As one or two tech bloggers might have heard, Dave Winer and I had some disagreements at Gnomedex that spilled over into the blog world. We’ve since cleared up the misunderstandings in e-mail and are now working together to improve communications between Mozilla and its users, something I know Mitchell has already spent lots of time thinking about and working on.
Dave suggested I succinctly express my philosophy about users and competition so he can make it available to his readership, which I appreciate. My philosophy is very simple: serving users is the only reason I work in the software industry. I don’t care about competitors unless they impede my ability to do that.
July 3rd, 2006 at 1:48 am
Well it’s really nice to hear that you and Dave Winer have cleared up the confusion and now you both are working together. I apptreciate that you both have sorted it out among yourself. Two people can’t think in the same way that’s what happened in your case and we have all seen the result.
July 3rd, 2006 at 9:51 am
Dave’s comments were obviously off the mark based on what I’ve been following from the creators of Firefox, and how they only focused on the users since day 1, and why they had to as the Mozilla projects were perpetually impeded by too much time and energy focused on inter-developer coding style squabbles.
Firefox and it’s extensions (especially Greasemonkey) are a key component in keeping the web interesting. I can show Firefox to any non-techie person and they will love it instantly. There are few software products out there which don’t need much of a pitch to grab a user’s loyalty.
The only update I’d recomment is that the user can choose which search engine to default to when Firefox is installed. I commend that Firefox makes so much $ from google search. But where there is a choice like this, it’s best to let the user choose. Most folks wouldn’t know you could choose an alertnate search tool, unless it’s made clear in the setup process.
July 3rd, 2006 at 1:17 pm
I’m happy that you and Winer have cleared up the misunderstandings. The only downside is that I was looking forward to hearing your talk. Now i will always wonder what you were going to say. But it is really good that you and Dave are working on a solution.
July 3rd, 2006 at 1:19 pm
Oops; i forgot happy 4th of July;and thank you. I love Firefox
July 3rd, 2006 at 9:13 pm
But i do remember……..Happy 4th of July, and i love Mozilla too.