Firefox - A New Religion?

Religion (Definition) - "A cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion."

Is Firefox a bad web browser? No. Is it the next coming of the Almighty? According to some it would seem that way. It is one thing recommending a program, it is entirely another to preach about something as if you were part of a religious cult.

Seriously how sad is it that a program needs a web page like this: www.spreadfirefox.com

"Welcome to Spread Firefox. You are our marketing department, a diverse community of people tired of swatting popups, chasing spyware, combating identity theft and installing security updates you could set your watch to. You have a vision of the 21st century web and are ready to push it to the world, wresting control from a monopoly that has let it stagnate. We'll provide the tools, but you will drive campaigns that will be rolled out here over the coming months."

You can see clearly here this site is less about recommending a better browser and more about a crusade against Microsoft. But to have your crusade you must have a Religion and of course followers. To recruit followers you need beliefs.


Beliefs

Beliefs through propaganda? Yes, Firefox is being marketed as if it is superior to Internet Explorer in regards to Pop-ups, Spyware and Security. How convenient of the Firefox followers to leave out the other side of the story:

The Dark Side
Internet Explorer with Service Pack 2 installed for Windows XP is just as secure as Firefox in relation to Spyware and Pop-ups. Service Pack 2, released Aug 2, 2004 (Firefox 1.0 released November 9, 2004), includes the following security enhancements relating to Internet Explorer:

1. Built-in Pop-up Blocker
2. Internet Explorer Download Monitoring (ActiveX Controls)
3. Removal of MSJVM

And the following related to Windows Security

4. Updated and Enabled the Windows XP Firewall
5. Automatic Updates Improvements
6. Data Execution Prevention

These features eliminate the threat of auto install Spyware. However like anything, Spyware can still infect people via ignoring the warnings or installing applications with bundled Spyware. How many people do you think who are told to use Firefox are told this? How many people are told there is a solution to the Spyware problem using free software in simple guides like these:

Malware Removal Guide

15% of web pages aren't completely compatible with Firefox
Firefox is not 100% Internet Explorer and ActiveX compatible. Web pages that depend on ActiveX or were only tested in Internet Explorer will only render and work properly in Internet Explorer based browsers. Web page features such as Menus, Web forms or other content may not function or behave differently then intended. This means that someone using Firefox may come across a website that does not look or work right. This is pretty significant information that is conveniently left out by the legions of Firefox followers.

The Security Myth
"Firefox is 100% Secure", simply not true. Firefox has over 290 Security Vulnerabilities and more vulnerabilities in 2006 than Internet Explorer. Some of these vulnerabilities have remained unpatched since 2004! Irony? It gets worse. Over 90 Extensions have been found to collect data and uniquely identifying users without notifying them. Popular extensions such as Greasemonkey, Firebug and IETab all are vulnerable. Even Spyware gets through. So much for security.

Innovations
Firefox is being touted as having innovated features as if it invented them, such as tabbed browsing and Pop-up blocking. I'm sorry to be the historian and ruin everyone's party but Opera has had these "Innovations" for years. So have other web browser like Netcaptor, Avant Browser, Maxthon (MyIE2).


Followers

Firefox followers can be anyone but obviously people with too much time on their hands. Let me clear something up, there are many respectable users of Firefox who use it and understand it for what is and do not preach it but recommend it. These are the same respectable people who have always done this with every program they have used. This new trend of the "Followers" does not include them. For to become a Follower you have to submit to the hype and preach the beliefs. At which point you become part of the religion, Spamming "Firefox Rules!" everywhere you go. As an example of how ridiculous it has become, I submit the following from a news article:

"All of this has been a pinch-yourself experience for Mozilla's Baker. A former Netscaper, she became accustomed to laboring in obscurity during the Mozilla project's early days. Now she's struggling with the group's recognition. She gets buttonholed by parents at her son's school and approached by strangers at exercise class.

Recently, after Baker handed a Mozilla T-shirt to a friend at Trapeze Arts, the circus-skills gym where she works out, a nearby woman burst out: "Are you from Mozilla? Firefox changed my life!" She then kneeled and bowed before a stunned Baker."

Need I say more?


