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Mozilla Chairman Speaks on Open Source/Microsoft 327

Posted by Zonk from the welcome-to-mozzOS dept.
ChrisMDP writes "Tom's Hardware has an interesting interview with Mitch Kapor, the chairman of the Mozilla Foundation. They discuss, amongst other things, what it's like competing with Microsoft, and Firefox as an operating system." From the interview: "Pragmatically, I think we have to distinguish between a base set of extensions and everything else. It gets progressively more difficult to create seamless solutions when there are nearly infinite possibilities for customization and tweaking of settings. There's a basic tension in principle that can never be completely resolved."
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Mozilla Chairman Speaks on Open Source/Microsoft More

Mozilla Chairman Speaks on Open Source/Microsoft

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  • What? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by essreenim ( 647659 ) on Thursday February 24, 2005 @10:28AM (#11765972)
    It gets progressively more difficult to create seamless solutions when there are nearly infinite possibilities for customization and tweaking of settings.

    It's called bloat. It happened to Red Hat. It happened to SuSE and it happened to Opera. You have to have limited objectives to avoid bloat. This is the key for browsers like Lynx etc. I would say Slackware Linux is one of the few distros that has managed to avoid bloat whilst still being very modern and "full of possibilities"...

    • Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gowen ( 141411 ) <gwowen@gmail.com> on Thursday February 24, 2005 @10:37AM (#11766041) Homepage Journal
      You have to have limited objectives to avoid bloat.
      If AdBlock is bloat, I want bloat. If FlashClickToPlay is bloat, give me more bloat. If allowing my browser to lie about it's identity so I can access my bank account is bloat, then I welcome bloat. Bring It On.

      If giving me features that I want to use (in the form of extensions, thus making those I don't want optional) constitutes bloat, then keep feeding me that lovely nutritious bloat.

      PS : Did you know, that my airbag, CD player, air conditioning, seatbelt, leather upholstery, rear seats and spare tyre all make my car heavier, and this considerably slower and less fuel efficient. And yet, by and large, that's another load of creeping featurism that I don't seem to mind about.
      • I seriously question the amount of weight that a seatbelt adds. Either way I get your point.

      • Me, Too. (Score:3, Funny)

        by 4of12 ( 97621 )

        ....all make my car heavier, and this considerably slower and less fuel efficient. And yet, by and large, that's another load of creeping featurism that I don't seem to mind about.

        Stay tuned. Imminent increases in the price of fuel will focus your attention on eliminating the less valuable pieces of vehicle feature bloat.

      • If you think about it all three of the plugins you mentioned are solving problems that could be more appropriately solved on the other end.
        1. Advertisements could go away.
        2. Flash could have a setting called Click to play
        3. Your bank could rewrite their code to stop blocking anything but IE.

        Not that those problems are going to go away but if you think about it all of the "bloat" you mentioned are really useful features to fix a problem someone else is causing.

    • Re:Bloat (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Adhemar ( 679794 ) on Thursday February 24, 2005 @10:38AM (#11766046)
      It gets progressively more difficult to create seamless solutions when there are nearly infinite possibilities for customization and tweaking of settings.
      It's called bloat. It happened to Red Hat. It happened to SuSE and it happened to Opera.

      No, it's called bloat when the nearly infinite possibilities are part of the default application - the base set.

      That's why Mozilla and Firefox work with extensions. Users can personalise their application, add the missing features they need (or think they need). But without the overhead of the missing features they don't need.

      That's particularly true for a light-weight browser as Firefox.

      But because the fact that lots of extensions exists and lots of combinations of extensions are possible, the problem of the nearly infinite possibilities for customization and tweaking of settings is as real in such a customisable application with extensions as it is in a bloated application.

      • Re:Bloat (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Chris Kamel ( 813292 )
        That's particularly true for a light-weight browser as Firefox.
        I don't know what exactly is your criteria for calling a browser a light-weight, but as for the memory footprint firefox is surprisingly similar to IE

      • Re:Bloat (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Dolda2000 ( 759023 ) <fredrik.dolda2000@com> on Thursday February 24, 2005 @12:21PM (#11767133) Homepage
        No, it's called bloat when the nearly infinite possibilities are part of the default application - the base set.
        I'd care to disagree -- whether the features are included by default doesn't constitute bloat. You don't call the UNIX command line (by that I mean the command line as a concept, not the shell program itself) bloated since there are many thousands commands that you can use.

