What is better for the future of OSS - having a program that is easy to use and popular that has a few flaws, or something that is flawless and rigorous but only the geeks know about and use?
Actually what is better is improvements in the existing software by receiving feedback and addressing issues. I would tend to agree that is it okay to have software that works but has a few flaws and is then released. Stepping stone migrations are important and you can't really blast someone for not fixing everything at once.
By the way, there is another company called Microsoft who has done this as well, but they aren't open source.
I would argue that you need both. Just because a few of us geeks have some issues with it, in reality most common users don't notice them and don't care. They simply want something that is fast, easy to use, and doesn't serve lots of popups and corrupt their system. That's it. They don't care about creating unique secure processes or memory usage or some obscure flaw in the security model. In a perfect world they would care about all those issues like us geeks.
However, Firefox initially had the same precise software release model as Microsoft I described. Until they DO address those issues (which incidentally IE does had those features for a while), it is just "another Microsoft" growing along. The reason why I am being more critical with Firefox in particular is because it is supposed to address security when the inherent core design (which is difficult to change according to the developers) is flawed for security!
I am happy with simply having so many people going out and downloading and installing it in defiance of IE and the rest of the establishment failing to do any thing about popups, browser hijacks, or security issues. That is a very good first step.
It is delaying the inevitable. I really hope Firefox steps up to the plate or else it is just going to be another IE, security holes included. And that point, it is going to have some pretty bad PR and is going to only reinforce the belief that open source is shotty quality which is simply not true (good code is good code, bad code is bad code, regardless of it's licensing).
more attacks. But the fact is that it is probably the most popular OSS product out there and the public loves it. I think that far outweighs the few flaws it has.
I just hope they do not ruin the OSS image.
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- Carroll Kong
