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."

Comments

Way to Miss the Issue, PCPro.

[twitter]

The problem has never been "bundling" it's been technical and business sabotage. "Bundling" is like a gift, the naive user asks themselves, "How can having a free program be bad?" "Bundling" that forbids vendors from including other programs is where M$ falls foul of the market and law. Technical sabotage, such as erasing user preferences and book marks, is another issue. These are the kinds of things that M$ continues to do and making vendors carry the cost of installing additional programs won't fix the problem. Massive fines for M$ and vendors who submitted to the practices might do better.

I can't believe that people working at Firefox could have missed these issues and suspect PCPro of selectively quoting people to deliver a M$ friendly message. Netscape is the poster boy of anti-trust in the US and people at Mozilla are intimately familiar with the issue. The message delivered undercuts the weaker remedy that might have been implemented as a compromise. That Mozilla would be accused of anti-trust practices like M$ is pure FUD, the practices and size of the two companies could not be more different. The editors at PCPro have some strange filters for what they consider newsworthy.

Re:Way to Miss the Issue, PCPro.

[dedazo]

I can't believe that people working at Firefox could have missed these issues and suspect PCPro of selectively quoting people to deliver a M$ friendly message. ... That Mozilla would be accused of anti-trust practices like M$ is pure FUD

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.

Re:Way to Miss the Issue, PCPro.

[dedazo]

They're already out shilling for fun and profit. Expect a few more to jump in shortly.

POOP!

[Anonymous Coward]

YEAHHHHHHH!!!!!

Let's see here

[jgtg32a]

You posted this 1 min ago.

You said that IE was actually a good product.

You said that Vista is better than Ubuntu.

You will be marked troll is about 3 min.

Re:i agree with him completely

[dave420]

Uh-oh... correlation does not equal causation :) Netscape was a fucking AWFUL browser compared to IE. Pinning its downfall on MS's bundling of IE with Windows is a bit far-fetched.

Re:Ironic

[dontmakemethink]

It's as though IE5 and XP were "too good" by M$ standards. It's like making good software was a mistake they'll never repeat.