>Whether the Auto-install issue is fair or not, >I suppose it depends on your perspective. Apple >also installs Quicktime with iTunes (and >vice-versa), but that never caused any hoopla.
It's not about installing. It's about *updating*. When an *installer* bundles additional applications, it's annoying. When an *updater* offers opt-out *updates* for *new software*, software you haven't already installed, it's dangerous and damaging to users who will ultimately come to distrust update systems the way they already distrust installers. That's bad for the security of user and the safety of the Web as a whole.
There is a very real distinction to be made here between software installers and software updaters. Missing that distinction is to miss the whole point of Lilly's concerns.
Safari 3.1 is *not an update* to iTunes and it is *not an update* to QuickTime and Apple should not label it as such and should not piggyback on the *update* system that users trust to keep them safe and secure.
>The best word I can come up with is "annoying" and >even then, only to a fairly small subset of people. >It's a move that makes me look up and wish that Apple >were a friendlier company, but uproars? That's a >bit much, I think.
It's much worse than annoying. Users today mostly feel comfortable clicking OK on software update dialogs because software update keeps their *installed* programs secure. It's the best method a vendor and a user have to ensure that the software isn't going to be exploited.
When *installers* bundle extra programs and install them by default (opt out rather than opt in) it's *annoying*. When *updaters* bundle extra programs and install them by default (opt out rather than opt in) it's damaging to the trust relationship that users and vendors have relied on to keep software safe and secure.
This is different than bundled *installers*. This is using the *update* system for installed software to add *new* software. Safari is *not* an update for QuickTime or iTunes. It is wholly new software and should not be treated as an update. Users are conditioned to accept updates (and thank God) because updates are used to keep them safe and secure. When users start to distrust updates, they're going to be less secure and that's the issue here.
KevMar, this is different and much worse than bundled installers. This is an *update system* that's behaving as a bundled installer. Update systems should not become installers for new software. That's the whole point here.
I couldn't care less about bundling in installers. It'll bother users or not but this is a different situation. New software is being offered up as an *update* when it's not. Users trust update systems and usually just click "OK, make me safe and secure" and now they're going to start distrusting update systems. That's the problem here.
>I call bullshit on Mozilla. Microsoft forced IE 8 on me. >I did not have a choice. Apple offered me Safari and I >turned them down.
Microsoft didn't Force IE 8 on anyone. It's not even included in their Software Update system. It's a standalone download that you have to seek out on the web.
Perhaps you meant IE 7 which was offered as an update through their SOftware Update system. Well, guess what. IE 7 *is* an update to IE 6 -- a critical one for very legitimate security issues. You can opt out but you'll be doing yourself a security and safety disservice.
Safari 3.1 is *not* an *update* to iTunes or to QuickTime and calling it an update is misleading at best and predatory at worst. Not only that, but it weakens the trust relationship between vendors and users when it comes to software update systems.
Software update systems should be *update* systems and users should feel comfortable clicking "OK, keep me up to date, safe, and secure". When *update* systems are abused like this, people trust them less and it's more difficult for vendors to keep those users safe.
>In any event, Safari is at least a standards-compliant browser, >so it still fulfills Mozilla's dream of a standards-based web, >even if actual Mozilla software isn't being used.
It's not about Safari being used. I'm all for a healthy, competetive browser market where users can chose between several great standards compliant browsers. That's a big piece of what Mozilla is all about.
The problem here is not that Safari may get more users. The problem is that they have used "software update" to install a *new* piece of software. Safari is not a software update for QuickTime and it's not a software update for iTunes. It's an entirely new piece of software being pushed by Apple as if it was an update when it's clearly not.
This is a problem because it waters down the meaning of "software update" -- something that vendors depend on to keep users safe and secure and that users should be able to trust. Users shouldn't second guess themselves when clicking "OK" on a software update dialog. If they're afraid of software update services, it'll be impossible for vendors to keep them safe with security and stability updates.
It's this trust relationship being abused by Apple that's the problem, not that more people may end up with Safari.
