Letters from the Equator

Mozilla Foundation kills Mozilla

This is news. Back in the day when I was an engineering student in college, Mozilla was making big headlines about being *the* open source browser. It had strong strong support from Netscape and a huge group of alternative-browser folks, and I remember how difficult it was trying to get it to run smooth enough. I almost gave up on mozilla after trying out Netscape 6, but a little known browser named Firebird had pulled me out of the ashes.

Of course, if you had been following closely, that browser has now become the increasingly popular Mozilla Firefox. And the Foundation has bigger things to worry about than to maintain the Mozilla suite.

Before you read on, I just want to say that I don’t know much about what goes on in the Mozilla Foundation and the Firefox community. All I know is that I’ve been using this browser for years, since Firebird 0.4 actually… and that it’s becoming a strong browser contender because of it’s clean interface, flexible extension framework, small footprint and of course, price.

if you really look at the people behind the products, it’s like comparing a pinenut to a pineapple. open source communities are largely loose in organization, paling in comparison to larger commercial organizations i shall leave unnamed.

a week ago, there had been some restless activity over Mike Connor’s post regarding his concerns on Firefox’s development. He’s since made some clarifications, but this is where open source community begins to reveal itself to the general public.

So, is firefox doomed? Is IE going to make such a big comeback, heralding the future of web browsing? Is tabbed browsing all there is to it?

Most of us users aren’t really concerned, to be honest. But I do respect the hard work that has been put into Firefox since the very first days, and I’ve decided to stick with this once for the long haul. At least, it’s really about people who care.