        Rather, I'd say that bloat is a question of architecture. The command line isn't bloat, since all the commands are properly seperated from the shell itself. If every command was a part of the shell program itself, then it would be bloat, even though it has the exact same capabilities.

        That's why Firefox may be called bloated -- not because all the extensions are included by default (which they, of course, aren't), but rather because all the extensions that you choose to include run as part of the same program. They become part of the firefox program itself when you install them. That is also why "It gets progressively more difficult to create seamless solutions". Since the extensions aren't properly seperated from themselves or the core Firefox program (the shell, if you will), it becomes ever more difficult to avoid conflicts.

        That's also why a Linux distro is often considered less bloated than Windows, even though it's capable of so much more.

        But because the fact that lots of extensions exists and lots of combinations of extensions are possible, the problem of the nearly infinite possibilities for customization and tweaking of settings is as real in such a customisable application with extensions as it is in a bloated application.
        Note again the parallel of the UNIX command line. There are even more combinations of programs (extensions, if you will) in the command line than there are for Firefox, but that's not a problem since it has a better underlying architecture.

        That's particularly true for a light-weight browser as Firefox.
        Not really part of the subject, but I can't help noting how "light-weight" is such a relative word... Firefox may be light-weight compared to IE, the Mozilla suite, etc., but can you really call any program that takes 25 MBs of memory just to start of "light-weight"?

    • Re:What? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by lakerdonald ( 825553 )
      Firefox has done a very good job at avoiding bloat by not including all functionality in a vanilla firefox. Through the use of extensions and themes, it has left the mechanism to Firefox and the policy to the user.

    • Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Thursday February 24, 2005 @10:43AM (#11766096) Journal
      Opera bloated? If 4MB for a full-featured browser and mail client is bloat, then I am more than happy to run bloated software...

      • Re:What? (Score:2, Informative)

        by essreenim ( 647659 )
        Yeah, maybe, but older versions of Opera are faster than newer ones. Think about that!

        • It is still faster for me than Firefox without any extension (on Gentoo Linux with default compile settings like the ones in the gentoo installation guide for firefox, opera binaries) And it presents a far saner UI to me than Firefox with all those extensions ever will. Think about that. I agree that a Mail- and IRC-Client are too much but leaving bits of basic functionality to be added only via plugins is not the solution either.
        • "Yeah, maybe, but older versions of Opera are faster than newer ones. Think about that!"

          Define faster. I'm getting more done with 7.x than I ever did with 6.x. Why? They 'bloated' the UI to make it more useful.

          Yeesh. If some people had their ways, keyboards would only have a 1 and a 0.
      • Oh, dear goodness. What have they done to you? I imagine in 2020 they would be saying - "if 4GB for a full-featured browser and mail client is bloat...". Dang. I remember playing games on my speccy (only 15-17 years ago?!) that were 40kB in size that contained 800+ rooms map, quite a bit of animated graphics, sound, and still bytes enough left for code to make it work. That is 1/100 of your "browser and mail client" heavily _packed_! Don't get me wrong - I liked and still kinda like Opera (though its email

        • Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Thursday February 24, 2005 @11:32AM (#11766598) Journal
          Oh, dear goodness. What have they done to you? I imagine in 2020 they would be saying - "if 4GB for a full-featured browser and mail client is bloat...".

          When Netscape 2.0 was in pre-release, I recall reading articles saying it was going to be 8MB. At this time, I had a 60MB hard drive in my 386, and it was huge. People complained it was bloatware. Now, 10 years later, Opera is smaller and includes an advanced mail client in that size, not to mention the fact that it supports vastly more features than Netscape 2 ever did. Of all the pieces of software that can be accused of bloat, Opera is about the last that should be.

          • Re:What? (Score:3, Informative)

            by joeljkp ( 254783 )
            Just to avoid wild speculation here, Navigator 2.0 final came in at 3.19 MB.

            Your point, however, stands.