>Firefox shouldn't come bundled with any Google software
Firefox, if you get it from Mozilla (Mozilla is the vendor that creates and maintains Firefox) doesn't come bundled with Google software. Firefox does come with features that integrate web services from several vendors including Google, but there's just no "Google software" "bundled" with Firefox when you get it from Mozilla.
> The only smart thing AOL did that had anything > to do with Netscape was to create the Mozilla > foundation.
Actually, AOL didn't create the Mozilla Foundation. Mitchell Baker created the Mozilla Foundation and as part of that endeavor she solicited donations from AOL and several other large companies. AOL was convinced to donate $2M over 2 years, a couple of trademarks, and some hardware. Other organizations also donated cash, equipment, bandwidth, and full-time staff to the early Mozilla Foundation. There's no doubt that AOL's donation was significant, but it can hardly be said that they created anything.
. I REALLY can't tell the difference because all of my themes, extensions and bookmarks, etc. seem to be working fine (miracle of miracles), automatically, but they've also not changed the version when you go to Help->About Mozilla Firefox.
One thing that worries me about Firefox being open sourced is that hackers are basically "gifted" with the information about the security holes in previous versions meaning that anyone running the previous versions is more vulnerable until they update which may be never - especially as there's plenty of people still running Firefox 1.x. , not all Linux distros have an auto-update and earlier versions of FF didn't auto-update either. In this respect, for me, closed source is more secure.
Actually, Firefox is pretty darn up to date. Our stats show less than 2% of Firefox users are still on 1.5. If your linux distro doesn't do updates, I suggest getting a new linux distro or getting Firefox directly from Mozilla so we can keep you up to date.
The number of Firefox users who aren't up to date is so tiny compared to the number of IE users who aren't up to date as to be mostly ignored by hackers -- remember that hacking today is a financial enterprise. It's not script kiddies trying to impress their friends, it's organized and profitable crime and targeting a few hundred thousand hard to identify Firefox users wouldn't make any sense to those people.
We're always working to keep our users up to date and I think our record is extremely good. Our security updates reach 90+% of our users in a matter of days 99% of our users in a matter of weeks. Our major updates, like from 1.5 to 2 reached 98% of our users in less than a year. How many users are still on IE6 when 7 offers so much more security? Public stats from web analysts put that number between 65 and 75%. If you were building a serious criminal endeavor online, would you target hundreds of thousands of users or hundreds of millions?
Second, it takes us about 4 or 5 days to automatically update 90+% of our users and with a couple of week's time, we get about 99% of them moved forward. Because there's no cost to updating, and because it's automatic, we don't need to support older versions for years and years.
Ask Microsoft what their updated percentages are across their various releases. My guess is they won't tell you. And even if they did, I'm sure they'd be just as misleading about this as about their IE bug counting.
Public stats show that uptake of IE7, a security update for IE 6 in dozens of important ways, has been abysmal over the last year. At best, they've been able to move between 25% and 35% of their users from the insecure IE 6 to the more secure IE 7 and to get that they had to stop doing the Windows piracy check. Compare that with Firefox 1.5 -> Firefox 2 where approximately 98% have moved forward in the year since Firefox 2 became available.
I think we've got to the root of the problem that you and some other Firefox 3 Beta 1 testers are seeing.
Starting yesterday, we began receiving reports, like yours, of a new memory/cpu usage issue that happens shortly after a normal startup and can spike the CPU and chew up hundreds of MB of RAM. This is apparently happening to people with new profiles or in profiles that have a very outdated list of bad sites for the Phishing Protection feature.
What's going on is that soon after Firefox is started, Firefox tries to fetch updates to the site forgery list -- the lists of bad sites that allows Firefox to warn users about suspected Phishing attacks. If the profile has very outdated or no local list, as is the case for a new Firefox profile, Firefox is trying to bring down a complete, rather large, list in one big chunk rather than slowly in small chunks. This causes Firefox to consume large amounts of CPU and memory and can slow the users machine to a crawl.
This problem is due to the change in the "SafeBrowsing Protocol" which only affects Firefox 3 Beta 1 and nightly build users. If you're on Firefox 2, this isn't going to affect you.
The work-around for this problem was for us to throttle it on the server side. We've done that and if you try Firefox 3 Beta 1 again, it should be fine.
