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Mitchell Baker and the Firefox Paradox (Inc)Mitchell Baker and the Firefox Paradox (Inc)Posted Feb 28, 2007 2:42 UTC (Wed) by njs (guest, #40338)Parent article: Mitchell Baker and the Firefox Paradox (Inc) I might quibble with the article's phrasing, but, c'mon guys, it's entirely correct that Firefox is in a unique place. The competition for Firefox is not Konquerer; the competition for Firefox is Internet Explorer. Can anyone name a single other FOSS project that has gone toe-to-toe with a marquee MS product, on the desktop, and gotten double-digit market share doing so? We hope that our office environments, desktop environments, kernels, etc., will do the same someday, but so far... we've failed at that. Firefox is the only project managing it, and it's a very interesting question how they're doing it, and whether they'll continue to do so. Furthermore, the stakes are not just whether Firefox happens to be more pleasant to use than Epiphany or whatever... you can use whatever you want, I don't care, it doesn't affect me. But if we don't have something breaking the monoculture (i.e., getting at least double-digit market share on the desktop), then we hand control over the web's development to Microsoft and Adobe. Since they have no stake in the web remaining open and interoperable, that would not be the preferred outcome. The Firefox crowd seem to be the ones with the best chance of preventing this, so I'm rooting for them even if I don't use their browser...
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Mitchell Baker and the Firefox Paradox (Inc) Posted Feb 28, 2007 11:09 UTC (Wed) by quintesse (subscriber, #14569) [Link] I would have to ask: what other "marquee MS products" are there for the desktop? Office yes, but what else? I can't think of any.
So IMO in the end Firefox is in a "unique position" accidentally not because it was designed to be. Firefox was lucky that it was targeting a market that MS had ignored because they were not making any money of it. Neither the Linux kernel nor office applications like OOo are in that "luxury" position, MS has always put a lot of money and effort into Windows and Office so distinguishing yourself from the competition by offering an obviously superior product will be much more difficult. It will also mean that MS will react much more quickly when a competitor incorporates some good ideas in their products.
So of course it's good to look at the Firefox project to see if there's something you could learn but I think that it's already obvious what made them successful: make a greatly superior product that appeals to a large group of people that is easy to use without too much limitations when compared to the current leading competitor.
But in the end I think it's the lack of similar circumstances that will make it very difficult to pull of another "Firefox". (That doesn't mean I think it's impossible, I just think it will take much more time because the advantages of switching will be far less obvious to most people).
Mitchell Baker and the Firefox Paradox (Inc) Posted Feb 28, 2007 13:22 UTC (Wed) by kirkengaard (subscriber, #15022) [Link] Actually, Firefox is in a "unique" position because it developed out of the longstanding position of Netscape relative to Internet Explorer. Netscape became Mozilla, and Mozilla became a gargantuan monster, and necessitated Firefox, which became Mozilla's newest flagship product. Call it "successor in interest". That position is in no wise new. The other position is being marketed for by OpenOffice.org, which (wonder of wonders) has a similar level of marketing and corporate clout behind it, and interest in seeing it succeed because of investment. Again, inherited from a previous "rival" (though of far less consequence) in StarOffice.
Mitchell Baker and the Firefox Paradox (Inc) Posted Feb 28, 2007 22:25 UTC (Wed) by job (guest, #670) [Link] I'm not sure about the other ones but I think VLC has a fair share of movie viewers hooked, who might not care about free software otherwise.
Mitchell Baker and the Firefox Paradox (Inc) Posted Mar 1, 2007 11:07 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Yep and you can thank the magic of Ffmpeg for a lot of that.
Hands down their multicodec is superior to most commercial codecs and if they are not superior then it's damn close or it's because certain specific features are missing.
Divx/Xvid < ffmpeg for instance.
Especially that SNOW experimental codec that is in ffmpeg. They made that and it's probably superior in compression/quality then the current "Hi-def" champion: h.264
Although unfortunately these sort of things need more love from developers. Potential for being the Vorbis of Video.
Mitchell Baker and the Firefox Paradox (Inc) Posted Apr 8, 2007 3:42 UTC (Sun) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link] I would have to ask: what other "marquee MS products" are there for the desktop? Office yes, but what else? I can't think of any.
walk through any large company and you will find several others, the exchange/outlook monstrosity (open source mail, trivial, now get me an integrated calander, task list, etc. or if not integrated, at least wroking well togeather), visio, project, word, excel, powerpoint (some of these covered by the 'office' bundle)
firefox had it easy in comparison, the web follows standards (more or less), for all of these other areas the new project will need to figure out how to be file compatible (due to the network effects metnioned earlier in the thread related to mathlab)
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