Open Source

There's a lot of excitement about Firefox, out there. Over at Catallarchy, Randall's comment that this is the open-source movement's first mainstream success draws criticism.

First, I think Open Source is anti-corporate, not necessarily anti-capitalist. That's essentially A-C.

My criteria for whether or not something is going to catch on and be mainstream: can my Mom install it? Mom can't install Gnu/Linux, and she is not going to view the opportunity to write her own drivers and recompile the kernel as an advantage. I don't think that the fact that many (surprisingly many, but nowhere near most) servers use open-source software is altogether impressive. System Administrators are more likely to enjoy the access/recompile features, and I think they are generally more tolerant of issues with software that is written by anyone other than MS than they are with MS issues (hint: if there were no adverse issues with Linux, there would be no FAQs or newsgroups filled with people asking questions). I'm going to leave my copy of Redhat installed right where it belongs for now: on the shelf.

Most of us aren't going to install Firefox without first owning IE (not me - I use Netscape). I'll get a little more excited by the prospect of open-source when they can build their own processors and memory without corporations.