> if they claim to be more neutral, then at the start of > the installation, they should prompt the user for whatever > search engine they prefer and not default to anything > (it should always go to a selection screen when one searches.)
Where did Mozilla claim to be "neutral". We're most certainly not. If we were neutral, we'd have to offer users a choice of about 20,000 different search options at startup. We claim to build a product that's best for the users and best for the health of the open Web. We're not neutral. We're advocates. We've picked a side. We're on the side of the user and on the side of an open and improving Web. If we didn't think Google was the best search service for our users, it wouldn't be the default. Our decisions always put the users ahead of the money.
And prior to that the default was Google. We changed from Google to Yahoo, thinking that it was the right thing for our users in Asia. Then our users in Asia told us, over and over, that they preferred Google so we switched it back. With each of these changes, we established contracts with the search providers and so yes, per contract requirements (that were drawn up before the code change was made,) the code change needed to be made.
Once again, I think this really hits at the heart of what's confused here. Google isn't donating/giving money to Mozilla. Google is paying for search traffic that Firefox generates. Yahoo is doing the same thing. Google is the bulk of the traffic and so the bulk of the revenue. If Google was just donating cash to Mozilla in the tens of millions, I'd understand that people might be suspicious about the "why" but the why here is obvious -- for lots of traffic. 130 million Firefox users constitutes a lot of traffic. Firefox is about 20% of the Web and probably are serious search users. Any search company would happily pay for a piece of that traffic.
Again, Google is not donating. Google is not giving. This isn't some charitable action on their behalf. They're paying for search traffic. They're paying for the eyeballs of 130 million Firefox users. There is no secret arrangement here or some unknown agenda. Google wants traffic. Firefox is giving them traffic. Google is paying Mozilla. The same is true for other search services included in Firefox and we're turning away a lot of offers of lots of money to add more to the browser because we want it to "just work" for users and that's more important than additional sources of revenue.
Firefox is available under a tri-license. You can accept the Mozilla code under any of the MPL, the GPL, or the LGPL, depending on what best suits your needs. Mozilla only accepts contributions that have all three licenses to preserve our ability to continue offering it all under any of those three license terms.
Mozilla wouldn't ship live.com as the default because it's a poorer service than Google and sending 130 million Firefox users to a less good service that uses its profits to attack the very mission of Mozilla -- to promote choice and innovation and be an advocate for the non-commercial aspects of the Web and the people using the Web, is just stupid.
Google for it. I've already wasted enough time responding to an obvious troll. Hell, just read the previous couple of/. articles and you'll find links.
> Now, the question is: if Yahoo, Altavisa, Microsoft, Excite, > or Ask (was Teoma), or anyone else for that matter, offers > similar services to Firefox for free- will they be allowed > to get their foot in the door (via a GOOD user interface to > allow selection- modifying about:config params doesn't count) > or bundled in (ie, included in the official distribution)?
I take it you've never used Firefox. We include other search services. We've even defaulted to other search services in some geographic locales. The interface for switching among the included services is super easy and even adding services that are not included are easy to add with a click or two (and there are over 13,000 of them available at mycroft.mozdev.org)
Not only that, any of these companies could (and some do) distribute a custom version of Firefox with their features as the default.
>It is a simple fact that once an entity provides >a majority of the support for an activity it >controls it.
So if I buy 85% of advertising from your newspaper, that means I have an editorial say in what you publish? Bogus.
There's a simple relationship here that may don't seem to (don't want to?) get. Google and Mozilla have a search relationship. Google pays Mozilla for Firefox users that use Google's search services. Other search services also pay Mozilla for Firefox users that use their services. Google is the default because it's the best available search service and the default gets most of the usage so it results in most of the revenue associated with usage. That's the extent of the relationship. They don't have any say outside of that nor do they seem to want any say outside of that (and wouldn't get it if they did). It's not like there aren't a handful of other search services that wouldn't gladly pay for more traffic from Firefox users.
> Could that money come from another source though? Would > Yahoo payout like Google does if they switched the default > search engines, homepage, etc to yahoo's servers?
We already do have a financial relationship with Yahoo and they pay Mozilla for the traffic Firefox sends them. It's just not as much because they're used by fewer Firefox users (both because they're not default, and because users prefer Google.)
