begin to hate it, remove it, and use IE instead?
I worry about being chased, held down, and gang-raped by supermodels and tennis stars
Actually Netscape killed itself.
Netscape 3.0 was about even with IE3 in terms of crappiness.
But Netscape Navigator 4.x was worse than it's competitor. It was flaky and crashed a lot.
Then it took ages for the Netscape team to come up with something better - they threw out everything and tried to rewrite this Mozilla thing from scratch. Fine.
Trouble is there was a LONG gap between Navigator 4.x and something significantly less crap. It took them YEARS.
Netscape Navigator 4.08 => 1998, Navigator 4.8 => 2002. 4 years and that code branch did not really improve significantly.
As for the Mozilla branch? Netscape 6 and 7 aka Mozilla 0.6 to 1.0 were not worth using. Bloated and buggy.
Honestly, when did Mozilla actually start to be good enough for "Aunt May" to use? I'd say maybe sometime after 2005? 2006?
Firefox/Mozilla was leaking tons of memory for ages (still does sometimes). Even though IE also leaks memory in some cases, the thing is you can easily start multiple instances of IE whereas it's hard to do the same with FF/Mozilla. I remember Mozilla and Opera giving me memory consumption problems even in 2005.
They only started making significant inroads in fixing memory leaks and other problems _recently_.
So what was Joe Sixpack to use between 1998 and 2006? Mozilla was too crap. Opera? Opera used to either cost money, or be ad ridden (till 2005).
IE was crap, but it was the least crap choice for most people.
Yes bundling of IE hurt Netscape - especially in the dial up days - try downloading Netscape 6 over a 33.6 modem. But the main problem was the early "Mozilla" Netscapes weren't worth downloading even if they were quarter the size.
Because if it has no effect on monopoly, then Mozilla would become the monopoly product if they WEREN'T bundled in Windows.
If the Eu wants to force MS to bundle additional software into their OS, then fine, the EU should also be paying for the extra space that software takes on my HD. I charge a reasonable rate of $5/megabyte. For all those who complain about big-gov't and their hand in the cookie-jar - this is it. This is a company, Opera, crying to the gov't because Opera failed at their product. How did they fail? Look at FireFox 20% market share, and growing. Look at Opera. Make a great product, get people aware and you will have the market-share.
I use FireFox, I love FireFox - but if I didn't why should I have my HD congested with their install because the gov't said so?
I do not support "The Man". I also do not support your irrational stupidity
I mean logic would dictate that if he doesn't believe in bundling affecting share, and both products are free, and Firefox only has 20% of the market- he must therefore believe that users are choosing IE over FF, right? That is absurd.
If Mozilla wants Firefox to be the #1 web browser but they don't want it to be bundled with Windows how would a person with a new computer get FF?
Obviously they'd have to use IE or Opera which would then decrease Firefox's market share since the competition's browser has to be used to get on the web and then download FF.
"It's asserting that bundling leads to market share. I don't know how you can make the claim with a straight face," he said.
Maybe because it's true? In fact the converse boggles my mind. How can you say, with a straight face, that Internet Explorer would have significant market share if it wasn't bundled with Windows?
"'Bundling' that forbids vendors from including other programs is where M$ falls foul of the market and law."
Law yes. Market no. The market has no preferences toward stability or growth in any long-term situation or biases towards any greater good. The market is an unthinking non-entity that is invoked to gloss over ideas and trends which economists don't fully understand.
Because being open source, if they BECOME dominant, they actually DO stifle innovation and crush other players since free
They will crush other *commercial* player. Since it's difficult to compete with a product costing 0$.
AND dominant will stop other free open source browsers from getting a foothold.
That won't stop it from being over turned by other opensource browser.
As long as the new contender has more interesting new features, it will replace the older one.
See the number of time one dominant platform got replaced by another dominant platform in the Linux world :
- On a small scale, FireFox itself is newer project whose popularity displaced Mozilla's previous full-blown internet suite. Before it, Mozilla (the internet suite) was what most of the linux people were using, but the modularity of Firefox got it popular enough to replace.
