Building mozilla? [Was: RE:IE accounts for 95% of browsers]

[Jared]

> Personally: I have serious complaints about Mozilla. Still it is cool as
> long as you are just using it and not trying to install a plug-in. 

Ok. So go fix it. It's not like Mozilla is closed-source and
proprietary. : - )

As long as we're on the subject of Mozilla and IE, here is a
unique perspective which helps me get "over" the fact that
IE has gobbled up the market.

<analyticalrant>
Always remember: what IE is, is _FREE SOFTWARE_. Sure it's not
open source, but it's as close as MS will presently come, and it's
a long, healthy leap in the direction of open source. Why can I
say such a thing? Because I watched closely the origination of IE
as free software back in the mid-90s, and rejoiced to see that
the _only _way IE could make inroads to the 90 percent market
of Netscape was to make their browser available for free.

I think this is the greatest event in Internet history,
dwarfing local BBSs which carried intermittant links to the
Internet during the early 90s, dwarfing the creation of Yahoo,
the first 'search engine' and dwarfing the creation of Netscape
out of Mosaic, the first freely available graphical browser
which exploded  the Internet into the world view in about 1994.

Now most people think of IE as competition for Netscape. But
if you look at it closely, you'll see that it is an _extension_
of many Netscape innovations, including JavaScript and the
fact that you could get it for free. It _STILL_ carries the
'Mozilla-compatible' tag in its user agent id, a remnant of
the day when IE was catching up to Netscape's market share.

And now that Mozilla is competent alternative to IE, MS is locked
in to keeping their browser available for free. It's certain they
spend hours and hours discussing ways to make people pay
for it, and always come out of the meetings realizing that
they have to give it away free.

So, even though IE has 80 percent of the market, it is a
powerful trojan (Yes, IE is a recursive trojan!), a toe-in-the-door
to Microsoft for the idea that free software is a really wise
marketing tool. That toe in the door will always remain,
and eventually it will grow to topple MS strategy to the
core... because Open Source is technically superior from the
get-go. Anyone who _objectively_ studies the principles and
practice of Open Source has to resign to that fact.

I am not naive to the fact that Microsoft will only acknowledge
this simple truth after a long and bloody battle, during which
they consistently lose money until they cannot afford closed
source development. I hope it happens within my lifetime, so
we can get on with things; it is a natural consequence of
grabbing too much too fast. Mozilla is a natural consequence of
building slowly and incrementally on a solid foundation.

</analyticalrant>

-Jared