Asa Dotzler: Firefox and more

*Applause*

Agreed, oh and I love to see someone vent when the rage takes hold.

Well said indeed. The spirit of Firefox (as well as the software itself) continues to be an inspiration to me in all my work. Do something right, do it for all the best reasons, and get it out via open source to as wide an audience as possible. I think good thoughts in your direction every time I open Firefox.

I am not sure what to take from this lambasting.

At the top, some fair shots at my lack of knowledge of Firefox history.

In the middle, a "bit of history", about the band of brothers who started Firefox from nothing to the success it is today. Truly a "bit" of history, since it omits the fact that Firefox is built on top of some important core technologies (XUL, Gecko) that were grown in a fully funded corporate garden. Also an interesting parsing of the history of the Mozilla Foundation, which indeed started with "zero revenue" in 2003 -- but with a commitment for $2M over two years from AOL and a further $300K from Mitch Kapor. Verily, it is by what you omit that we shall know thee.

And finally, at the end, the none-too-suble put downs. No, our projects are not Firefox, and given the niche nature of our market, they never will be. But we have not failed yet.

Sadly, no direct engagement of the issue -- what exactly is it that users provide to open source projects?

Take me, as an example. I am a Firefox user. I have contributed no code, submitted no bug reports, helped no new users, documented no features. You have gotten nothing from me. Nada. I am a user. So, why am I important to your project?

I can only think of one reason, and it is not a bad one, really. That is that the larger the pool of useless users, the more likely that the pool will include useful helpers. That you can't have one without the other, and the kind of product that attracts useless users will also by virtue of its quality attract useful helpers.

Not a bad argument, really. Too bad you didn't make it.

Firefox has many users. And, like yourself, many have not contributed financially, or provided help to other users.

Just because you view yourself as useless (no-one's arguing with you there), does not mean you have to tarnish everyone else with the same tag.

Paul: Users are important to open source software because they are the reason it exists. As a developer, I make software for my users. Without users, the software is effectively nothing. It sounds like the problems you are facing come from within. Mind you, it is true that a great deal of bad software comes from the this-is-for-the-developers philosophy. Heads up: we don't need any more of that.

The success of Firefox, OpenOffice.org and some Linux desktop distributions is precisely described in Ramsey's post: unlike a majority of OS projects, instead of being developer oriented they are user oriented. Mozilla, the suite was largely sold as developer oriented and this took it nowhere. Firefox was created with the end user in mind: simple, familiar, stable, plus some helpful features: popup blocker, tabs, web feeds and extensible.

It became a success.

Then money got in through partnerships plus donations but I guess the former makes the larger share.

Where would Firefox be today without the money nobody can tell as history can't be rewritten but customer orientation is a requirement for success in any industry. So I see nothing particularly surprising on Firefox's success: 10% - 20% market share, making web browsers a hot topic again, pushing Microsoft to update IE, enabling modern web technologies: SVG, XForms, micro summaries, RSS, etc. And there's still a long way to go to keep shaking the web. As long as the product (Firefox 2) is still a great product and with a promising future (Firefox 3), marketing is key.

Users are as important as developers as there's no reason for one without the other. Both must be pleased. Perhaps here's where more work is necessary to attract more developers to embrace Mozilla technologies.

What users bring to the project? Purpose. End users satisfaction is the main driver for me and I can assure for a very large if not all people involved with Firefox in any way.

Honestly, I thought this was obvious for anybody involved with open source.

Obvious for all except Mr Ramsey, it would seem.

Percy, thanks for the great one-word answer. "What [do] users bring to the project? Purpose."

Does this mean that you consider the primary motivator of projects to be altruism? Egoboo? I am just being argumentative: along with the classic "scratching one's itch", altruism and egoboo are just part of the bubbling cauldron of motivations people carry around in different proportions.

Any others I am missing?

Wow Paul you've upset these guys big time. I personally think there is a big difference between mozilla and GIS software. Users are important to mozilla because it's all about providing a better UI - lock stock and barrel (ok maybe ego and money has something to do with it).

