To compare Mozilla ja IE... I have two different Windows XP partitions on my hard drive and I use them both every day. The first has IE as its default browser and the second has Mozilla. Guess what? I hope that you know, what do Ad-Aware or SpyBot: Seek & Destroy find from your computer. From that partition, where I have IE, they find every week at least 200 bad objects, but from the Mozilla's partition, they never find anything. Also, I haven't found many pages, which can not be displayed with Mozilla. Nevertheless, many pages can not be displayed correctly with IE. And as a webmaster, I have to say, Mozilla is the only browser that can display HTML & CSS new versions as they meant to be displayed. (IE, Netscape & Opera do not.)

Mozilla is bug ridden, if and if ever it gets enough of a fan base it will be ripped apart by script kiddies and lamers. Tell me, how in the world are you suppost to have a secure browser if you can download the source code? Huh? Just answer me that one.

Would be like Internet Explorer's SDK up for grabs on the net right now. The idea is insane, and more than likley will not work.

I've been using Mozilla for about a year and I can tell you that it most definitely is NOT bug-ridden. And your lack of understanding of open-source is laughable. Based on your theory, Apache should be less secure than IIS since it has a huge "fan base".

Also, you can get the SDK from Microsoft but an SDK and source code and not the same thing. I recommend doing a google on "security through obscurity" to understand why your point is so ridiculous.

A software with SDK would lease likely have more vulnerabilities than an open-source project as these "script kiddies and lamers" wouldn't have access to instantly find any loop-holes. Anyone with their heart set on corrupting a project isn't going to contribute to it's development. Sure, you could trust some people but could you trust over 100 million?
FYI: my comparison should be regarded with a non-opensource Firefox and opensource Firefox. I'm not comparing IE.
With that aside. "Pay to get your name in the New York Times" sounds interesting. Although I don't see how this could professionally contribute to Mozillas credibility. Selling a name is one thing, selling a product is another. Could this be perceived as Mozilla selling out Firefox?

Your theory just isn't true in practice. There is absolutely no evidence that an open-sourced product is any more insecure than a closed-sourced product. As I pointed out in my original post Apache is a great example. Just as there is the potential of millions of script kiddies looking at the code there are also millions of legitimate programmers potentially looking at the code. Do you believe that script kiddies have a better chance of finding a flaw than a profressional programmer?

And Mozilla is not actually running the ad but is merely endorsing it. They do not "sell" Firefox so this is not an ad to drum up revenue dollars. This is an ad to draw the public's attention to an alternative to IE. Whether it is better or worse (better in my opinion) is not the point. The idea is to open people's minds to the idea that there is an alternative.

I'm not saying that Open-source projects have more vulnerabilities. I'm saying that the vulnerabilities they have can be picked up much quicker by script kidies than if it were an SDK.

Why not go all the way... a Super Bowl Commercial!

Do any of you know how much a fullpage ad in the NYTimes costs? This is crazy! Why not take that $100,000 and use it to advertise in some other, errr I mean, in a lot of other places?

BTW, Opera > FireFix.

true, it's a big risk and that's a lot of $$$, but i think it's worth it, i think this has potential to attract thousands, if not millions of users.

Well, other than liberal elites anyway. What a waste of an ad budget.

Better yet, put the $100,000 toward fixing the thousands of known bugs that have been sitting in Bugzilla for years untouched.

If they bother you that much fix them yourself.

Amen.
And Baka, what if every Firefox user is not a programmer?
This is, IMHO, the one Firefox flaw. I submitted a bug once, sat there for two months, submitted another, got 'reprimended' for duplicating a bug. Someone else with more community credit reopened my first bug, and everyone sat in amazement as they went "Whoa, that's true man, it *is* a bug!".

It's still not fixed though.

Presumably if they could have, they would have. They also have a point. Publicity is important, however they need to improve some things. Usability, definately. And a bug should be judged on its own merits, not on the status of the person who reports it.

I think using and alternative browser gives more choice to the masses. Open source was the beginning of the computer age, and there is more given effort to repair security problems with Mozilla than is being accomplished on IE. The latest Microsoft babble is that many items within IE will be repaired upon Longhorn being issued. Yeah lets all wait until 2006. If CERT suggests alternative browser than one should heed advice from security experts rather than assume that they will never be under attack.

That comment ("fix it yourself") typifies exactly why open source software most often fails on the corporate desktop:

There's no accountability for many (although not all) of the applications.

We in corporate North America do not want to "roll our own" for mundane things like desktop apps. We want it fixed. Now. Period. We are prepared to pay for that. We are NOT prepared to put up with nonsense from propeller-headed technoweenies who say "fix it yourself - you have the source". We have more important things to do, like run a business and make money, money that we'll use to pay people who actually WILL fix the problems. That's why we use COTS.

From the consumer side, Joe Public and Co. feel the same way. We are not propeller-headed technoweenies who will "fix it ourselves". We want a rich and full-featured web experience out of the box and have neither the time nor the inclination to "fix it ourselves". We want something that plays Yahoo Launch! like Netscape and IE (guess which browser CAN'T). We want something that displays ALL pages the way the de facto standard browser (IE) does. We want something that can be used to access Windows Update so we can update our chosen OS (yeah, I can hear the shrill yammer from the peanut gallery already yelling "If you ran Linux, you wouldn't..." - dry up kid).

So, let's get the rose colored glasses off.

It's a nice browser.

It's also got flaws.

It can't do everything IE does.

It more than likely has as many flaws as IE does under the skin (given Gecko's admitted lineage) and the only reason they haven't come to light is because 1) the browser doesn't have the market share IE has and 2) it's the darling of the hacker set if for no other reason that it's NOT from Microsoft.

Will it take over the world?

You're kidding, right?

Will it stir competition?

That's already happening.

Will silly-asses media pundits blow it out of proportion and bill it as the second coming to boost readership?

Is the Pope Catholic?

Does it provide a viable alternative to IE?

Yes, but within limits.

Could a Windows user completely replace IE with it for ALL browser uses?

No. that can't happen if only for the reasons iterated above.

So, the bottom line:

Is all of this a huge example of overhype?

YUP!

But then again, what isn't these days...

Enjoy the grandstanding.

Just don't take it seriously if you have more than two braincells between your ears to rub together.

>> Well, other than liberal elites anyway.

Give me a break. It's the most widely-read credible (ie non-tabloid rubbish) paper in the western world. Safe to say that a few potential users will see it.