businessweek.com— The maker of the Firefox browser shepherds a restive, valued legion of programmers—and provides a model for companies like Google and LinkedIn.
Jul 2, 2009View in Crawl 4
OK, lets get this out of the way. Mozilla/FF/Google good. FF > IE. "M$FT" is evil and sucks. Yes, I'm using FF and yes it is better than IE.Having said that, this article just feeds the BS perception that Mozilla is this pure and holy "company".First off, they wouldn't be around except for the basically tons of free money Google feeds them and their non-profit status. This is just a white-washed PR arm of the Google empire. I'd love to see Mozilla make a dime of profit without Google backing, they couldn't even if every employee worked for free. What, donations? Charge for the browser? Opera is making a killing in the market this way, huh?Also, if you believe this FTA you are a moron...."The organization wanted to include a feature to let users surf the Web without recording their history in the browser, but abandoned the idea when its developers couldn't get it to work. With the deadline approaching, a volunteer came up with a plan for such a feature that Beltzer describes as "absolutely perfect." A private browsing mode made it into the release. "All these great developers at their disposable couldn't add this, and one lone rogue programmer working for free solved the problem no one else could? Whatever! If I wrote for Mozilla and read that I'd be pissed. Surely someone could have pulled through and add it for them. After all, even MSFT managed to pull it off.Anyone thinks that Mozilla is a viable business model is a dumbass. I like free software as much as the next person, but it will never replace how software is made. This isn't Star Trek with world peace and no currency being used.
"If I wrote for Mozilla and read that I'd be pissed." Why? It's basically true that Ehsan implemented private browsing by himself. Of course there were many design discussions and the Mozilla community helped; there's no such thing as a feature which happens all by itself!Some of our best features have come from volunteers who don't realize how hard something is and just do it. Later they learn that a single person doing this is "impossible".And please remember that many of the core hackers who are Mozilla employees spend a significant portion of their time doing reviews and mentoring for the entire community.
The story reads that one guy basically saved their bacon on the feature, if true it is a slam against those other developers. It may be a hard feature, but if only a single person can do, it they better hope Ehsan doesn't start working for MSFT.OSS wants you to believe that only certain things can be done if you open it up to the entire world. That isn't true. You can find talent if you look for it.
browniemixJul 2, 2009
If only these fools would focus this much effort on Ubuntu too.
Closed AccountJul 2, 2009
Good work. Firefox is easily the best browser - ever.
Closed AccountJul 2, 2009
Please Dear, Not Tonight, Soft Penis Already
unbannedaccountJul 2, 2009
OK, lets get this out of the way. Mozilla/FF/Google good. FF > IE. "M$FT" is evil and sucks. Yes, I'm using FF and yes it is better than IE.Having said that, this article just feeds the BS perception that Mozilla is this pure and holy "company".First off, they wouldn't be around except for the basically tons of free money Google feeds them and their non-profit status. This is just a white-washed PR arm of the Google empire. I'd love to see Mozilla make a dime of profit without Google backing, they couldn't even if every employee worked for free. What, donations? Charge for the browser? Opera is making a killing in the market this way, huh?Also, if you believe this FTA you are a moron...."The organization wanted to include a feature to let users surf the Web without recording their history in the browser, but abandoned the idea when its developers couldn't get it to work. With the deadline approaching, a volunteer came up with a plan for such a feature that Beltzer describes as "absolutely perfect." A private browsing mode made it into the release. "All these great developers at their disposable couldn't add this, and one lone rogue programmer working for free solved the problem no one else could? Whatever! If I wrote for Mozilla and read that I'd be pissed. Surely someone could have pulled through and add it for them. After all, even MSFT managed to pull it off.Anyone thinks that Mozilla is a viable business model is a dumbass. I like free software as much as the next person, but it will never replace how software is made. This isn't Star Trek with world peace and no currency being used.
bsmedbergJul 2, 2009
"If I wrote for Mozilla and read that I'd be pissed." Why? It's basically true that Ehsan implemented private browsing by himself. Of course there were many design discussions and the Mozilla community helped; there's no such thing as a feature which happens all by itself!Some of our best features have come from volunteers who don't realize how hard something is and just do it. Later they learn that a single person doing this is "impossible".And please remember that many of the core hackers who are Mozilla employees spend a significant portion of their time doing reviews and mentoring for the entire community.
unbannedaccountJul 2, 2009
The story reads that one guy basically saved their bacon on the feature, if true it is a slam against those other developers. It may be a hard feature, but if only a single person can do, it they better hope Ehsan doesn't start working for MSFT.OSS wants you to believe that only certain things can be done if you open it up to the entire world. That isn't true. You can find talent if you look for it.