Mozilla a not-for-profit organization released its open source web browser named Firefox three years ago. Since then the company has shown all giants of this trade that open source software can change tides towards them.
According to an online market analysis, Firefox now holds about 15 percent of the browser market, which is predominantly held by a 79 percent share of Microsoft’s indigenous Internet Explorer. We cannot actually say that Firefox is more loved than Internet Explorer but still the 15 percent share for an open source application is respectable. The reasons for the dominance of IE are many, one of which is that IE comes bundled with Microsoft’s Windows which is the most widely used OS worldwide.
Mitchell Baker, the chairman of the Silicon Valley-based Mozilla Corporation, says that Firefox is predominantly about promoting a healthy open internet where no company or individual holds a monopoly on innovation.
She also stated that internet changes quite quickly and there is no one who can guarantee that the things we see around today will be in use tomorrow, and open source is one of these changes.
The benefits of open source software are many which include the provision that users can change the source code to match their personal requirements and one of the best features of these components is that they are free to use which makes them common among users.
If we talk about Firefox which is also available as a free download, it generates revenue through agreements with a number of search engines, which have embedded search applications in the browser.
Mozilla is not only supplying Firefox as a free to download and open source product, the company is also making available an E-mail application named Thunderbird, which is not as common as their web browser.
Firefox now aims to give stiff competition to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. One reason for the success of Firefox is that the web browser comes with a number of add-ons or features such as ability to download themes for a fully customized view and some outstanding features like tabbed browsing. This made Microsoft think about their indigenous product and the company had to upgrade their web browser to support features like tabbed browsing.
Ms Baker also stated that:
It took a long time to actually get that product right, now we’re back in a stage where enough people recognize the browser to actually make a difference to the internet and are once again starting to do innovative and interesting things in the browser.
According to me open source should be able to overtake traditional closed source applications if it gets participants who already have a good name in the software market, if they become part of the open source world then their brand names will fetch more people in the community.
Via: Stuff