- Gnome is currently the most popular environment, after a period when KDE was the most popular one.
- DBus is the current message passing system after DCOP was employed in the previous KDE.
- CUPS replaced LPR, GStreamer is gaining mind share compared to Xinelib, phonon and pulse audio replaced esd and artsd.
- At the begining XPDF was the single best thing for pdf files in linux, now each desktop environment has a better integrated viewer.
- Same also for the most popular file system or other component.
Some time component are just replaced by newer projects of the same guys (mozilla -> firefox, artsd -> phonon), some time other projects gain more mindshare (xinelib -> gstreamer) or sometime new common solution emerge as a way to collaborate between lots of different incompatible projects (DBus).
FireFox will end up being replaced, eventually, if some day some developer got some better idea.
As Firefox is open source, that better idea won't have problems fighting lock-in : anything that the next best-thing might be lacking, the developers can fix by getting inspiration reading the Firefox source code.
Currently, what prevents most users to switch to something else (say from Firefox to Google Chrome) is the huge collection of very useful plugins they use everyday. Technically, nothing prevents developer to either making a firefox-compatible plugin layer in Chrome that could at least run the most popular plugins.
Or, using the plugins source, make Chrome-compatible version of the most popular one (as an example, developers have made an AdBlock for Konqueror).
Meanwhile, with a commercial monopoly like IE that would be impossible. Anything that doesn't follow a well documented standard, can't be replicated in a potential concurrent. Thus the problem Firefox users have when finding a website which require IE-specific stuff like ActiveX.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I'm considering moving my laptop back to Vista because extended desktop support is about a billion times better in Windows world than it is in x11. Running the latest Xorg-7.4, if I plug in a second monitor using XRandR support, I can clone desktop only. Sure, theoretically it's possible to do an extended desktop, but when I try I get a maximum screen size error. To get around that, I could set a virtual screen size in my xorg.conf file, but even then, what if I want a different resolution for my TV or my projector or my external monitor? XAA is a big kludge and right now is x11 is really holding Linux back. For the record, to do all of the above in Vista, all I have to do is plug in a second monitor and then it all just works. Really, the only thing holding me back right now from switching is all of the work I put in to get my laptop fully functional on Gentoo.
I think it would be interesting to see what would happen if Microsoft bundled Firefox with Windows. 90% of the browser war wasn't based on who had the better browser, it was about controlling the home page. When it all comes down to it, I don't really think MS would care if everyone used Firefox. What they probably care most about is when people first start up their browser...it opens to a page controlled by Microsoft. It amazes me that so many people never change their home page.
So let's say Microsoft throws in the towel and bundle firefox with windows...and have its home page set to msn.com. It would really be a win/win for Microsoft.
My observation is that people who use IE use Microsoft's search quite a bit and people who use Firefox use Google more.
Microsoft might actually be better off to bundle Firefox and control the home page.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
Knowing that water flows downhill and people quickly tire of struggling against technical coercion, Microsoft leverages their OS monopoly to guarantee IE gets installed - bundled or not.
OS needs to be patched? Better have IE on hand.
Imagine the coordinated effort required to bring about the situation where your browser is necessary for the vast majority of PCs to 'safely' connect to the internet.
Psychopathic control freaks.
Enterprise management tools -- not bundling. Lots of IT admins and managers I speak with would love to make Firefox (or something other than IE) their enterprise browser, but they can't unless they have a good way of managing in the enterprise. Firefox's lack of enterprise management tools is a glaring strike against what is otherwise a far superior product compared to IE.
Between the two of them, I'd bet a pretty penny that Mitchell's thoughts are going to be the more decisive in forming Mozilla's official stance.
the next person i see who writes "correlation does not equal causation"
it's a mindless kneejerk reply, and it insults the intelligence of anyone reading your words
1. it announces with smarmy glee a concept that your audience already knows
2. a lot if not most times correlation does actually reveal causation
i wish i had the power to singlehandedly wipe that meme from every reply i ever read a again. it's an insulting mindless remark that pisses people off. next time, just explain why you believe what you believe about cause and effect, and leave out the patronizing smarmy "correlation!=causation" please
no, it does not come as an amazing mind blowing observation when you point it out for the 10,000th time, can you believe it?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Netscape was already a freshly killed corpse before AOL's purchase. Remember that IE 4 was already out for over a year before AOL got involved, and IE was galloping into a strong lead.