        • Re:What? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Sj0 ( 472011 )
          Listen, if you REALLY want a web browser that barely runs in text mode, or has very basic 1 bit(or even 4 bit! Look at 'em all!) graphical text and such, options *are* available. Realistically though, comparing a super optimized game designed to run with a single low resolution, low bitdepth, and utilizing every trick possible to appear to use more data than it actually has will always do better than a program designed to run in 1600x1200x32 utilizing a huge variety of different file formats including sever
    • It's called bloat. It happened to Red Hat. It happened to SuSE and it happened to Opera. You have to have limited objectives to avoid bloat. This is the key for browsers like Lynx etc.

      Lynx is not lean. Lynx is extremely under-featured. If Firefox is bloated, then Lynx is starving for some food.

      Lynx simply does not cut it on the modern (post 1994) web. And no, being text-only is not the reason. It does not support frames, no CSS, no javascript. Like it or not, a full featured browser needs that.

  • Good line (Score:5, Insightful)

    by chris09876 ( 643289 ) on Thursday February 24, 2005 @10:31AM (#11765990)
    Microsoft has never intended to compete on a level playing field. Instead they have tipped the field to favor themselves, sacrificing product quality and user benefit over and over again.

    This is a great quote. It explains partially how Microsoft got where they are today, and why their current size and monopoly is unsustainable. Unless they make a fundamental change in their business model, something's going to happen to them.

    • Re:Good line (Score:5, Insightful)

      by chroot_james ( 833654 ) on Thursday February 24, 2005 @10:38AM (#11766049) Homepage
      People have been saying that forever and MS's lead has never fawltered. I think Mozilla is on the right track by making Thunderbird and Firefox and focusing on them doing their specific tasks very well. If parts can be shared, excellent, but don't break your back figuring out how to share components when the goal is to have good, alternative products for people who want quality.
      • I think Mozilla is on the right track by making Thunderbird and Firefox and focusing on them doing their specific tasks very well. If parts can be shared, excellent, but don't break your back figuring out how to share components when the goal is to have good, alternative products for people who want quality.

        Because all that work on XUL, Gecko and all at the beginning wasn't back breaking work. It only took years and years. Firefox and Thunderbird have been able to "[focus] on ... doing their specific ta
      • People have been saying that forever and MS's lead has never fawltered.

        First, people haven't been saying that forever, in the 90's "people" still believed that Microsoft will be everywhere. It looked like they were going to replace Unix on the server, it looked like they were going to replace Palm on PDAs, Apple was weak and declining - in general it looked like MS would dominate all computing.

        Now, people who leave Unix go to Linux, not Windows and a couple of Windows-servers are also replaced by Linux.

    • Sorry, but I think MSFT has a very long way to go
      before their "ship goes turtle". $50 Billion USD
      can buy an awful lot of "pontoon outriggers", in
      the form of (1) USA software patents, (2) DCMA,
      (3) buying their way into EU software patents,
      and (4) SCO-like attacks against F/OSS.

      Unless, of course, there is a "sea change" in
      American politics, and an honest-to-goodness
      populist regime comes to power (Executive Branch
      AND Legislative Branch). Given the current SITREP,
      those are some very long odds to hope for.

  • Bizarre article. Bizarre. (Score:5, Funny)

    by ites ( 600337 ) on Thursday February 24, 2005 @10:33AM (#11766009) Journal
    Q: how does it feel to spend 20 years being beaten^H^H^H^H competing with Microsoft?

    A: Microsoft totally cheat. They don't play fair. OK, sometimes they can pull their socks up, like when they bought Spyglass and abandoned MSN version 1.

    Q: Firefox is like... the new operating system?

    A: Yes, and one day it may actually instal Flash support automatically. There's no end to what's possible?

    Q: How's Chandler doing?

    A: Who?

    Q: You know, the open source thingy.

    A: Ah, yes, very well. That's such a kind thing to ask. Any day now. There's no beating open source.

    Q: so, since CPU's have passed 3Ghz, does it make sense to write better code?

    A: better code is better code.

    Sigh.

    I love Firefox open source as much as the next righteous Slashdotter, and Kapor is a totally cool dude, but WTF? WTFF?

    • Don't understand..? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by aug24 ( 38229 )
      Firstly I don't understand your problem with the interview (I get that it's a little thin, but so what)...

      I mean, "better code is better code" - that's not really a paraphrase of what he said, is it? He said that speed wasn't the only issue, maintainability is a biggy, which is a good answer to a rather dull question.

      Second I don't understand why someone has moderated your comment funny. It wasn't supposed to be was it?