> Sure the cash is really flowing in, but it seems like > other there would be other companies that would pay for > that right. Maybe not as much as Google, but they'd pay > something at least.
Any company, including Microsoft, that depends on traffic would pay to have 130 million users visiting their services regularly. Google is the best right now so we chose them as the default. Yahoo is still a favorite of some people, and so it's included in Firefox as an alternative. Some countries have other popular search services and we include those -- even defaulting to them in some cases, when it makes sense for the users.
This isn't about money, really. Mozilla could get as much or more money by selling off search or other services to the highest bidder but that's not how we operate. Google is the default because it's the best. If some other search overtakes Google, then that will probably soon be the default.
>I know I'll be tagged as paranoid. But it might >explain why Mozilla separated Thunderbird. Google >doesn't want you to use POP3 or IMAP. They want >you to use the web. It just might just have been >one of the reasons that were considered when >making the decision.
It wasn't. Google doesn't have any say in what we do beyond the code and services they contribute. They absolutely don't have any involvement or influence in Thunderbird where they don't contribute anything at all.
>I remember that Mozilla wanted contributions for the >NYT ad a few years ago and many of my friends who were >students barely scraping by, contributed some of their >much needed money to the project. Apart from that I >guess a ton of people donated money to Mozilla in the >past few years thinking that they needed funding badly. >Did Mozilla really need it or were they getting enough >money from Google to run that ad by themselves?
Donations to this program happened before there was any serious money coming in from Google. Remember, back then we only had a few users and it's users and traffic that generate revenue. Without contributions from our community, Firefox wouldn't be where it is today -- especially early contributions like with the NYT ad project.
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>Whether the Auto-install issue is fair or not,
>I suppose it depends on your perspective. Apple
>also installs Quicktime with iTunes (and
>vice-versa), but that never caused any hoopla.
It's not about installing. It's about *updating*. When an *installer* bundles additional applications, it's annoying. When an *updater* offers opt-out *updates* for *new software*, software you haven't already installed, it's dangerous and damaging to users who will ultimately come to distrust update systems the way they already distrust installers. That's bad for the security of user and the safety of the Web as a whole.
There is a very real distinction to be made here between software installers and software updaters. Missing that distinction is to miss the whole point of Lilly's concerns.
Safari 3.1 is *not an update* to iTunes and it is *not an update* to QuickTime and Apple should not label it as such and should not piggyback on the *update* system that users trust to keep them safe and secure.
- A
>The best word I can come up with is "annoying" and
>even then, only to a fairly small subset of people.
>It's a move that makes me look up and wish that Apple
>were a friendlier company, but uproars? That's a
>bit much, I think.
It's much worse than annoying. Users today mostly feel comfortable clicking OK on software update dialogs because software update keeps their *installed* programs secure. It's the best method a vendor and a user have to ensure that the software isn't going to be exploited.
When *installers* bundle extra programs and install them by default (opt out rather than opt in) it's *annoying*. When *updaters* bundle extra programs and install them by default (opt out rather than opt in) it's damaging to the trust relationship that users and vendors have relied on to keep software safe and secure.
That's much worse than annoying.
- A
This is different than bundled *installers*. This is using the *update* system for installed software to add *new* software. Safari is *not* an update for QuickTime or iTunes. It is wholly new software and should not be treated as an update. Users are conditioned to accept updates (and thank God) because updates are used to keep them safe and secure. When users start to distrust updates, they're going to be less secure and that's the issue here.
- A
KevMar, this is different and much worse than bundled installers. This is an *update system* that's behaving as a bundled installer. Update systems should not become installers for new software. That's the whole point here.
I couldn't care less about bundling in installers. It'll bother users or not but this is a different situation. New software is being offered up as an *update* when it's not. Users trust update systems and usually just click "OK, make me safe and secure" and now they're going to start distrusting update systems. That's the problem here.
>I call bullshit on Mozilla. Microsoft forced IE 8 on me.
>I did not have a choice. Apple offered me Safari and I
>turned them down.
Microsoft didn't Force IE 8 on anyone. It's not even included in their Software Update system. It's a standalone download that you have to seek out on the web.
