Firefox donations hit $250,000 (News.com) [LWN.net]

Firefox donations hit $250,000 (News.com)

Posted Nov 1, 2004 22:59 UTC (Mon) by kornak (guest, #17589) [Link]

That in effect is the result if you promote it. Open source development in
large part is maintained by its level of interest. This will inevitably
increase interest which will increase development contributions.

Firefox donations hit $250,000 (News.com)

Posted Nov 1, 2004 23:06 UTC (Mon) by jwb (guest, #15467) [Link]

I sincerely doubt that there's a lot of qualified hackers out there who have not heard of the mozilla project, some time in the last five years. And, the majority of the power-user base is also aware of the project. This ad will be reaching, for the most part, the less clueful users and IT managers out there. Which may be a good thing, if it softens or eliminates the kind of thinking that leads to MSIE-only web development.

If I had the $250k I would pay it out in bug bounties. But I'm not the supreme overlord of the Mozilla project, so who really asked me?

Firefox donations hit $250,000 (News.com)

Posted Nov 2, 2004 5:36 UTC (Tue) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]

Which may be a good thing, if it softens or eliminates the kind of thinking that leads to MSIE-only web development.

Yes, if it helps with that it's worth every penny. I had an argument with my bank's customer support: they tried to tell me to use internet explorer. Luckily CERT had recommended against IE in June this year, and the Washington Post had reported it, so I pointed them to that article and gave them a bit of my mind about endangering their customers' security. They finally replied thanking me for the valuable input and said they would pass it on to their IT staff, but nothing has changed... the only thing that will change them is if 10% of their customers use non-IE browsers (more importantly, don't use IE) and are willing to complain rather than just switch to IE for that site.

Firefox donations hit $250,000 (News.com)

Posted Nov 4, 2004 12:24 UTC (Thu) by NRArnot (subscriber, #3033) [Link]

I had an argument with my bank's customer support: they tried to tell me to use internet explorer. Luckily CERT had recommended against IE in June this year, and the Washington Post had reported it, so I pointed them to that article and gave them a bit of my mind about endangering their customers' security. They finally replied thanking me for the valuable input and said they would pass it on to their IT staff, but nothing has changed...

The best (only) way to convince a bank like that is to take your money to a competitor bank that doesn't force you to use the least secure browser, and let them know why you closed your account.

And if that's a pain - nothing compared to what happens if you get hacked through IE or Windoze and some criminal grabs your money!

Yes, but not directly

Posted Nov 2, 2004 0:06 UTC (Tue) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link]

The ad will help increase the market share of Firefox. This will motivate more hackers to contribute to the project, especially if their pages don't render in Firefox. Also, having Firefox hacking experience would sound more appealing to hiring managers.

Firefox donations hit $250,000 (News.com)

Posted Nov 2, 2004 2:07 UTC (Tue) by frazier (guest, #3060) [Link]

They were very clear that the money was dedicated for the newspaper advertising. I've given both to the ad campaign and to Mozilla foundation for development on prior occasions.

Go Firefox!

Firefox donations hit $250,000 (News.com)

Posted Nov 2, 2004 21:31 UTC (Tue) by rjamestaylor (guest, #339) [Link]

Only those who gleefully give away money without reading the page on which they are giving it would be confused. If so, "The Lord loves a cheerful giver."

Anyway, the PR generated by buying the ad will dwarf impact of the ad itself. When businesses and institutions learn there is an alternative to a troublesome application (I've heard IE referred to as "Internet Exploiter" on the streets of downtown San Antonio, TX) not only will they use it, they will back its continued development. Don't believe me? Look at IBM, Novell, HP, Dell, etc., with Linux. They benefit directly. But then look at OSDL member Unilever -- when they talk about soap transactions they aren't talking about XML -- why does Unilevel back Linux? Perhaps because it's useful to the food and hygiene product manufacturer. (See the OSDL member list at http://groups.osdl.org/osdl_members/osdl_roster/ .)

Point is, Firefox is a good thing. But unless you reach people and tell them, they won't know. MS includes IE in each Windows sale. A little green grease to help the promotion of Firefox will help overcome InErtia.

(I just wish they'd pick a newspaper with a better reputation than the New York Times.... :) )

Cheaper countries

Posted Nov 2, 2004 12:08 UTC (Tue) by angdraug (subscriber, #7487) [Link]

Especially if there were programmers from cheaper countries interested.

Good point. It's really a shame that so little paid free software development happens in the global South. Sending projects to Eastern Europe, South America and Asia (and Africa where possible) would help these economies much more than IMF's pittances that go to corrupted officials anyway.

(For the reference: here in Minsk BY, $250,000 would buy about 12-15 man-years of outsourced development.)

Firefox donations hit $250,000 (News.com)

Posted Nov 2, 2004 15:03 UTC (Tue) by ibukanov (subscriber, #3942) [Link]

> It surprises me that people wants to pay so much more to NYTimes editors than to the programmers that could actually make a difference.

I also was very skeptical but then I guess the effect of having contributors names in the advertisement did the trick.

> I wonder if it would work for other projects as well. KDE?

IMO it would not: KDE is not known to the general public sufficiently and the desire to be associated with something cool/good while having a name in NYT etc. would not kick in :(

Firefox donations hit $250,000 (News.com)

Posted Nov 2, 2004 21:15 UTC (Tue) by bfields (subscriber, #19510) [Link]

> It surprises me that people wants to pay so much more to
> NYTimes editors than to the programmers that could actually
> make a difference.

Note that while I know next to nothing about the Mozilla
project--I'm just a user--still, I would have guessed that
much more than $250,000 a year is being spent on development.

--Bruce Fields

Firefox donations hit $250,000 (News.com)

Posted Nov 3, 2004 17:32 UTC (Wed) by pauly (subscriber, #8132) [Link]

Well, you have to do both kinds of things. It has been a long-standing
problem with OSS that we've had a very high level of technical quality with
just a few freaks using the whole thing.
The problem I was able to observe quite closely in Marocco (a country with a
working economy, but a very heterogeneous one and, with respect to high-tech,
still far behind the US or Western Europe) is this: Those who do have to access
to technical education and/or resources are trying hard to keep up with what
they perceive is the world market. No matter how much cheaper OSS would be
or how much independence it would bring -- if the world market uses (or
appears to use) MS Office, everyone there will use MS Office and not even
think about anything else.
You get the point: Changing the way of the mainstream in the highly
industrialized countries will also change the opportunities of anyone in Marocco,
India or elsewhere.

Cheers, Martin