      J.
      • Always happy to explain,

        I found the questions bizarre. WTF was the "good code" question doing there? Where did it come from? What was its point? Faster CPUs mean better code? Surely the opposite... "since PCs are so fast, there is no need to code like monks anymore".

        Second, yes, Kapor's answer was good. I mean, what else can you say to such a question?!

        Third, yes, my comment was definitely funny. It'd have been funnier if I wasn't so freaked by the inanity of the discussion. OMG, Firefox is so th
      • This is the interview we should have seen...

        Q: So what's this between yourselves and Microsoft? Is it personal?

        A: No, it's nothing personal. We're going to grind their cheating, robbing, lazy farking faces in the dust of their spyware-ridden corporate collapse, while their users flee in hordes into our welcoming arms. The "Fire" in Firefox is about the righteous burning flames that will purify the world of IT and cleanse it from... sorry. Nothing personal.

        Q: So is Firefox the new operating system?

        A:
    • Silly---

      Firefox is not an operating system. EMACS, OTOH.....

  • Replacing IE (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Himring ( 646324 ) on Thursday February 24, 2005 @10:36AM (#11766027) Homepage Journal
    The challenge is changing the end-user more than anything. I have tried for the longest to get my company to convert to Firefox, but users have integrated, in their heads, that to use the web is to use IE, and they can tell they're firing up another browser they get nervous, blame all problems going forward on the new browser, and simply don't like change. Microsoft did something very powerful by link IE to Windows. IE has become saturated within the minds of users. The few users I have converted over I have to change the new browser icon to the big "E."

    People also have a great amount of grace for microsoft, excusing their security holes, making such statements as, "well, if another browser gets as popular as IE then it'll have the same problems, etc." And I'm talking about IT professionals not just end users. I try to explain that, no, Microsoft has been uniquely bad at security....

    No matter what the browser, it has an uphill climb against IE....

    • Re:Replacing IE (Score:5, Insightful)

      by grasshoppa ( 657393 ) on Thursday February 24, 2005 @10:57AM (#11766210) Homepage
      More than that, there are applications that require IE.

      Example, and I will use names: Webclaims. It's an online claim submitter for medical insurance. It requires IE with at least a medium security setting, you have less trouble if you set it to low. Further, the local client requires at least superuser access. Can you imagine what security implications this has?

      While applications like this continue to be made, IE will have a hold on corporate desktops.

    • Re:Replacing IE (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Pionar ( 620916 ) on Thursday February 24, 2005 @11:36AM (#11766655)
      *sigh* You know, maybe people are just creatures of habit. Just because they are doesn't mean they're stupid. I tried getting my mother to switch to firefox. She honestly tried it for a few days and said, "meh, it's not worth learning something new when the old thing works just fine for me." Ok, that's fair. While they're not radically different in UI terms, as far as setting preferences, managing downloads and such, they're worlds apart. (I think firefox is easier to set preferences in - except for the ones you can only get to with about:config).

      But, I'm not going to say she's stupid. So the best thing I can do as a conscientious son is to make sure she knows safe browsing habits and keeps her computer up to date. For a 45 year old woman who'd never used a computer until about two years ago, her ability to spot something that isn't right is remarkable. She's never had a virus or spyware.

      Now if I could just get her to stop asking if I'm there when she gets my voicemail, I'd be set.

  • That's nice, but.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by suso ( 153703 ) on Thursday February 24, 2005 @10:36AM (#11766029) Journal
    somehow I always think that this premise might actually be somewhat true for our society:

    "Evil will always triumph because good is dumb."

    Forgot where that is from (Spaceballs?), but sometimes I feel that evil does win out in the end. Companies that use evil tactics to get ahead may not win out in the long run, but really screw things up in the short timeframe.

    Of course you could look at it this way, Firefox could be an example of Good winning in the long run because Microsoft was being evil 5-8 years ago. Wow, its been that long already?

    • It's not "good" or "evil". It's called Marketing 101. MS realized that marketing was critical to move a product. I call that "smart". If you build it and don't tell anybody or really market it to the mainstream user base, then odds are that you will not gain market share (not always true, but true 90% of the time). Which is why it's good that Firefox is being presented to a more mainstream audience both in the press and through targeted advertising.

      Using words like "good" and "evil" to describe what's

      • Marketing should only go so far. What Microsoft did (using their leverage in the OS business to shut out other software competitors) was just wrong. At least in my definition of wrong. Perhaps not yours.