Bundling wasn't the reason for Netscape's death. It was Netscape's incompetence and lack of focus (read some of jwz's material from the time as the company was overtaken by suits), coupled with the fact that Microsoft could spend lots of money on something that really made them no revenue, while Netscape's ability to do that dried up as their server products lost traction.
The "Mozilla Brand" has been based upon "being the better browser because they are forced to compete since they aren't bunlded". If they suddenly go "Hell yah, bundle Firefox on everything!" then that goes away.
Beyond that I believe Conner's has a fundamental point that bundling in general has a negative effect on competition. It doesn't matter if if the the best or worst browser in the world was bundled with every desktop, phone, and widget. If it is everywhere, it becomes hard to compete against. That does not totally kill competition but it is a hurdle to jump over for anything new.
Mod down.
Considering the fact that they stole 21% of Microsoft's market share, encouraged new competitors and continues to grow new market share based on a grassroots campaign and Google backing, I'd say their track record refutes your statements quite effectively. Until you can show how Microsofts shrinking market share stolen by Firefox was not a direct affect of their growth, I'd say your argument is rendered inneffective.
BZZZT. Thanks for playing. However many MS Windows machines Firefox may or may not be on, 100% of those machines still have MSIE. That's what the anti-trust violation was about.
So as far as the anti-trust remedies are concerned, nothing has changed. As far as security is concerned, nothing has changed. You can run Firefox or Opera, but when another application hits an embedded script or URL, it's MSIE that gets fired up and then exploited.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
The courts have found that the bundling of MSIE is anti-competitive and in violation of antitrust laws.
In the US antitrust trial, the DOJ files four charges against Microsoft for violating sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act: illegal monopoly maintenance, foreclosing Netscape, attempting to monopolize the browser market, and illegaly tying IE to Windows.
The original trial judge, Jackson, found them not guilty on the charge of foreclosing Netscape, based in part on Jim Clark's testimony that Netscape was able to distribute 160 million copies of Netscape during the time period in question. Jackson found Microsoft guilty on the other three charges.
The appeals court upheld the conviction on monopoly maintenance, vacated the charge of attempting to monopolize the browser market (because the DOJ did not define the browser market properly) and remanded the charge of tying IE to Windows back to the lower court to be retried using different standards. The DOJ and Microsoft then settled the case without re-trying the tying charge.
So while MS was once convicted of an illegal tie, this conviction was overturned and never re-tried. So Microsoft's bundling of IE with Windows is not currently considered to be illegal.
User maintains more than a dozen sockpuppet accounts on Slashdot.
It's a bit hard to not allow them to bundle IE at all. Html/css/javascript interpreter and renderer is needed or useful in many applications. If a desktop environment doesn't provide one by default, then it's just creating problems for developers. Developers can choose alternatives when developing programs of course, but if you don't want to ship with an extra browser/library, then a standard browser that you know exists on a platform save your day.
You can make policy to force MS to hide IE and force pre-bundling of other browsers. But you certainly can't force them to exclude it completely.
GNOME have their own. KDE have their own. May be they force MS to hide the IE interface from users by default, but the library is certainly left to stay.
Just because something is a monopoly doesn't make it bad. Democrats have a majority monopoly of the House, Senate, Executive branch and Supreme Court. Are you saying Democrat ideology is bad? Nationalized health care would also be a monopoly... A monopoly is bad only when it fails to address the needs it serves. Not just because it exists.
Well actually, I wrote an article a LOOOOOONG time ago to do just that... remove internet explorer. It's no longer online but these guys mirrored part of the article. http://prxbx.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=191
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
I think maybe it's still not clear what he's saying. Let's try this:
If bundling is what leads to market share, how did Firefox get 20%?
See what he's trying to say? Why is it so hard for people to get this?
