[Marxism] Alternatives to Microsoft's Internet Explorer

["Walter Lippmann" <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

People everywhere are moving away from Microsoft's
Internet Explorer browser. I'm still stuck with it
but I have to admit that my tendency is always to
be somewhat behind the curve when it comes to such
technological matters. On the CubaNews list we got
some correspondence today in which a reader writes
about Mozilla as an alternative to I.E. and which
Marxmail readers may find of interest, so I'm now
going to share here. If any of the technologically
more sophisticated Marxmailistas can explain what,
if any, are the advantages and disadvantages which
remain with each, I would like to learn about them.

One of Cuba's leading computer experts, Arnaldo Coro
felt the same as our reader did. Arnaldo wrote a
commentary on this which we got translated and
posted awhile ago. You can read his article here:
http://www.walterlippmann.com/coro-ie.html

Spanish-speaking computer users who are interested
in technological matters would probably enjoy the
Clic Internet site, which also provides a weekly
newsletter updating readers with the latest stuff
http://clicinternet.cubasi.cu/esp/index.htm

Anyone who would like to look at these and provide
some translations to English should feel strongly
encouraged. Our gratitude toward out translators
is boundless. There is so much we have to learn!


Walter Lippmann, CubaNews
http://www.walterlippmann.com
===================================================

-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel Perez [mailto:bowcoach@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Friday, November 26, 2004 12:01 PM
To: CubaNews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [CubaNews] An Alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer



For those of you who don't know of Mozilla's newest
internet browser I thought I would mention it in this
forum. It is worlds better that Microsoft's Internet
Explorer and is downloadable for free.

One the nice features I'm sure many in this group will
appreciate is its tabbed browsing, which allows you to
set numerous pages to load up upon opening of Firefox.
It's like having multiple homepages.

The program also has a built in pop-up blocker. Since
i have installed it I have not had one pop-up yet.

To Download Firefox click the link below:

http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

-Daniel P. Perez


-------------------------------------------------------------------------
        
November 25, 2004       
        
Michael Hiltzik:
Golden State


Building a Better Browser at Mozilla


For those of you who are not particularily computer
savy you do not need to uninstall your current
browser. Firefox will import all your
bookmarks/favorites and other settings so you won't
have to bother with it.

Below is an article that appeared in the Los Angeles
times yesterday regarding this browser.

Let's dispose first of the rather mundane David and
Goliath story that has been the focus of most recent
news coverage of the Mozilla Foundation. "We're not
out to hurt Microsoft," Brendan Eich says, "so much as
to help the Web."

Eich's words might sound like mere braggadocio if not
for the startling success of the first consumer
product released by the foundation, a nonprofit
descendant of Netscape Communications Corp. that he
serves as chief software architect.

Mozilla's free Firefox 1.0 Web browser, unveiled Nov.
9 to ecstatic reviews, has been downloaded since then
by more than 6 million users; counting earlier test
versions, it may already be running on more than 30
million computers.

It may also be responsible for the first recorded
decline in market share experienced by Microsoft
Corp.'s Explorer browser in at least five years.

Firefox's advantages over Explorer make its rapid
acceptance unsurprising. Among other virtues, it's
faster, more resistant to viruses and spyware and full
of useful features that Microsoft, complacent in its
near-monopoly, has never provided for Explorer.
(Firefox is available at http://www.mozilla.org.)

Even more interesting, Firefox is the product of an
informal group of fewer than 20 programmers, many of
them volunteers from around the world working for
free, assisted by thousands of technology aficionados
who have contributed ideas, identified bugs and tested
interim versions on their computers over the years.
Their emotional investment in the project resembles
that of Apple Macintosh fans: Programmers have already
developed Firefox versions in 24 languages, including
Slovenian, Chinese and Asturian.

Firefox could be the most successful general-purpose
program ever created by the "open source" process, in
which the programming code of a project or system is
publicly available for enhancement or extension by
programmers at large.

For all that the term "open source" may conjure an
image of thousands of programmers hacking away in
isolation, Firefox - which Mozilla will soon
supplement with an e-mail program, Thunderbird - also
shows that a successful open-source project can't be
merely a public free-for-all.

To be successful, it must be carefully managed,
although not as firmly as a corporate effort aimed at
creating a proprietary product. "There have to be one
or two minds in charge," says Eich.

The trick is to strike a balance between authority and
indulgence. Says Walt Scacchi, a research scientist at
UC Irvine's Institute for Software Research, who has
been studying open-source projects: "It's a question
of how much guidance and coordination is required to
move things forward without being corrupted by
authority."

Indeed, Eich has spent years mediating among
participants who work on Mozilla projects for personal
reasons and with varied philosophies.

"It's a very heterodox community," he told me in the
Mozilla headquarters tucked away in a corner of a
Mountain View, Calif., office park. (The office is
dominated by a model suspension bridge, fashioned
entirely out of empty soda cans and paper clips, that
once adorned the Netscape offices.)

"Some are hobbyists who only want to scratch their own
itch. Some are into the challenge of doing complex
software. Some are motivated by getting their code out
to millions of users."

In a development gratifying to Mozilla, many are
engineers who have been assigned full time by their
employers to develop applications exploiting its code.

Although Eich says that animosity to Microsoft ranks
fairly low as an inspiration, Mozilla owes its birth
to the giant company's ruthlessness. In 1998,
Netscape's business of selling its pioneering browser
and related software for profit was destroyed by
Microsoft's decision to give away Explorer for free.

Forced to follow suit and thus unable to support a
large engineering staff, Netscape decided to publicly
distribute its source code - the basic programming
blueprint. It hoped that volunteers would use it to
develop their own innovations, preventing Microsoft
from securing an absolute browser monopoly, while
allowing Netscape to develop its own specialized (and
hopefully profitable) applications. Supervising the
effort was a team of Netscape programmers named, after
the Netscape browser's code name, the Mozilla group.

The strategy failed to save Netscape, which was
absorbed in 1999 by America Online. AOL last year
donated its remains, including old Netscape software
code, to the newly formed Mozilla Foundation and
donated $2 million in seed capital.

The foundation was largely the idea of Mitchell Baker,
a former Netscape lawyer who now serves as its
president. Baker says she always understood that a
large-scale project aimed at producing products that
would have broad utility and require constant
innovation required an organizational structure that
would give its products an identifiable brand and
allow it to employ a crucial core of personnel. The
payroll now comes to about 15, she says, most of whom
are engineers supervising the open-source work.

The Firefox launch plainly has forced Baker to
consider how to deal with the attention and
responsibility - and possibly the revenue - that may
come from market success, without sacrificing
Mozilla's open-source ecology. It may be tempting to
bask in Firefox's rapid acceptance - "People tell us
that it's such a better Web experience that if they
try it, they really like it" - but a new set of
challenges lies ahead.

"I'm not sure of all the ways the stresses will
manifest themselves," she told me this week. "We're
going to be looking at the pressures of success."


                



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