        So when you cross that line and go from marketing to intentionally breaking compatibility to shut out competitors, thats what I'm talking about when I say "evil".

        Firefox is "good" because it makes many attempts to be compatible with many technologies and just tries to serve the people that use it.
    • Forgot where that is from

      *SLAP*

      Signed,
      DH

  • MS Adverts (Score:2, Funny)

    by ebzxzpp ( 862371 )
    Had a hard time reading the article, with all the MS advertising in the page...

  • Mozilla OS? (Score:5, Funny)

    by thekernel32 ( 240428 ) on Thursday February 24, 2005 @10:43AM (#11766095) Homepage
    Dang, it looks like mozilla is going the way of emacs... "What? You're exiting mozilla? Why? It has everything you'll ever need for your entire computing experience! It debugs itself too!"

  • Wait a minute.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by ceeam ( 39911 ) on Thursday February 24, 2005 @10:46AM (#11766119)
    Whassat? Firefox as an operating system? You mean a program that was cut off from the "bigger" mozilla to be "just a browser"? Hm.... When a new Firefox's Firefox is due to fork out? :-)
    • Yes, it is strange that people are talking about Firefox, the operating system.

      Previously people would talk about Mozilla the OS, refering to Mozilla The Platform, not the Mozilla (Seamonkey) browser suite itself.

      I suppose the Mozilla Foundation is now most widely known for Firefox, but refering to Firefox as the platform will only add to the confusion.

  • A few clicks... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jav1231 ( 539129 ) on Thursday February 24, 2005 @10:46AM (#11766120)
    He talks about it taking just a "few clicks" to get Flash, RP, and other plugins working. Obviously he's not talking about Firefox on Linux. Flash, sure. It's probably the single easiest plugin to get to work. Most other plugins cannot be installed with the "follow this link to install the plugin" option at all. If they do manage to install, they don't seem to be able to find your plugins directory. Don't get me wrong, I love Firefox (though those 1-2 second pauses are annoying) but there needs to be some type of search in the installer to find the plugins directories. Couple that with Real Player unable to give me video on half of the Real Player content I find and you wonder what's going on. Though, that wouldn't be a Firefox issue, I know.

  • um... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Cocteaustin ( 702468 )
    The chairman of the Mozilla foundation is Mitchell Baker, not Mitch Kapor.

  • Firefox is slowly winning the war (Score:5, Informative)

    by lokalhost ( 666083 ) on Thursday February 24, 2005 @10:50AM (#11766151)
    from Securityfocus.com: as of January 2005, SecurityFocus readers using Firefox (46%) eclipsed Internet Explorer users (44%) in our traffic logs for the first time ever. I just can't wait for similar numbers hitting msn.com -- I must be a zealot for bashing microsoft.

  • "Product" is just what you wrap your bizplan in. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gelfling ( 6534 ) on Thursday February 24, 2005 @10:51AM (#11766161) Homepage Journal
    Mitch oughta know this by now. Product is just the wrapper for the business plan. Product is just a carton you put on a shelf to aim your markeing at. Product really doesn't matter all that much. If it did then Firefox and Openoffice would have been able to charge $5 for their product and make billions doing it. And Bill knows this too because the great genius of Bill Gates is understanding that if you talk to your competitors about 'product' it will distract them from looking at your business plan. And without a credible bizplan, products like Mozilla are essentially interesting experiments that demonstrate how close you can come to MS's product. In other words they are triumphs of reverse engineering. But as I said, 'product' really doesn't matter so those organizations have spent all their time and effort to replicate a wrapper, a box without having anything to put in the box.
    • Why does there have to be a business plan?

      Why can't things just be done to add good things to the commons?

      Why do some people see everything in fucking dollar signs?

      Justin.

    • Re:"Product" is just what you wrap your bizplan in (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      ...products like Mozilla are essentially interesting experiments that demonstrate how close you can come to MS's product. In other words they are triumphs of reverse engineering.

      Don't forget that Mozilla is descended from Netscape, and is anything but a "me too" IE clone.

