Mr. Tucker’s post from '05 [http://blog.mises.org/archives/004234.asp] might need to be re-looked at.
Firefox is all too willing to help protect “the free market” (with one hand on the guillotine). [http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/browsers/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=213401732]
Too much fun to be had.
It is not Firefox. It is Mozilla. The Mozilla corporation is already a free market champion. The fact that its CEO chose to endorse the antitrust attack by EU does not diminish their status.
Think of them as like wal-mart. They’re guilty of some crime but on the whole, they’re a boon for consumers.
To my knowledge, a recent article more or less countered the fear of Mozilla beomcing a monopoly when one of the heads of the company commented that while they are happy at the market share gains, he / they did not agree to utilizing the Firefox bundled with an OS concept, for fear of becoming a monopoly like IE had for quite some time.
I’ll fish it out of the bookmarks after dinner for a source, if no one else beats me to it 
I would shed few tears over Microsoft’s demise, whatever the means. They have been one of the worst abusers of IP injustice.
Internet Explorer is dead anyway. Even with improvement in new version of IE, they couldn’t stop the Mozilla marketing machine and the various new sharks that pop up recently(Google’s Chrome for example).
Even so, I wouldn’t be so worried about a Mozilla monopoly. The browser wars if anything got even more firecer in the last year or so with the introduction of Google Chrome.
Seconded, but not at the expense of Standards Fascism I’ve been encountering latley whenever I doubt CSS’ all & mighty altar of position in the web-design community.
The only thing I think IE has been good for, unintentionally of course, is that it has forced a continued challenged of standards not being universal (they never will be, if we want to innovate new web technologies and/or techniques at all) by being a stubborn foil, & despite the catering to users using a terrible browser, it has confirmed that the Semantic Web will probably have a role equivalent for those who incite The Common Good in argument (i.e. How dare you argue against The Semantic Web, it’s a positive right that everyone must obey, etc.)
Semantic Web seems more like a journey than a destination, but this of course falls on the same deaf ears that continue to think the W3C is worth a dime’s difference (lol @ EmotionML)
Back on topic…
Microsoft deserves to die, however. Hopefully their more successful xbox division branches off & renames themselves before the Steve Ballmer ship hits the final iceberg, at least they seem to know what their doing, inital launch failures notwithstanding.
I like IE much more than I like Firefox for some of the same reasons I like windows over linux, thus I would be willing to pay more for IE. But to each his own.
I guess malware distributors would be out of a job, otherwise.
Meh. Malware has moved away from ActiveX and into social engineering ads for “ZOMG YOR COMPUTAR IZ INFECTED!” And people will download whatever name AntivirusXP is going by at the moment. And then come to people like me to get rid of it.
DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!
lol
I personally use Chrome when I can. Some sites I have to use IE on because they don’t show up right.
I don’t think IE is dead. We’ll still be saying its dead 20 years from now.
Someone help me out here, but I thought Mozilla and Firefox had merged?
And the issue of my original post is not that I am concerned about Mozilla / Firefox / Chrome or any other browser becoming a monopoly, but rather the use of courts to dictate what a company, Microsoft, can and can’t do with its own software.
It would be like your neighbor convincing the local government that you could drive a convertable, but not with the top down under any circumstances.
-Brent
have you seen this?
http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/08/introducing-ubiquity/
It is called Ubiquity and it is the most useful plug in I’ve ever used
Geez, can’t these people complaining about the fact that Microsoft gives you internet explorer with Windows just go and make their own operating system and throw their browser in it? If its good enough people will buy it.
I think many people here have been drinking too much of the Firefox Kool-Aid:
If you support free-markets then you support Microsoft being able to do whatever it wishes with it’s property. You have a choice like everyone else not to purchase Microsoft Windows but no government has the right to force Microsoft to use it’s property for competitors or dictate how or what it sells.
The open-source movement is filled with collectivists so I find it ironic that it is championed here.
Firefox started as “Phoenix” in 2002, an experimental redesign of the Mozilla Suite browser component. It officially became known as Mozilla Firefox in 2004. The name “Mozilla” in this case refers to the Mozilla Foundation/Corporation which develops Firefox and developed the Mozilla Suite. Official development of the Mozilla Suite ended in 2005 but continues as a community-developed product known as SeaMonkey.
The problem here is the assumption that it is Microsoft’s property.
They wrote the code not you. But maybe in a collectivist world we can just make them write it.
From each according to his ability…
And them owning your copy of that code running on your computer follows from that… how?
The DVDs Microsoft distributes on are indeed Microsoft’s property.