Firefox Is Heading Towards Trouble

The security update did not run perfectly. Well, it was the first one, so there were indeed troubles. No need to jump into conclusions about the whole process.

As for Linux users: They are generally lower priority, as most of them get their updates from their distro and not from the Mozilla Fund.

I kept envisioning the author singing that song the Scarecrow sings in the Wizard of Oz. My assessment of his mental status is at least as accurate as his assessment of Firefox.... and IMHO, it's more accurate. But I guess it sells... shame everything is turning in the National Inquirer.

Don't really know the author, and am not presently blessed with the time to be up on the Firefox situation, but...

He actually raises an interesting general question, regardless of whether it applies to Firefox here and now...

Does software have a window of opportunity? Does the old cliche of never having a second chance to make a first impression apply?

Firefox is a classic case of coming out of nowhere to take the world by storm. You and I both know that the Firefox is more than five years in the making, but most of that time was spent under the larger world's radar.

Now things have become explosive. How does an open source project handle that? Does its structure matter? Will people have more patience knowing that they're open source? How long will that patience last?

What does it mean for OpenOffice, which may be on the verge of a Firefox-like "introduction"?

Just wonderin'.

The author makes perfectly valid points, XFree86 anyone?

Author's point is that the whole idea of open source can't work, and firefox is a perfect example of such, "rotting" from the inside out. At best this is FUD stuff.

The only point I see in this is on top of the authors head....

Well, I must admit I agree to the end-conclusion of the writer. He basically just says they're in short of money.

Opera, and OpenOffice (Sun's StarOffice) won't suffer from this problems I think, but for example, XFree86 also had a shortage of money I believe, and you see were it leads too (people switched to Xorg, because licensing changed).

The problem is also Firefox was ported to Windows, but the infrastructure was not (MS always uses patches instead of full new install, Firefox has no 200 mirror sites like linux-distros)

However, the problem of a shortage of contributing developers is far bigger in my opinion.

95% advertising, sponsored links, newsletter invites and other assorted crap. Where's the content?

Use lynx and scroll 50 pages down to the article!