      If Firefox were reverse engineered from IE, we wouldn't be using it.
      • Oh it basically is. The browser 'experience' is pretty much all the same with some subtle differences and varying degrees of clean and successful implementation. One is an Accord, the other is a Camry. But generally they both do the same things the same ways and what makes your experience hard or easy or interesting or valuable for one is equally true for the other. For something to be different it would have to function differently like the address bar in XP except after that the experience is still the sa
      • Firefox and IE are both ultimately descendants of NCSA Mosaic, so this whole reverse-engineering debate is kind of pointless, IMO.

  • App Loader v. Operating System (Score:5, Insightful)

    by theManInTheYellowHat ( 451261 ) on Thursday February 24, 2005 @10:52AM (#11766169)
    Back in the day of good old DOS, the Un*x and Vax guys reminded all the DOS guys, that DOS was just a program loader and not a true operating system.

    Doesn't this apply to browsers as well?

    I just don't see how refering to these application's as "operating systems" helps any cause they are working twards, and it would seem to add a stigma that is perhaps not necessary.

  • Say the wrong thing (Score:5, Interesting)

    by IGnatius T Foobar ( 4328 ) on Thursday February 24, 2005 @10:53AM (#11766183) Homepage Journal
    Owwch.

    "and Firefox as an operating system."

    Doesn't Mitch know that it's almost exactly that statement that caused Microsoft to launch its slaughterfest against Netscape when Marc Andreesen said it?
    • Remember java as a "platform" that ran anywhere making which OS you were running irrelevant. That got MS notice real quick. MS went from bundling java to creating j++ to not including it at all.

      People forget Microsoft can sometimes can be absolutely devestating to competetion. (The Mono developers should be carefull).

  • xul (Score:5, Interesting)

    by codepunk ( 167897 ) on Thursday February 24, 2005 @10:55AM (#11766190)
    Now give me a ide and some documentation so that I can create xul apps. The biggest push should be to get a xul ide together to help extend and push the platform. I don't care if it is written in xul or python or whatever, don't point me to xul maker either it looks like ass and is being developed way to slowly. I love firefox now make it damn easy for me to build cool xul apps.

  • But who makes it? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by gelfling ( 6534 )
    Wouldn't it be interesting if the future of real competition to MS consisted of Vietnamese programmers working for pennies on open source code which is then thrown over the wall to Bangalore who staffs the help desks to support it? Wouldn't it be interesting if the only credible response to MS's dominance was to cut the cost of development and support to near-zero and pray that no one makes a breakout development. In other words, what if the only way to fight MS is to completely destroy all innovation and f
  • That said, wouldn't it be better if Firefox came bundled with a Flash player, etc., or its installer detected a need for customary extensions and could install at the same time? There's no technical reason why it couldn't happen.

    please, leave it on a menu somewhere and off by default, I don't even want a flash player auto-compiled in the package or downloaded during browser install unless I ask it to.

    thanks

  • Getting end users converted to Firefox... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Krankheit ( 830769 ) on Thursday February 24, 2005 @11:20AM (#11766452)
    I have noticed that the teacher's computers where I am attending are loaded with spyware. They were all using Internet Explorer. A few switched over to Firefox right after I told them MSIE lets spyware in. But most couldn't care less. Finally, I found something that is getting the others to switch over. I ask them "Would you use a web browser created by a convicted monopolist?" They always say "No." Then I tell them they are using one (Internet Explorer). This gets there interest and then I get them to download and switch over to Firefox.

  • Wow, talk about a generation gap! (Score:3, Funny)

    by windowpain ( 211052 ) on Thursday February 24, 2005 @11:22AM (#11766478) Journal
    "Mozilla Chairman Speaks on Open Source/Microsoft"

    Mozilla chairman? Who's he? Ohhh MITCH KAPOR!?!?! The guy who developed Lotus 1-2-3!!!

    I can already see a Slashdot headline from 20 years in the future. "Gates Foundation Chairman Speaks at AARP Convention."

  • Bloat? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Diplo ( 713399 ) on Thursday February 24, 2005 @11:27AM (#11766529) Homepage
    "It's called bloat.... and it happened to Opera."
    Remind me again, which is the smallest download of Opera, FireFox or Internet Explorer?