The Religion

I've never seen anything as crazy as the Firefox Followers who bombard everyone with "Use Firefox, Take Back the Web!" "Firefox Rules!" Slogans, signatures, advertisements ect... Its not just in forums its now in magazines, newspaper ads, bumper stickers, it's everywhere and it's down right annoying. This is like the Jehovah Witness follower who keeps coming to your door even though you're not interested. Honestly I'm a little scared that there is a generation of kids out their who have been brain washed to spending a good portion of their life promoting a web browser as if it was their religion. If I had known this I could have utilized this army of zombies to promote "Use Antivirus Software! So you stop sending me infected E-mails!" Which is probably a more useful allocation of resources anyway but I will leave the Religion founding to the pros over at www.spreadfirefox.com


Resources:
www.FirefoxMyths.com
CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) - Firefox
Firefox fanatics decide to make money by punishing users
Firefox Gripes
Firefox Unleashes Spyware
Internet Explorer 6.x More Secure than Firefox 1.x in 2006
Opera Innovations
Opera is Faster, More Secure and More Compliant than Firefox
PopUp Blocking Comparison Test
Silent Firefox Adware Install - Proof of Concept
Websites That Don't Work Well With Firefox
Websites alienate Firefox users

Open-Source is not necessarily Free

"Open-source software is required to have its source code freely available; end-users have the right to modify and redistribute the software, as well as the right to package and sell the software." This is the formal definition. When you dig deeper you find that the common perception of open-source and no cost, "free" software gets kind of blurry.

"Despite apparent similarities, open-source software is distinct from free software. The Free Software Foundation's (FSF) free software definition is more restrictive than the Open Source Definition; as a consequence of this, free software is open source, but open-source software may or may not be free."

Now granted a large majority of open-source is indeed free but the fact that some isn't I'm sure is slightly alarming to the socialists among us. Here again is the real point, people talk about how great open-source is and pander it's ideology. When in reality all anyone truly cares about is one of two things:

1. It is Free Software
2. It is Anti-Commercialism/Capitalism, in other words - Anti-Microsoft

Programming is not an easy quick task that many are willing to do for free. I'm sure some nieve idealists would if they had some other way to live. The fact of the matter is the best open-source projects are money makers and/or are backed by large corporations who have talented programmers and engineers on the payroll. Some of the most popular and well developed open-source projects such as OpenOffice and the Mozilla Project which inclues the Firefox web browser and the Thunderbird Email Client are funded by Sun Microsystems which for various reasons has legitimate issues with Microsoft. This is one reason these projects exist as open-source and are in such a highly finished competitive state. They compete directly with Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Outlook and Office line of software.

The big picture becomes even clearer when you look at the most successful open-source Linux distribution Red Hat. Their business model is of selling software with support packages for the server market. The key word here is they are "selling" open-source software. Idealists and Socialist fail to grasp the concept that you need money to live. In this respect you start to see why certain open-source advocates are quick to separate themselves from the public perception that open-source is free software. They instead focus on the ability of open-source to be easily modified and redistributed. Fair enough but this is far from commonplace.

I'm sure if you talk to enough open-source advocates they will all admit to using this feature of being able to modify the software. Now in reality how significant the personal modifications are as opposed to the large majority that wait for the handful of actual open-source developers to release their latest build seems more likely. In which case you get back to the fact that the majority uses open-source for one of the two reasons I mentioned above. In which case you have hypocrisy.

Open-source appears to be free when it is convenient. Right now it is very convenient. Microsoft is the big bad guy on the block and marketing the free alternative plays to the idealists. If all open-source software was truly free then you could do anything with it, including sell it as your own. Try selling Red Hat's Server software as your own, that's what I thought. I honestly don't care what any open-source advocate tries to say to change what they think the public's perception of open-source is. The general public considers open-source software as free, no cost software. Very little if any attempt is made by the open-source community to change this perception. If anything it is the driving force behind its success. This is almost as bad as the misleading perception that open-source is this huge public development community. Tell that to the closed group of paid programmers and engineers on Sun and IBM's open-source development teams.

I don't necessarily dislike or have a problem with open-source, rather I am very cynical about the economics behind it and the misleading public perception of it. Can open-source truly be free? In certain situations I believe it can but as a whole, economics has a way of bringing reality to even the most idealistic of us all.