But open source GIS isn't about the users, they aren't the primary driver for open GIS, as they are to mozilla. It's about being able to build a cost effective, robust, reliable and open GIS. But this open-ness is only benifical if you are able to develop the software, or take a peak at the code behind it and understand it.

Paul, I think your comments have been taken wildly out of context by those who shout loudest. citronpousty and james fee would make good journalists, but im not sure about good developers, and thats why they cant take advantasge of open source gis, i think they get cranky if they don't have their daily esri fix.

Like all great debates in modern days this one seems to be dominated by the extremes:

"purpose" "for the users" "doing something right.."

vs.

"a large and ongoing firehose of money" and it's ilk.

I sleep soundly knowing the truth is likely somewhere in the middle... just like when I listen to television talking heads. I agree with some of what Paul is saying and fear his "sound bites" are slightly taken out of context... creating faux-outrage where there really isn't any intended. Well.. maybe with the firehose thing :) but still.

Asa, are you denying that Mozilla gets millions of dollars a year, and that that money has no effect on coding?

OPEN SOURCE ROCKS! WHOAHH!!!! *Takes off t-shit*

Dan100: Does it sound like he was denying Mozilla gets millions a year now? NO. He was talking about the roots of the Firefox project. Firefox started off small with no official funding off anyone (Moz, Netscape, etc), when this browser was becoming more popular than the Mozilla suite (there was a lot more activity on the Phoenix forums than the Mozilla suite forums) then the Mozilla roadmap was altered to transition to standalone apps and eventually *after proving itself* became the main focus of the Mozilla foundation.

If Firefox hadn't been so popular they'd have not made the millions in search revenue in the first place.

Note: MAJOR newbie, here. Bit more than a "user" but WAY below a true developer (my code is weak).

Point to add (only 2 cents worth): I wonder if the Open source GIS community will fall into the same role in the development cycle that I, in my naivite, observe.

To wit: tremendous strides in technology occur in the Open source community, are freely distributed, discovered by corporate developers (I'm thinking Microsoft, most prominently), worked into the latest for-profit software release (but, of course, redone, so that they don't have to respect Open source requirements; cf., Microsoft's own brand of Java, etc. - I hope that this is a valid example), and fortunes are (sometimes) made. Small wonder MS is the target of so many breakers (I hate to demean the former connotation of "hackers" by lumping these former security guys in with malevolent types who destroy and deface).

The analagous GIS point: developments in GRASS and other "free" GIS community works are almost certainly not copied, in terms of coding, by GIS giants (I'm thinking ESRI, playing the MS role a la the Firefox e.g.). Rather more to the point, the functionality (or perhaps more correctly "functions"?) is seen to be a potential for improving their own commercial products and they quickly throw wads of cash into R&D to come up with their own versions. Sometimes, the money developers copy each other.

For GIS folks, I'm thinking in terms of the "ground-breaking" idea behind (Arc) SDE: store your data (spatial and/or attribute) in a commercially available RDBMS instead of one that's built into your product (or acquired, as was INFO, as in "ARC/INFO" - remember when ESRI used dashes instead of capitalization to denote modules?). I call out "ground-breaking" because Intergraph was doing this years before ESRI got a hold of it - anyone use MGE before? So, I can't prove ESRI got the idea from Intergraph, but the one preceded the other and, I might add, was (briefly) commercially successful (or at least viable).

But of course, this is a digression from the point I am trying to make - there is a secondary, or perhaps ancillary benefit to both users and developers from Open source efforts, as far as I can see - the user gets more choices. If the user can manage to use and enjoy Open source products AS-IS (as they say), bully for them. They'll save money and get some fine products. On the other hand, if they belong to a well-established large-scale operation that is fully committed to a vendor's product (I'm in municipal government and ESRI is cock of the walk in this arena of GIS users), then we just have to work with what we can get and hopefully make the mods to the OTS products on our own to suit our own needs. Nonetheless, I know for certain that even as a committed (not necessarily by choice) commercial software user (both MS and ESRI), I certainly have benefitted from the developments made in the Open source community, albeit indirectly.

So, like a good (social) Liberal (not the town in KS), my overriding point is: everyone is right! Yeah!

Thanks for tolerating this post. I know you guys quit arguing about it months ago - I just found it tonight.

Cheers.