"The Message: Practicality and Usability more important than Open Source"
October 24, 2006 12:44 pm marketingI am not the only one who is disturbed by this strategy. That’s not because I’m a free software zealot, but because I think it’s a losing game.
To win this battle, we need to speak to people’s souls – if we only concentrate on the surface, then Microsoft will win – they will add more functionality, make IE more usable, build a better browser the way they did in 1997 and 1998. Mozilla can always cry the pyrrhic victory – “we restored choice on the internet” – but once their market share starts to go down, they will have lost – because that’s how they’ve chosen to play the game.
If, on the other hand, we concentrate on values that Microsoft don’t have, and can’t compete on, then we will capture hearts, and market share will follow. Freedom, choice, open standards, community – these values will generate passion. Will they disturb some people? Sure. But you can’t win ’em all. An ounce of passion is worth more than a pound of mediocrity.
October 24th, 2006 at 11:11 pm
You’ll get dedicated and passionate users, yes, just not many of them. The thing to realise is that while you and I care about Free Software, the overwhelming majority of people simply do not and never will.
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.
October 24th, 2006 at 11:11 pm
But… Joe Sixpack does not care whether his browser is open source or not. He simple does not care. What he does care are the speed it renders, the features it offers and the stability of the app. To him, it’s irrelevant whether the app is Free or not, if it doesn’t work as well or better as the primary competitor (which came with his computer).
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?
October 24th, 2006 at 11:30 pm
Coming from outside the developer community, it seems to me that urging a focus on winning people’s souls and concentrating on values rther than functionality and features is, itself, a pretty good definition of zealotry. Developer passion for developer vallues doesn’t play a role in the software choices made by almost everyone on the planet.
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.
October 25th, 2006 at 12:05 am
Billg: “Developer passion for developer vallues […]”
You are missing the point exactly by basing your argument on the assumption that free software is of importance only to a developer.
October 25th, 2006 at 12:32 am
You may like to read a marketing professional’s opinion about trying to convince people with stuff they don’t care about:
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.
October 25th, 2006 at 1:08 am
This has been the Mozilla strategy for quite a while. There’s nothing new here. As someone who has been involved with the project for a long time, I think that they are doing the right thing. Marketing for the browser is about explaining to people why it’s going to improve their lives in an immediate and concrete way. That’s where their focus is at the moment. Asking the question “how can we improve the browsing experience for everyone?” That’s what keeps people using the browser.
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.
October 25th, 2006 at 1:11 am
Yes, but free software is of importance *mostly* to developers. Are there others who find the notion of freedom appealing? Absolutely. But they’re not a lot of the market. Normal users have lives to live, businesses to run, families to raise – they just want something that works and makes their lives easier. Not every decision has to have an ideological/moral component.
October 25th, 2006 at 8:07 am
>The words “Freedom, choice, open standards, community” are >benefits only for a very small, already ‘educated’ minority of people.
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.
October 25th, 2006 at 8:38 am
BTW, the way you try to outrun MS is wrong. Instead of providing better solutions you care about providing “Freedom”.
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”.
October 25th, 2006 at 10:01 am
To those who think discussing “freedom” with users is a non-starter because users don’t care about freedom, I ask: is it also a non-starter when talking about politics?
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.
October 25th, 2006 at 11:03 am
Mozilla turned to Firefox and followed the stategy of “embrace and extend”. The only got it half right, there has only been extend, the relentless grab for market share, but there has been very little extend.
The old mozilla was much better about pushing the platform first, keeping mozilla the same on all platforms instead of pointless pandering to operatings systems which in the long run developers want to discourage people from using. The old mozilla was much more serious about promoting standards like MNG and SVG and pushing Mozilla Composer help ensure at least some users were producing standards complaint web pages.
I continue to happily to use the mozilla seamonkey codebase as I have done for so many years.
Firefox was a poor and short sighted reinvention of Netscape Navigator. Fighting against Internet Explorer as a standalone browser utterly fails and misses the larger point that Internet Explorer succeeded not by being slim but more by being bundled as part of a larger system. Firefox has been totally mismanaged from day one, they are playing American Football in a world of Soccer, self-satisfied but totally missing the point.
October 25th, 2006 at 1:42 pm
Ken: The freedom at issue in free software is essentially the freedom to acquire and exploit source code. By definition, if you have the skills needed to understand and exploit that code, you are not a typical user.
The software development model used by Mozilla and Firefox has nothing to do with MS putting tabs in IE. MS put tabs in IE because Firefox is providing competition. Firefox could be completely closed-source code written by inmates in a Chinese prison and it would still have provided that competition. What users care about is the fact that it is a better browser and, most importantly, that they don’t have to pay for it.
If it is concern about software freedom that motivates people to use Firefox, then one might argue that a decision by Moziilla to charge, say, 20 dollars, for Firefox would have only a neglible impact on its adoption rate. Do you know anyone who wants to take that bet?
The issue of software freedom is obviously very imprtant to members of that community. But, there is simply no evidence that it, by itself, is driving the software choice decisions of people who are not members of that community. In other words, almost everyone on the planet.
What drives software choice is quality, functionality, and price. F/OSS needs to compete on those attributes. No one else really cares about software development ideologies.
October 25th, 2006 at 1:44 pm
Well, that last post was mine. Strange things happen when you stay up late…
October 25th, 2006 at 4:50 pm
Right now, I don’t really care how they market it, so long as they can gain enough market share to force web developers to take it seriously, and that they code with standards-compliance in mind so that we’re all free to use whatever browser suits us best.
I don’t want Firefox to dominate the browser market, just be big enough so it can’t be ignored.
Open standards trump even open source, IMHO.
October 25th, 2006 at 6:24 pm
Eugenia: Could you tell me why you quote me and say basically the same things I do?
I said that “Freedom, choice, open standards, community” are benefits *only* for 2% of the market, namely those who have been trained to associate certain results with these words. As an implicit consequence, I also said that the other 98% of the market does not care about these words right now — at least, in my opinion.
Hope I made it clear now.
October 25th, 2006 at 11:16 pm
Alan, I think this is completely wrong what you say about Firefox.
Firefox just works in terms of functionality and in terms of popularity – and this indicates that it is very well managed. The product achieves, what Mozilla was not able to achieve for a very long time: it has a growing user base and many more advocates who don’t care about free software. No wonder, when you compare the fast and slink program to the huge and clumsy Mozilla seamonkey suite, and when you see how they market it.
The advantage of FF is (in addition to the ones that are mentioned already) that it is available on many platforms. If you’re on windows one day and the other on Mac or Linux, you can use the same browser – that is fine.
Of course you can continue to use the Mozilla seamonkey – everyone can choose for him/herself. It’s anyway the same code as in FF that displays the webpage to you.
October 26th, 2006 at 12:28 am
> The product [Firefox] achieves, what Mozilla was not able to achieve for a very long time:
You assume that Mozilla would not have also become more popular with time. It took Mozilla very long time to get to Mozilla 1.0 but no sooner had they reached that stable plateau did they churn things up again and fork off firefox.
You also assume that Firefox was ever necessary, as I said they reinvented Netscape Navigator but a standalone browser did not require killing off the suite, all the necessary infrastructure already existed. If you use Seamonkey you will see almost all the real gains happened in Gecko anyway so the benefits of Firefox were minimal for anyone already using a Gecko based browser (and amusingly Seamonkey has been significantly faster than Firefox at times).