Perhaps you meant IE 7 which was offered as an update through their SOftware Update system. Well, guess what. IE 7 *is* an update to IE 6 -- a critical one for very legitimate security issues. You can opt out but you'll be doing yourself a security and safety disservice.
Safari 3.1 is *not* an *update* to iTunes or to QuickTime and calling it an update is misleading at best and predatory at worst. Not only that, but it weakens the trust relationship between vendors and users when it comes to software update systems.
Software update systems should be *update* systems and users should feel comfortable clicking "OK, keep me up to date, safe, and secure". When *update* systems are abused like this, people trust them less and it's more difficult for vendors to keep those users safe.
- A
>In any event, Safari is at least a standards-compliant browser,
>so it still fulfills Mozilla's dream of a standards-based web,
>even if actual Mozilla software isn't being used.
It's not about Safari being used. I'm all for a healthy, competetive browser market where users can chose between several great standards compliant browsers. That's a big piece of what Mozilla is all about.
The problem here is not that Safari may get more users. The problem is that they have used "software update" to install a *new* piece of software. Safari is not a software update for QuickTime and it's not a software update for iTunes. It's an entirely new piece of software being pushed by Apple as if it was an update when it's clearly not.
This is a problem because it waters down the meaning of "software update" -- something that vendors depend on to keep users safe and secure and that users should be able to trust. Users shouldn't second guess themselves when clicking "OK" on a software update dialog. If they're afraid of software update services, it'll be impossible for vendors to keep them safe with security and stability updates.
It's this trust relationship being abused by Apple that's the problem, not that more people may end up with Safari.
- A
>Firefox shouldn't come bundled with any Google software
Firefox, if you get it from Mozilla (Mozilla is the vendor that creates and maintains Firefox) doesn't come bundled with Google software. Firefox does come with features that integrate web services from several vendors including Google, but there's just no "Google software" "bundled" with Firefox when you get it from Mozilla.
- A
> The only smart thing AOL did that had anything
> to do with Netscape was to create the Mozilla
> foundation.
Actually, AOL didn't create the Mozilla Foundation. Mitchell Baker created the Mozilla Foundation and as part of that endeavor she solicited donations from AOL and several other large companies. AOL was convinced to donate $2M over 2 years, a couple of trademarks, and some hardware. Other organizations also donated cash, equipment, bandwidth, and full-time staff to the early Mozilla Foundation. There's no doubt that AOL's donation was significant, but it can hardly be said that they created anything.
- A
. I REALLY can't tell the difference because all of my themes, extensions and bookmarks, etc. seem to be working fine (miracle of miracles), automatically, but they've also not changed the version when you go to Help->About Mozilla Firefox.
you're not using Firefox 3 beta 2.
- A
One thing that worries me about Firefox being open sourced is that hackers are basically "gifted" with the information about the security holes in previous versions meaning that anyone running the previous versions is more vulnerable until they update which may be never - especially as there's plenty of people still running Firefox 1.x. , not all Linux distros have an auto-update and earlier versions of FF didn't auto-update either. In this respect, for me, closed source is more secure.
Actually, Firefox is pretty darn up to date. Our stats show less than 2% of Firefox users are still on 1.5. If your linux distro doesn't do updates, I suggest getting a new linux distro or getting Firefox directly from Mozilla so we can keep you up to date.
The number of Firefox users who aren't up to date is so tiny compared to the number of IE users who aren't up to date as to be mostly ignored by hackers -- remember that hacking today is a financial enterprise. It's not script kiddies trying to impress their friends, it's organized and profitable crime and targeting a few hundred thousand hard to identify Firefox users wouldn't make any sense to those people.
We're always working to keep our users up to date and I think our record is extremely good. Our security updates reach 90+% of our users in a matter of days 99% of our users in a matter of weeks. Our major updates, like from 1.5 to 2 reached 98% of our users in less than a year. How many users are still on IE6 when 7 offers so much more security? Public stats from web analysts put that number between 65 and 75%. If you were building a serious criminal endeavor online, would you target hundreds of thousands of users or hundreds of millions?
- A
First, Window Snyder is a she, not a he.
