The people who really care about Free Software were already onboard with Mozilla before Firefox even started. If Firefox wants to grow, it makes sense for it to try to appeal to everyone else, and promoting other advantages is a good way to do that.

To you, the freedom of the software is important. It’s important to me. It’s important to some enthusiasts as well. Bt people who care are a miniscule fraction of the market.

What would you rather have:

Open and free Firefox that emphasizes features and which has 10-25% market-share.

Open and free Firefox that emphasizes openness and freedom, and has 5-15% market-share.

To us, the advocates of Free Software, the only difference between those two alternatives is that in one case, Firefox has bigger market-share, whereas in the other alternative, it has less market-share. The app itself is exactly the same, it’s license is exactly the same. Only difference is the market-share.

The fact that Firefox-team decides to focus on functionality does not change the fact that the app is also open and free. It’s not like you have to choose one, but not both. What difference does it make to us, whether Firefox-team decides to tout the functionality of the browser to Joe Sixpack, instead of the nature of the license it’s being distributed under?

Few computer users have heard of free software, open source, etc. A larger number pay attention to licensing issues, but I’m sure those are mostly corporate and enterprise folks for whom it is a cost issue. The guy in the suburbs buying software buys one copy, probably doesn’t read the license, and soon forgets it if he does.

If the competition from Firefox results in a better browser from MS, that’s great. That’s the way things are supposed to work. Firefox would then need to push ahead of MS again, etc. etc. It’s all to the benefit of the users, for whom the software is written.

You are missing the point exactly by basing your argument on the assumption that free software is of importance only to a developer.

http://www.john-carlton.com/?p=144

Skip the initial blah, blah until the paragraph: “Anyway, one example I couldn’t fit into The Rant concerned the idiocy of trying to *educate* people into buying your stuff.”

The words “Freedom, choice, open standards, community” are benefits only for a very small, already ‘educated’ minority of people.

Free software is about the long haul, and motivates a small but very important part of the possible user and developer base. And more importantly, it’s a question of being able to operate in an honest and transparent manner with the rest of the world. No secrets.

The Mozilla folks understand this but they also understand that the way to the hearts of normal folks is through their stomachs, not through their heads. What you see is a strong design ethic mixed with a commitment to transparency. That’s the winning combination.

These “benefits” are not beneficial to me. I don’t care if Firefox has a community behind it or if it’s open source. I care if it WORKS as I expect it to be. For me, software is a TOOL, nothing more. Like I care if my microwave’s design is open and it has a community of geeks who get their ding-dong erected just by looking at its “open” electronic circuit. I don’t care. Same goes for software.

If it doesn’t have “practicality and usability” (as Mozilla guys put it), I don’t want to use it, I don’t even want to try it out. David Neary says that he is not a GPL zealot, but he clearly is when he is saying that “software freedom” is more important. It’s not. And I have 98% of the computer users of the world to prove it. Sooner or later the rest 2% wakes up and smells the coffee too.

This is a lot like having two students, one being a good A student and the other one being an F student, but with a talent in cheerleading. Who cares if you are good in cheerleading? Good for you and for our occasional entertainment, but nothing as satisfying as seeing good students that one day will lead our nation.

You can’t compete in such grounds. To win you have to compete where it matters, and that’s “practicality and usability”, not “freedom”.

This is a serious question. Just as you might claim that normal people don’t care about software “freedom”, you could claim that normal people don’t care about any other kind of “freedom”. That is, until they see the consequences of being without it. People don’t care about freedom, but a politician who ties “freedom” to (say) “not being harassed by the police for doing nothing” *does* win hearts and minds (and votes).

Similarly, pushing software freedom can be effective, as long as you tie it to practical benefits for them. For example, “free software means faster innovation: would IE7 have tabbed browsing if Mozilla didn’t do it first?”.

You have to say “freedom in this arena is good, and here’s why!”, not just an abstract “freedom good”. You don’t convince anybody that democracy is good by citing dead political scientists, either, but that doesn’t mean that average people like living under tyranny.