John’s Blog

Strange not to see China and India in Top10 with their population, though I understand why the practical side of it.

~83TB served in 24 hours …. this is gigantic traffic.

Actually, I was hoping to see 10million being achieved, a round and beautiful figure to go on world record. Perhaps with 3.5 or 4.0

@unknown: it’s not a zero-day, it’s at the moment undisclosed, and ZDI will give us time to patch. So there’s no real user risk at present.

I’ve been (not so) patiently waiting for FF3, now that it’s here and all the plugins I normally use have been upgraded and improved to match I’m browsing and developing faster than ever.

It was exciting to see people pledge in the millions but then to see that number multiplied several times over the 24 hours of download day was amazing!

Thanks everyone for all the hard work, 4% market share after just 24 hours is a testament to that work and dedication. Congratulations!

Firefox 3 is Great…. I am also a lover of this Open source Browser.

Nice work with Firefox 3. I’ve been using the betas and release candidates for weeks, and of course, was one of the millions that downloaded it yesterday. Thanks.

Great work!!! much improvement over v2, and incomparably better than that other browser. Forgive me, but if those people over at M$ are at all smart, they will offer all those who worked on F3 a job – then maybe they can write good code….

Nice work with Firefox 3. I’ve been using the betas and release candidates for weeks, and of course, was one of the millions that downloaded it yesterday. Thanks.

Very first thinking…will a zero increase for the present count as it has now..!! the answer again remains again a YES. Really cool browser n thanks for whole team for shipping out electronically free.

Very first thinking…will a zero increase for the present count as it has now..!! the answer again remains again a YES. Really cool browser n thanks for whole team for shipping out electronically free.

muito bom….

Firefox 3 – don’t believe Mozilla?

1.Weder die Foundation noch die Cooperation, klärt die Endbenutzer auf ihren Internetseiten über Funktionsänderungen auf, die im Zusammenhang mit der Privatsphäre der Benutzer stehen. Die Internetseiten sind kommerziell gestaltet und versuchen den Benutzer nur zum Download und zur Benutzung der Software anzuregen.

2.Die Geschäftsbedingungen, sog. EULA’s, sind nur in englischer Sprache abrufbar und entziehen allein sich so einer Vielzahl von Benutzern. (Stand Juni 08)

3.Google, der bisher nur als Anbieter eines Suchmaschineneintrag erkennbar war, bleibt weiterhin ungenannt, obwohl er alleine im Jahre 2006, 85% der Gesamteinnahmen der Mozilla Organisation ausmachte und nun auch als Pishing-Provider im Hintergrund implementiert wurde. (siehe file „firefox.js“ im Ordner Prefs

4.Die neue Funktion, die während des Betriebes des Firefox-Browsers nun regelmässig (48mal täglich) mit einem Google-Server Kontakt aufnimmt und somit auch die aktuelle IP des Benutzers 48 mal täglich an Google sendet, wird unter „Security & Privacy“ als Feature verkauft.
Anti-Phishing – Shop and do business safely on the Internet. Firefox gets a fresh update of web forgery sites 48 times in a day, so if you try to visit … …Originalzitat http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/firefox/features/

5.Auch in den Sicherheitseinstellung wird Google als Anbieter des Pishing-Schutzes nicht erwähnt! Somit wird auch der Anschein erweckt, es handele sich um eine vom Hersteller und somit vertrauensvolle Quelle der Liste!

6.Ebenfalls in den „Sicherheitseinstellungen“ kein Warnhinweis, das die aktuelle IP 48mal am Tag an einen Drittanbieter bekannt gegeben wird.

7.Die Malware-Funktion basiert auf einem regelmässig stattfindenen Kontakt mit dem addons.mozilla.org Server. Malware… A continuously updated list of attack-sites tells us when to stop you from browsing …Orginalzitat http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/firefox/features/

Auch hierbei wird Mozilla immer über die aktuelle IP-Adresse des Benutzers informiert!

natürlich wird hier keinesfalls das Benutzerverhalten ausgespät, nur darüber nachgedacht!