There are two ways that bundling does not lead to market share. Here:
He didn't say these things in the clearest way. Certainly what he said was easily misinterpreted. But he can be reasonably understood to mean this, especially in context. Sure he could have spoken better, but, geez, let's be active readers and mentally insert some adverbs until the quote makes sense.
Are you saying Democrat ideology is bad? Nationalized health care would also be a monopoly... A monopoly is bad only when it fails to address the needs it serves. Not just because it exists.
I'll say it: [ahem] The monopoly of the Democratic party, and any possible implementation of nationalized health care, are bad.
The reason is that the Democratic party are just as authoritarian and power-hungry as the Republican party; they're just leftists instead of rightists.
Convert FLACs to a portable format with FlacSquisher
yes, pirates have nothing to do with global warming. but including this correlation in with the sets of correlations we are talking about is insulting my intelligence, your intelligence, everyone's intelligence
so my assertion that correlation and causation are tightly bound is appropriate in situations where an intellectually honest, educated, prudent, and ideologically neutral person is making the link
i am automatically excluding all the idiotic correlations and causations, that are well outside an honest probability rating
i will underline my assertion with a dull overused weapon: occam's razor. i won't insult your intelligence and explain occam's razor for you, but i will assert that if correlation!=causation,for most intellectually honest sets of correlation, occam's razor would not be a useful dictum
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
With the same logic, every application should be removed from Windows. Media Player was removed, now IE... what's next? Maybe bundling the Windows Blackjack is unfair for Blackjack game markets? Paint? Disk defragmenter? Clock? Maybe even the whole Windows kernel should be removed from Windows?
I mean IE is awful but Windows has to have a browser, for god's sake.
When there is competition, and when you do not gain your "monopoly" position by abusing a different monopoly, you kinda deserve it for being good, if you happen to gain a monopoly position.
The Windows "monopoly" is built on a lack of competition when Windows was not yet the de facto standard for i386 machines. The Internet Explorer "monopoly" is based on the strong market position Windows has and being bundled with it. Neither position was earned. One simply fell to MS due to a lack of a competitor, the other was gained by leveraging another monopoly position.
Should FF become a leading browser (which I doubt, btw), it could only achive this position by being "the best" (whatever this would mean). There is competition, you have the free choice between a few browsers, and I can't see how they could abuse any other strong market position to use to their advantage.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
FF comes bundled in most Linux distros, and thats fine, bundle it all you want. I don't use it and want nothing to do with it. Could care less about its existence.
So the ff execs are right in this case, bundled and I still don't and wont use it.
Konqueror is all I use for a browser. Don't work in Konqi, too bad, I won't be back.
1311393600 - Back to Black
Law yes. Market no. The market has no preferences toward stability or growth in any long-term situation or biases towards any greater good. The market is an unthinking non-entity that is invoked to gloss over ideas and trends which economists don't fully understand.
The market isn't used to gloss over anything and it is not as ill defined as you suppose. The press and pundits do occasionally reference "the free market" in general to refer to the economy, but that's not what is going on here. A market is simply a category of product or service as defined by the customers and what options they have when trying to make a purchase or otherwise acquire a good. By law, once a market is dominated by one company or cartel, they cannot use that dominance to undermine competition for goods in other, preexisting markets.
There are two really common categories of abuses used to do this: price fixing and tying. The most common form of tying is bundling. Where most people seem to go wrong is thinking that tying in general or having a monopoly is illegal. Neither is the case. It is illegal to tie/bundle one product from a dominated market to another product in a separate, pre-existing market.
For example, suppose Firefox did gain monopoly influence on the Web browser market. What would that mean to them? Could they still tie Firefox to Google search by making it the default search option? Sure, since Google search is not their own product. Could they still provide Seamonkey which ties Firefox and Thunderbird? Sure, since they also offer Firefox as a stand alone browser. Could they still develop new features? Yes, but they do need to be careful about it. If they're creating features where there is a preexisting market for that function via a plug-in, Firefox developers would have to create it as a plug-in as well and offer it on even footing with other plug-ins. Further, they could not stop offering Firefox as a stand alone application and instead offer only the Seamonkey suite.