Second, it takes us about 4 or 5 days to automatically update 90+% of our users and with a couple of week's time, we get about 99% of them moved forward. Because there's no cost to updating, and because it's automatic, we don't need to support older versions for years and years.
Ask Microsoft what their updated percentages are across their various releases. My guess is they won't tell you. And even if they did, I'm sure they'd be just as misleading about this as about their IE bug counting.
Public stats show that uptake of IE7, a security update for IE 6 in dozens of important ways, has been abysmal over the last year. At best, they've been able to move between 25% and 35% of their users from the insecure IE 6 to the more secure IE 7 and to get that they had to stop doing the Windows piracy check. Compare that with Firefox 1.5 -> Firefox 2 where approximately 98% have moved forward in the year since Firefox 2 became available.
- A
I think we've got to the root of the problem that you and some other Firefox 3 Beta 1 testers are seeing.
Starting yesterday, we began receiving reports, like yours, of a new memory/cpu usage issue that happens shortly after a normal startup and can spike the CPU and chew up hundreds of MB of RAM. This is apparently happening to people with new profiles or in profiles that have a very outdated list of bad sites for the Phishing Protection feature.
What's going on is that soon after Firefox is started, Firefox tries to fetch updates to the site forgery list -- the lists of bad sites that allows Firefox to warn users about suspected Phishing attacks. If the profile has very outdated or no local list, as is the case for a new Firefox profile, Firefox is trying to bring down a complete, rather large, list in one big chunk rather than slowly in small chunks. This causes Firefox to consume large amounts of CPU and memory and can slow the users machine to a crawl.
This problem is due to the change in the "SafeBrowsing Protocol" which only affects Firefox 3 Beta 1 and nightly build users. If you're on Firefox 2, this isn't going to affect you.
The work-around for this problem was for us to throttle it on the server side. We've done that and if you try Firefox 3 Beta 1 again, it should be fine.
- A
> if they claim to be more neutral, then at the start of
> the installation, they should prompt the user for whatever
> search engine they prefer and not default to anything
> (it should always go to a selection screen when one searches.)
Where did Mozilla claim to be "neutral". We're most certainly not. If we were neutral, we'd have to offer users a choice of about 20,000 different search options at startup. We claim to build a product that's best for the users and best for the health of the open Web. We're not neutral. We're advocates. We've picked a side. We're on the side of the user and on the side of an open and improving Web. If we didn't think Google was the best search service for our users, it wouldn't be the default. Our decisions always put the users ahead of the money.
- A
And prior to that the default was Google. We changed from Google to Yahoo, thinking that it was the right thing for our users in Asia. Then our users in Asia told us, over and over, that they preferred Google so we switched it back. With each of these changes, we established contracts with the search providers and so yes, per contract requirements (that were drawn up before the code change was made,) the code change needed to be made.
- A
> So why don't you give users the option to choose
> the search engine they prefer?
We do. Have you actually used Firefox?
- A
>Sure Google could threaten to not donate,
Once again, I think this really hits at the heart of what's confused here. Google isn't donating/giving money to Mozilla. Google is paying for search traffic that Firefox generates. Yahoo is doing the same thing. Google is the bulk of the traffic and so the bulk of the revenue. If Google was just donating cash to Mozilla in the tens of millions, I'd understand that people might be suspicious about the "why" but the why here is obvious -- for lots of traffic. 130 million Firefox users constitutes a lot of traffic. Firefox is about 20% of the Web and probably are serious search users. Any search company would happily pay for a piece of that traffic.
Again, Google is not donating. Google is not giving. This isn't some charitable action on their behalf. They're paying for search traffic. They're paying for the eyeballs of 130 million Firefox users. There is no secret arrangement here or some unknown agenda. Google wants traffic. Firefox is giving them traffic. Google is paying Mozilla. The same is true for other search services included in Firefox and we're turning away a lot of offers of lots of money to add more to the browser because we want it to "just work" for users and that's more important than additional sources of revenue.
- A
> If I provide 85% of your newspaper's income,
> damn right you'd better not piss me off. Thinking
> of slating my latest product? Think again.
Even when there are three other guys at the door willing to pay more for that space? I don't think you get what's going on here.