I was not able to access the official download site due to high network traffic. So I used http://www.filehippo.com. Does that count?

For my business (no website created) I need my email program to work so I can communicate freely, in a timely fashion with my clients. I tried for an hour to get some assistance from your support people via the ‘Yes, We’re Open’ Online Chat. Whether I started out as 22nd in the queue or 7th I always ended up after 10 minutes (as promised) seeing: “We’re sorry we weren’t able to answer your question. Please feel free to try again later, or return to the Firefox support page for more options.” In desperation I am contacting the only other person that I think may be able to help me, since none of the “-zines”, forums, knowledge base, FAQ’s or any other offered sources of assistance from Firefox proved to have any helpful information for my issue, which is a big one. Since the last download/install from the update prompt when I went to launch Mozilla-Firefox, I can’t reply to email – I can’t even access my Comcast.net Address List. This means all outgoing email business will have to be conducted through Internet Explorer, exclusively, until I am contacted with a location for downloading a repair patch or some other method of dealing with this issue is provided.
I’m happy you are all so pleased with your progress with Firefox 3, but how about a little more quality control before having us all blindly, trustingly install something that reduces our ability to function as before. Just because something is new does not mean it is better (I believe VISTA fits that description, also). If Firefox 3 is what caused my problem then I don’t want it and would like to revert to what I had before. I thought the tiny updates I did prior to launching the browser were just harmless, but necessary updates. Was I wrong? Are some updates better left alone and not installed because of compatibility issues with other applications – vis a vis email programs?
Sorry for being long-winded. I do that in order to be specific and hopefully understood. I look forward to your reply in my email that I can not reply to in Firefox yet.

I’ve been watching and participating in the semi-miraculous Mozilla.org story since 2004. I’ve been contending with the Microsoft story since 1980. In 28 years, I’ve come to understand a thing or two about the general paradigm of commercial software. I am a confirmed believer in the power of competition and free-enterprise, and while it might be considered an ideological oxymoron by some, that’s exactly why I believe that in almost every case, commercial licensing of software is a corrupt principle.

Mozilla.org has been one of the most successful proofs that open-source collaboration is not only a viable business model, it is a very dynamic model, far more so than the proprietary commercial licensing schema practiced by big companies like Microsoft and Adobe, but emulated all the way down the chain by smaller and less well-known opportunists. The core justification (necessity) for open-source collaboration is the preservation of work. I could write at length on the subject, but that’s not my reason for posting this.

While my enthusiasm for using Firefox (for example) has been on a steadily increasing plane for several years now, I have been concerned, and now I am starting to feel some of the feelings of outrage that I historically attributed almost solely to Microsoft. I’m going to cite a simple example, one you will very likely consider trivial, but which makes (and closes) the case as far as I am concerned.

While perusing the add-ons for Firefox awhile ago, I downloaded one called “Fire Shot by susbox”. It’s an add-on which allows you to take photo snapshots of your browser page (and surroundings), and provides some useful photo editing capabilities as well. It is very well-designed, the user interface is pretty good, and when I finally got around to using it, I was very impressed.

Assumptions I made (because I downloaded this from the Firefox add-ons website were: a) it’s free, and b) if I need to, I can go into the sources and either fix something if it’s broken, or find out how to do something with the program it can’t yet do, but which I have discovered a need. I also made the general assumption (with no guarantees) that the authors of the program would very likely be providing improvements to it over time.

Therefore, I felt comfortable adopting it’s use, investing my time learning how to use it, and generally standing down from looking for or considering other open-source tools that offer similar features. Today, I got a dialog box that informed me that “my trial period using ‘Fire Shot Pro’ had expired, and that my feature set had now reverted to their ‘basic’ edition.”