Markets aren't some black magic hocus-pocus. They are just who is buying what and what alternatives they have to pick from. Likewise antitrust laws are not too hard to understand. They just mean if you have a monopoly on something (overwhelming influence in a market) you can't use that influence to undermine competition in another market. Anything you do in those other markets has to be fair and anything your competitors can't do because they don't have a monopoly on something else, you can't do either.
In a way antitrust law is a victim of its own success. It does such a good job of motivating most companies to avoid undermining markets, most users simply assume the free market is operating in all markets and don't even understand the difference between a competitive free market and a market undermined by a trust.
This is a sig worthy statement!
Those [infamous] Mozilla claims are one of the reason it lost credibility in my eyes long ago. WTF is with this attitude?
Quick way to get 30% Funny 70% Troll: defend Opera browser on
The HTML rendering engine in Netscape 4.x is the WORST engine known to man.
Whoever made the decision to throw that garbage away and write Gecko needs to be congratulated.
Now if only Microsoft would realize how crap their own engine is and replace it with something else (written from scratch or grabbed from elsewhere)...
This guy at the Mozilla foundation is an idiot. It is because of Microsoft's bundling of IE with Windows that we have poorly designed websites that aren't standards compliant, and the reason web designers target IE and don't bother to make their site work with other browsers. Because "everyone has IE".
-- If we don't stand up for our rights, now, there will be no right to stand up for them later.
i am automatically excluding all the idiotic correlations and causations, that are well outside an honest probability rating
Who decides? You can get a lot of people arguing that violent videogames increase violent behavior in teens, and there are correlations to back that up. It's not an idiotic correlation because there's a working hypothesis as to why that might be the case. At the same time, using the correlation alone isn't viable because it ignores a whole lot of other variables. Obviously there's an increase in usage of violent video games, because they are relatively new. What else has changed in our society that could cause an increase in violent behavior? And then there's the question of direction: wouldn't violent people naturally choose to play violent video games?
See? Sometimes it's not black and white.
i will underline my assertion with a dull overused weapon: occam's razor. i won't insult your intelligence and explain occam's razor for you, but i will assert that if correlation!=causation,for most intellectually honest sets of correlation, occam's razor would not be a useful dictum
That's a pet peeve of mine, so I would really appreciate it if you did explain it to me. Let me give you a hint: if you think Occam's Razor says, "the simplest explanation is usually the correct one" you've been watching Contact, and you don't know what it actually says. Occam's Razor says nothing about the correctness of a statement, which invalidates your entire claim.
What Occam's Razor actually says is that entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity. If you have two hypothesis that give you the exact same predictions, but one of them is more complicated than the other, then you should use the simplest one because you lose nothing by doing so since the predictions are the same. The other one might be the correct one in terms of describing more accurately what is happening, but if you can't develop an experiment that would differentiate the predictions of the two theories, then there is no reason to assume the complex one is the correct one and you simplify things by choosing the simpler version.
Yeah, I like it for your average re-sizing (shrink/skew) and cropping. Pretty straightforward for the basics.
Have never mucked around with Photoshop or even the GIMP, though.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
As far as the main thrust of the topic, of course bundling helps--a lot--but maybe the exec just meant that bundling can't suppress good things forever...
Anyhow, the question of what to do if Firefox does gain a 2/3 market share is still valid (and even before that).
My hope is that more aspects of the Firefox browser can become or contribute to their own standards--and that Mozilla will itself adhere to them. XUL, the interface language used in the browser itself and extension building, might be such a candidate for standardization (or at least a subset of it), assuming other browser makers would be interested.
Perhaps there's a lesson somewhere with XBL, assuming it ever goes anywhere (the extensibility of XBL is great, but again, there should, I feel, be some standard for the more frequently recurring bread-and-butter requirement of describing browser elements, as XUL provides).
Likewise, it'd be great for XPCOM functionality to somehow become accepted as XBCOM (cross-browser). Perhaps FUEL API's could be joined with other browser makers' libraries into a standard, again assuming interest. At the very least, I hope other browser-makers-which-allow-extension-of-the-browser may agree to standardize on Mozilla's useful JavaScript module importation so that such code can also be reused cross-browser without modification.
