I must admit that I love the Mozilla Foundation and especially their products Firefox and Mozilla. I was not disappointed when I switched from IE to Firefox. Recently, I upgraded my firefox browser, and since then, I have had continuous crashes of my browser. I thought it was only me, but then I heard that several other Stanford students have been experiencing the same difficulties. It seems that this is not a localized problem.
The Economist article (pls see the main slashdot article for today) points to the difficulties of building open source products when there is no hierarchy. I disagree in that there are many examples of optimal outcomes resulting from large-scale decentralized collective action (e.g., markets). There are problems both with hierarchy and markets. Depending on the specific conditions, one system will work better than the other.
I make reference to this dichotomy because it seems to be the dichotomy of Microsoft IE and Firefox. Firefox can achieve more continuous upgrades by harnessing and empowering people, but it seems to be having problems at sustaining the same level of reliability. Many of my friends have already switched from Firefox. I have not. I am hoping that these problems can be addressed so that Firefox can continue to maintain the browser market competitive, thereby driving innovation.
Slashdot Mirror
I must admit that I love the Mozilla Foundation and especially their products Firefox and Mozilla. I was not disappointed when I switched from IE to Firefox. Recently, I upgraded my firefox browser, and since then, I have had continuous crashes of my browser. I thought it was only me, but then I heard that several other Stanford students have been experiencing the same difficulties. It seems that this is not a localized problem. The Economist article (pls see the main slashdot article for today) points to the difficulties of building open source products when there is no hierarchy. I disagree in that there are many examples of optimal outcomes resulting from large-scale decentralized collective action (e.g., markets). There are problems both with hierarchy and markets. Depending on the specific conditions, one system will work better than the other. I make reference to this dichotomy because it seems to be the dichotomy of Microsoft IE and Firefox. Firefox can achieve more continuous upgrades by harnessing and empowering people, but it seems to be having problems at sustaining the same level of reliability. Many of my friends have already switched from Firefox. I have not. I am hoping that these problems can be addressed so that Firefox can continue to maintain the browser market competitive, thereby driving innovation.