I don’t think I need to spend much time explaining the fundamental and inexorable conflict of interest which exists when a software developer portrays themselves both as “open-source collaborative” and “commercial” at the same time. That is an oxymoron, and it has no place on any Mozilla.org affiliated website. I’ll also make mention of the contradiction between the Susbox ’strategy’ of offering their product as a free, open-source add-on to Firefox, when in fact it was ‘trialware’ that morphs itself into ‘hobbleware’ after a period of time they hope will get a percentage of the early adopters to become paying customers.

I’m wondering what percentage of the $20 Susbox wants for their ‘Pro’ version found it’s way into the pockets of the folks who contributed to the millions of man-hours which have gone into Firefox, and all the truly free and open add-ons which, together, make this such an outstanding example of open-source collaborative software development? Whatever it may be (if anything at all), Susbox has no right to step in at the top of the pyramid and skim off it’s own piece. That violates the entire principle, and by allowing this tiny incursion, Mozilla.org enables and facilitates the erosion of trust and the eventual demise of the basic ideas which are part of it’s mission statement. (Which I have just read carefully.)

No one can prevent (nor would I want to prevent) Susbox from offering Trialware, Hobbleware, or whatever other variations they might consider to provide a commercial value-added product for use with Firefox. As long as their code is not violating the public-license established by Mozilla.org, they have every right to do so. There are plenty of websites which cater to providers of that type: CNET has download.com which offers all different variations. And by the way, I can select out any software which has those ’strings attached’ which would lead to me having to purchase something, after investing my time learning to use and apply their software tools to my problems. But for Mozilla.org to nibble around the edges of it’s own sterling principles is a disaster in the making, I believe.

Lord Acton, a 19th century theologian and philosopher wrote: “Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The same could and should be said of commercial software licensing.

I’ll add this one post-script which I hope underscores the importance of this issue: I am presently working with a local non-profit organization called ‘cureneuro.org’, the goal of which is to ‘encourage open collaborative medical research’. We are actively exploring ways to adapt public licensing protocols used in the software industry for use in medical research. Why? Because since 1980, when Congress passed legislation allowing academic research organizations to license the product of their publicly funded research. The result has been predictable: literally billions of dollars which can generally be categorized as ‘medical research’ actually goes to administrators who work for the ‘intellectual property departments’ of major medical universities (like OHSU here in Portland for example), to IP (Intellectual Property, not IP address) specialty law-firms, and to a handful of doctors who think of themselves now more as entrepreneurs than medical researchers. (And by the way, they are entrepreneurs who do not invest their uncompensated time or their own money in their ventures…those funds come from the public trough.)

Over my professional career (35 years or so), I have come to understand that free-enterprise and competition is an ideal embraced and admired by those who are starting out, and who want to both create something worthwhile, and profit from it as well. I have also discovered that these same folks, once they get a toe-hold on some niche, set about doing whatever they can to prevent others from adopting their enterprise of choice, and failing that, doing everthing they can to limit competitive pressure. The iconic epitome of that (in our time) is referred to as: ‘another Bill Gates’, but the sick philosophy behind it saturates our economy and corrupts our democracy.

So while you may think that Mozilla.org can tolerate a few trivial misrepresentations or omissions of fact (ie: lies), I would suggest that you err on the side of strict preservation when it comes to the principles stated in the corporate mission. We will all be better off in the long run if you do.

I felt the same way about FireShot, I’m surprised there aren’t more comments about it online, I found this page by trying to discover if anyone else was wondering about it being in breach of the Mozilla license.

I’ve already ditched FireShot for screengrab ( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1146 ) which is free, less obtrusive and doesn’t have a seriously ugly icon unlike the alternative.

Hi Tom – I'm sorry you had this experience, for sure. Mozillazine is a separate group from Mozilla — they're a community that's grown up that does a lot of writing & communicating & supporting Mozilla-related products, but they're not quite the same as Mozilla itself. Anything in particular you need help with?

Thanks,very useful and interesting post

Firefox has been getting more and more market share. If I'm not wrong the latest statistics stands at around 22%. This is simply amazing as more and more geeks are using Firefox and leading the trend as early adopters.