One concern I have is with an existing attitude in Mozilla where repeated mention has been made by prominent Mozilla developers of a distinction between the web and non-web, and arguing against following standards which were conceived without the web in mind. While that may well be true, this can also set up a false dichotomy and introduce exceptionalism. If there is a non-web use for a technology (e.g., support for external DTDs in (especially document-centric) XML for simple localization), then there well is also a web-use. Likewise was such an argument against certain standards made toward not implementing DOM Level 3, even though parsing and serialization from or to strings or the DOM is a pretty basic requirement across browsers (and the API, as with the rest of the DOM, is not that terrible so as to make it impossible to work around, as we all do with levels 1 and 2 of the DOM). I hope such existing cross-browser issues can be addressed, even as new standards if need really be (again, without falsely assuming that non-web uses such as serializing to streams, etc., can't find web (or browser) uses and dumbing down the standards).
I'm also concerned with another topic impinging on the Mozilla-as-gatekeeper concern: modularity within Firefox itself. Firefox should, I feel, quickly make good on its plans to enhance its extension dependency system, so third parties can supply independent modules and have extensions automatically trigger such downloads upon installation. Otherwise Mozilla stays as the albeit friendly gate-keeper within the community (not to mention for other browsers) and either gets bloated or left insufficiently extensible. For example, for dealing with the sparseness of built-in JavaScript functions to handle many common tasks, while using an already familiar API, PHP.JS could eventually be made as such a module. Mozilla expressed openness to allow modules to be added, but it would, I feel, be more extensible and sustainable into the future (and not contribute to browser bloat), if the community "market" could more
... would not bundling threaten Mozilla's revenue stream? They get money from Google because of its high position as a default in their browser. If bundled by Dell, for example, or even by Microsoft, how much would Google pay Mozilla if the default search engine was MSFT's Live? Pre-installs could suck all their income away. It may even lead to defaults changing after "updates".
Maybe that was the Exec's point (did not RTFA).
I know you won't like this - I don't like that I have to do this, either, and frankly think it's ridiculous that there's not a point-and-click way to handle external monitors reliably - but assuming you have the extended resolution set properly in xorg.conf you can write some extremely simple scripts for your various external screen needs, and they work every time (unlike the randr tray program, at least in KDE.)
If I want to run my laptop through a 1024x768 projector, cloned, here is my script:
xrandr --output LVDS --mode 1024x768
xrandr --output VGA --mode 1024x768
xrandr --output LVDS --clone-of VGA
If I want to use the projector as an extended desktop, simply replace the "--clone-of" with "--left-of" or "--right-of". Of course, make sure if you have a randr system tray program running that it's not set to "Unify outputs" - that is the only setting in the randr tray program that will override these scripts (as far as I know, I haven't tried everything.)
If I want to run it through my external monitor, same thing, just change the resolution (the external monitor and laptop screen are both 1680x1050, which makes it easy... using different resolutions on each screen does work, though.)
So you figure out all the possible settings you want, put the scripts in /home/user/bin/, then make links from your quicklaunch menu (or from your main menu, however you like to do things like that.) If you need a new setting at some point later, just duplicate one of the scripts and change the resolutions you need.
Not as easy as just plugging it in and having it work, sure, but it does work - when you plug it in to something different, just click on the link to your script and it switches right away and should always go, unlike flaky GUI programs.
To reiterate - I think it is absolutely ridiculous that this is necessary to use multiple monitors. If the scripts are this simple, KDE or Gnome should be able to produce the same results on the fly, and we should at least be able to specify this ourselves using a GUI. The GUIs are there, sometimes, but don't do anything or don't work.
I think this is a kind of elusive logic/semantic puzzle. I would be a wizard if I could explain it to the people who aren't seeing it right off.
Let's give it a try.
