Chris Hoffmann, Director of Engineering and Special
Projects at the Mozilla Foundation, speaks to Cliff Saran about
winning the hearts and minds of internet users and
developers.
Firefox has quickly established itself as the main rival to
Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser. With Google entering the
fray with its Chrome browser, can Mozilla Foundation, which runs
the open source Firefox project, take on the two biggest names in
the industry?
How are you convincing web
developers who have standardised on Internet Explorer?
The things we have working for us is that it is a virtuous
circle. As Firefox market share grows globally, it generally works
better and web developers use it as the primary platform for
developing and testing web content. In Germany, for example, where
40-45% of users are using Firefox, no website would consider not
supporting Firefox and/or web standards. You would cut out nearly
half of the prospective visitors to your site.
One of the early adoptor groups of Firefox were web developers.
The major reason for this was the web development extensions such
as Firebug. Firefox made these developers more productive. They
found that if they used the strategy to develop and test their new
content against Firefox first, it made getting to Internet Explorer
(IE) compatibility relatively easy. When going the reverse way and
developing and testing using IE, it was much harder. First, the
tools weren't available, and second it was too easy to branch out
into IE optimisations and features that are non-standard and
proprietary. Some of these things are not as well supported in IE7
and IE8 as those browsers move closer to standards adoption.
Web developer that are developing against IE6 are really
targeting less than 30% of the market now, and that will turn out
to be a losing proposition in the long run.
In the corporate space,
accountability, security and support seem to have held open source
back. What are you doing to change the perception of open
source?
I'm not sure I agree that Firefox has been held back. Forester
says we had 20% adoption of Firefox in the enterprise as of last
summer. That tracks pretty closely with the adoption we see in the
general consumer/individual user market place. The key thing we
have tried to focus on is making a good browser for individuals. We
try to focus on building a browser that makes users more productive
and more secure when they use the web. When I talk to individuals,
companies or any large organisation, they understand this and they
are excited about our mission to continually make things
better.
They have chosen Firefox because it is more secure and it makes
them more productive using the web. I've chronicled a lot of these
conversations of organisations that have
adopted
Firefox.
With Chrome as another browser
alternative, is there a risk users simply swap out
Firefox?
Firefox market share has grown slowly, organically, and though
the amazing grass roots effort of our community. The relationship
that we have with our community and users is based on trust that we
have been developing over the last 11 years of the Mozilla project.
One way to restate the question you asked is: "Will that trust
erode and users shift to other browsers?" That could happen if we
make mistakes and violate that trust. All of us working on the
project are working hard every day and night to make sure that does
not happen.
Google and other browser makers have two options to grow market
share. Build trust and acquire users over the long haul as we have
over the last 11 years, or they can attempt to buy market share and
distribution. Often the latter path leads to features that try to
monetise the browser, but are not in the best interest of the user.
The latter path gets the browser out there, but in the long run
users are less likely to continue to use the software.
Google has been investing and working on Chrome for four or five
years now. Chrome still has only 2 or 3% market share. That shows
the kind of commitment it takes to build a browser. Commercial
companies have found it hard to sustain the level of effort it
takes to build, maintain and advance the browser. Netscape tried
and it no longer exists. Microsoft tried and it shut down browser
development after IE6, but has now rejoined the competition.
It is the Mozilla Foundation charter to make the web better and
to build a better browser. We are in this for the long haul.