- A
Firefox is available under a tri-license. You can accept the Mozilla code under any of the MPL, the GPL, or the LGPL, depending on what best suits your needs. Mozilla only accepts contributions that have all three licenses to preserve our ability to continue offering it all under any of those three license terms.
- A
Mozilla wouldn't ship live.com as the default because it's a poorer service than Google and sending 130 million Firefox users to a less good service that uses its profits to attack the very mission of Mozilla -- to promote choice and innovation and be an advocate for the non-commercial aspects of the Web and the people using the Web, is just stupid.
- A
Google for it. I've already wasted enough time responding to an obvious troll. Hell, just read the previous couple of /. articles and you'll find links.
- A
> Now, the question is: if Yahoo, Altavisa, Microsoft, Excite,
> or Ask (was Teoma), or anyone else for that matter, offers
> similar services to Firefox for free- will they be allowed
> to get their foot in the door (via a GOOD user interface to
> allow selection- modifying about:config params doesn't count)
> or bundled in (ie, included in the official distribution)?
I take it you've never used Firefox. We include other search services. We've even defaulted to other search services in some geographic locales. The interface for switching among the included services is super easy and even adding services that are not included are easy to add with a click or two (and there are over 13,000 of them available at mycroft.mozdev.org)
Not only that, any of these companies could (and some do) distribute a custom version of Firefox with their features as the default.
- A
>It is a simple fact that once an entity provides
>a majority of the support for an activity it
>controls it.
So if I buy 85% of advertising from your newspaper, that means I have an editorial say in what you publish? Bogus.
There's a simple relationship here that may don't seem to (don't want to?) get. Google and Mozilla have a search relationship. Google pays Mozilla for Firefox users that use Google's search services. Other search services also pay Mozilla for Firefox users that use their services. Google is the default because it's the best available search service and the default gets most of the usage so it results in most of the revenue associated with usage. That's the extent of the relationship. They don't have any say outside of that nor do they seem to want any say outside of that (and wouldn't get it if they did). It's not like there aren't a handful of other search services that wouldn't gladly pay for more traffic from Firefox users.
- A
> Could that money come from another source though? Would
> Yahoo payout like Google does if they switched the default
> search engines, homepage, etc to yahoo's servers?
We already do have a financial relationship with Yahoo and they pay Mozilla for the traffic Firefox sends them. It's just not as much because they're used by fewer Firefox users (both because they're not default, and because users prefer Google.)
> Sure the cash is really flowing in, but it seems like
> other there would be other companies that would pay for
> that right. Maybe not as much as Google, but they'd pay
> something at least.
Any company, including Microsoft, that depends on traffic would pay to have 130 million users visiting their services regularly. Google is the best right now so we chose them as the default. Yahoo is still a favorite of some people, and so it's included in Firefox as an alternative. Some countries have other popular search services and we include those -- even defaulting to them in some cases, when it makes sense for the users.
This isn't about money, really. Mozilla could get as much or more money by selling off search or other services to the highest bidder but that's not how we operate. Google is the default because it's the best. If some other search overtakes Google, then that will probably soon be the default.
- A
>I know I'll be tagged as paranoid. But it might
>explain why Mozilla separated Thunderbird. Google
>doesn't want you to use POP3 or IMAP. They want
>you to use the web. It just might just have been
>one of the reasons that were considered when
>making the decision.
It wasn't. Google doesn't have any say in what we do beyond the code and services they contribute. They absolutely don't have any involvement or influence in Thunderbird where they don't contribute anything at all.
- A
>I remember that Mozilla wanted contributions for the
>NYT ad a few years ago and many of my friends who were
>students barely scraping by, contributed some of their
>much needed money to the project. Apart from that I
>guess a ton of people donated money to Mozilla in the
>past few years thinking that they needed funding badly.
>Did Mozilla really need it or were they getting enough
>money from Google to run that ad by themselves?
Donations to this program happened before there was any serious money coming in from Google. Remember, back then we only had a few users and it's users and traffic that generate revenue. Without contributions from our community, Firefox wouldn't be where it is today -- especially early contributions like with the NYT ad project.
-A