  • why only talk good about firefox ? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by krayfx ( 694332 ) on Thursday February 24, 2005 @11:42AM (#11766725)
    before i start my argument, here's my disclaimer:
    - i use firefox for all my browsing needs, on both linux and windows, been using firefox since it was in all its previous avatars - firebird, phoenix, mozilla, netscape...yawn, and the umpteen names. happy the way it handles things.
    - i switched from thunderbird to opera 'cos thunderbird doesnt have a decent mbox import utility, and although complicated - opera mail is really cool - with plenty of shortkeyys to work with.
    - i have a relatively decent config - amd 64 3000+, asus k8n, 512mb pc3200 ddr, geforce 2 gfx, soundblaster, 160 gb sata hdd - so its not like the machine might be an impediment for smooth running of firefox
    ------------------------here goes----------
    - i have praised firefox enough to many people, i have evangelised firefox in browsing centres, replaced IE on many desktops at my friends and relatives' place. so why always, only talk good about firefox? there should be a fair share of critical reviews too! i have a few grouses to air, although, this is not the firefox forum.
    1. the extensions management is really bad in firefox, i have been persistently having troubles with management of extensions - some of them refuse to get installed. changing versions - the plugins do not work on upgrading to the latest and the greatest release. the plugin/ extension writers are way too slow many times to upgrade. question of holes left by the extensions - lack of validity/ checks on the third party extensions. the recent inclusion of auto extension updation doesnt always work .
    2. bookmarks - why does the bookmark disappear when the browser crashes occasionally ? this is really hopeless. yes, i know there's an extension to fix it , bookmark backup - but why isnt it built in ? while browsing with multiple tabs, sometimes, the bookmarks in the toolbar act strange, and loads in a corner. the bookmark bugs have made many people go back to IE or switch to opera.
    3. java is a pain - as it loads - is persistent. sometimes an impediment while opening multiple tabs. slows down the whole experience. the cache is like a giant leak. as you adblock many ads along the way - after a period the ad block management gets heavier, and confused sort of. (not really a firefox's fault)

    these three have been a thorn in the flesh since ages. i will not be switching to any other browser, but its like - firefox isnt the undisputed king, nor is it enough to wish IE away. i hope that firefox writers will concentrate on fixing the issues - small number of manageable extensions, better plugin management, it has to be consistent even with point releases - apparently a large part of thier user-base - i am sure is an "intelligent" user - who upgrades with every point release - as shown by the large number of people who upgraded from preview release to final release. i hope mitch is listening!

  • Why geeks like firefox better than IE (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Richthofen80 ( 412488 ) on Thursday February 24, 2005 @11:51AM (#11766824) Homepage
    I see a lot of IE versus Firefox comments, so I'll just get it out of the way now.

    Firefox renders CSS more consistently than IE. Developers like that.

    Firefox uses about 2 mb less than IE while running in windows XP viewing the same slashdot thread.

    Firefox allows window tabbing.

    things not affected: Popup blocking, since SP2 does it. Plugins, since activeX is dead anyways.

    Basically, if IE 7 uses tabs, has a smaller /leaner memory footprint, and renders CSS like a good webbrowser SHOULD, then firefox loses some of it edge.

  • WOW! (Score:5, Funny)

    by CRC'99 ( 96526 ) on Thursday February 24, 2005 @12:20PM (#11767123) Homepage
    "They discuss, amongst other things, what it's like competing with Microsoft, and Firefox as an operating system."

    Wow. I didn't think Firefox had reached the functionality of emacs yet...

  • resolution (Score:3, Interesting)

    by idlake ( 850372 ) on Thursday February 24, 2005 @05:34PM (#11770757)
    It gets progressively more difficult to create seamless solutions when there are nearly infinite possibilities for customization and tweaking of settings. There's a basic tension in principle that can never be completely resolved.

    Sure, it can be resolved: through proper modular architecture. The UNIX shell and its associated commands have such an architecture.

    Mozilla and all the other Windows refugees, on the other hand, don't. The fault isn't Microsoft's or Netscape's, though: their programmers are just victims of a bad education. They actually think that building huge object-oriented architectures in which thousands of classes live all within the same address space is a good idea. That sort of silliness started with Smalltalk, which taught a generation of programmers that putting thousands of classes together and coupling them as closely as possible is a good thing.

    There is a non-bloated, good, modular architecture for GUIs out there somewhere, but someone yet needs to find it. Perhaps the first step is for people to start realizing that it is worth looking for it and that the kind of bloat represented by Mozilla, MS Office, and OpenOffice is not inevitable.

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