Sep 22 2004
Congratulations Firefox
I’ve just converted from Internet Explorer to the Firefox open source web browser. It takes about 5 minutes, it is free, more secure, and has better features. It copied over all my bookmarks and cookies, although I needed to adjust some of the positiong of the address bar links to make them work as I like.
This is a kind of milestone for open source software. I don’t know the whole history of the project and its organization, but it is exemplar of what open source can do, even in the face of a well-funded market leader such as Microsoft.
Programmers I knew used to lament about how “bloated” Microsoft software was, saying that they couldn’t understand how such a simple function could take up so much memory and CPU time. 10 years ago, they ranted about the security holes which they said were being built in into the Microsoft architecture, saying that they were just inviting virus writers and trojan horses with the “features” they were adding to the system. (For example, giving word prcessor documents access to the user’s address book and email system – something used by virus writers, but rarely, if all, by word processor users.)
I look forward to the day where I never have to see another talking paper clip pop up on my screen after an installation.
I think that Firefox could mark a turning point in the open source movement. A swarm of loosely connected but tightly networked programmers from around the world are successfully competing on the home turf of one of the richest companies in the world.
I look forward to equally simply operating systems and office applications. (Actually, I would prefer the open source world skip the “office” level and move more directly to something akin to Doug Engelbarts’ vision of dynamic knowledge repositories. (Doug is best known for his invention of the mouse, but that was just one of many visions he had, many of which are unfilled 40 years later)
Firefox works well for me; I heartily recommend it to others, both as a better browser for your computer as well as an organization to support.