First, you're right. Firefox gained market share by its bold merits. I totally agree. I mostly agree with your comment about IE being inferior and still having a huge market share, but I have to point out that IE at the outset was a fine competitor and would have gained ground on its own merits. Certainly not to the degree that it eventually did, though. And, yes, it was because of bundling (and protocol poisoning) that IE came to dominate the market. I'm with you on that.
The other gorilla, Netscape, would have done the same thing if they could, and it's my impression that they were acting similarly with regards to protocol "poisoning". I can't say "embrace and extend" exactly because they were seminal enough (despite earlier origins, Sir) that one would more appropriately say "create and extend". Anyway, not directly relevant. Back on topic.
So you can see now where I stand and I'll forego answering your questions about monopolies. Do let me know if you think I missed anything that needs addressing.
Now, here's the logic puzzle I'm talking about. Maybe we can look at it this way... If, back when, Dave Hyatt or Blake Ross and were asking you, "How do we get market share? Should we try to bundle?", how would you answer? You might think to yourself that bundling is a chickenshit way to get market share, that rather than forcing people, people should be given a choice, and that a browser should be able to commend itself based on its own merits (and that it should not seek to thwart interoperability for the sake of retaining market dominance; quite the opposite -- it should level the field by interoperating as much as possible, based on societal agreement (standards)). Woo! That's the ethical stance. So you say to them, "Bundling won't get you market share that won't also cost your soul".
Eventually they compete on features and win the browser wars, and interoperability wins, and the sun shines ever so brightly, and the evil of Angband is, if not banished, at least beaten back for the while. The Firefox kennelmasters rejoice in their glorious and just victory, and songs are sung of how market share was won not by the sinister forces of bundling but by honest Quality Application Design And Development (and a righteously frothing-at-the-mouth community), of how even the dark and powerful magic of bundling failed its corrupt wielders. No, bundling ultimately did not lead to market share for either the true and good victors or for the defeated powermongers.
Then the lords of Opera come to you, seeking council. "We need your advice. We must have more market share. Bundling is the way to get market share, is it not?"
And you answer, knowing what evil lurks in Opera's delusion-besotted, shortsighted plans, "I fear for your souls. No, bundling will not get you market share. Even with bundling you can lose market share. And even without bundling you can gain it. I can prove it -- look to the victory of Firefox." And someone hands you a lute from offstage and you burst out in song and revelers pass around a tray of tea and not tea.
Then a shrill little voice pipes up, "Yeah, but bundling sure does give you an advantage, don't it!" And the needles scratches off the record and everyone turns to glare at the Slashdot forum.
...after all, the EU spent ages pursuing MS over bundling not only IE but WMP too - for no apparent reason, according to FF.
It figures tho - he probably thinks that leaving your default browser settings at 'two clicks, all your passwords, fully displayed' is a good security configuration too.
Although this is all a bit surprising anyway - the way the FF users talk, everyone *in the world* is already using FF, aren't they? Just like Linux and Mac users, your world becomes everyone else's, whether they like it or not.
And this self-deception spreads - for instance, i couldn't post here without installing FF. Well done Slashdot, I guess your devs have blinkers on too. Why do I get the feeling I'm always arguing with Betamax users? Yes it's better, and yes, in the grand scheme of things, no-one uses it.
violence is trending down, not up. it has been trending down since the roman empire. once you realize that, linking violent videogames with real world violence is absurd. but there are a lot of historically mypoic people out there. every generation that has ever lived views its children as more violent than themselves, even though we're not wantonly crucifying and disemboweling neighboring tribes anymore. it's fauly measuring equipment, myopia, to assert violence is increasing. the existence of civilization allows us to air our differences with words, not swords. and civilization has been steadily growing for centuries
as for occams razor, anyone can assert a hypothesis gives a correct prediction. when of course, just as you say, testing it can be problematic. such that, the complexity of a hypothesis is pretty much all you have to judge: correctness of prediction is impossible to pin down. you can't measure correctness of prediction to the level of certainty you are depending upon in your argument
furthermore, the weaker the correlation, the more complex the hypothesis. if you wish to establish causation, this is unavoidable. saying that dwindling pirates leads to climate change requires an incredibly complex explanation, because the correlation is so weak: establish the mechanism. there is no mechanism. meanwhile, saying violent media leads to catharsis that results in less real world violence requires a simple explanation. the psychological mechanism can be readily appreciated. and so the correlation is strong. the bible is violent media. and reading the stories in that leads to psychological catharsis that means less real world violence. extrapolate from that ancient media to modern forms, and you understand why violence is so low nowadays as compared to precivilization
therefore, directly in line with occam's razor, as i asserted, correlation and causation being tightly linked makes occam's razor possible, since causation and correlation must be limited to simple explanations. what you say even supports this assertion, once you realize the assertion that the notion of a "correct prediction" is very fuzzy and mostly untestable. you even stated this yourself, without realizing the full implication thereof
look, if someone says a toast at a dinner party, and then another guy has a heart attack, correlation and causation are not valuable, because the explanatory mechanism for how cause and effect flows here is quite complex. meanwhile, if someone yawns, and then someone else yawns, correlation and causation are valuable to consider, since the explanation is a very simple psychological phenomenon. ie, occam's razor, as defined by you and understood by me, not defined by some contact movie watching simpleton you patronizingly labeled me as
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
IMHO, I believe a large majority is missing a *very* crucial flaw in the whole anti-bundling argument- the fact that nowadays, it is a necessity to have at least one bundled browser to a lesser degree.
Let's say you re-install Mac or Windows on a machine and start from scratch, with no help form a machine with net access or an external HD. let's see..
-hardware, it's easy- you have driver discs. Check.
-How about productivity software? Ok, so you're a little iffy there... half the time it's on discs, the other half directly from the Internet. Ok, so let's use the Net to look for stuff, huh? oh wait, you need a *browser* first to look it up, don't you? So let's just use that...
oh wait... it DOESN'T come with one?!?!? ok, so get one, like Opera, or firefox.... With what?
Let's face it- when it comes to those two operating systems- we'd be lost without a pre-existing browser. The only workaround would be to get one on CD- which hardly anyone produces anymore for browser software because there's just NO POINT. Linux has the advantage with tools such as APT and the gui-based Synaptic Package Manager- Windows and Mac doesn't. (though they should).
as long as these conditions exist on these mainstream OSs, somebody has to be there to take the fall and bundle- those "somebodies" are IE and Safari.
And if that's the case, why the heck CAN'T Opera or Firefox drop in the bundling game, too?
Well, I failed, but let's try this just a little more. Anyway, in retrospect I think I was looking at this wrong.
When he said that bundling does not lead to market share he used the sense of the term "lead" that means "result in", and he left off the adverb "necessarily".
So, paraphrased, he said, "Bundling does not equate to market share, just look at how far Firefox has come."
The topic is not monopolistic practices, though that's related. And, really, I don't need these facets of Microsoft's anticompetitive behavior explained. I'm generally familiar with the evil of Microsoft in this regard. I even likened them to (the rather nasty) Angband.
The topic is not monopolistic practices, but I appreciate your sharing the information. The topic is instead Connor's meaning in his assertion that bundling does not lead to market share. I'm thinking he meant "bundling does not equal market share", that market share can be substantially gained or lost despite bundling. Wouldn't you agree?
It seems that there are alternatives, but not that many (one or two). See TenDRA, for example. There are many more for C, and less for more exotic languages like Ada. (Found via Wikipedia.)
IIRC, it is also possible to preprocess C++ and output C (but perhaps those preprocessors don't support the modern C++ standard, they were developed ages ago, before gcc could compile C++).
Since there is no "default" C/C++ compiler on Linux (or at least, in my experience, almost no one accesses the compiler via the vanilla "cc"/"c++" names) there would be little, if any, uproar if a distro would bundle an arbitrary number of competing compilers (all with their own executable names).
> You know that someone would sue them over support or losses due to FF or Chrome.
Right. Just like all those famous lawsuits over the (how many?) disastrous worm botnets caused by vulnerablities in the underlying OS or their default browser. I'm sure MS is quaking in its boots. Yes, I think I feel the aftershocks, now!
Note to mods: Yes, that was sarcasm....