If you read the post I linked to at the start of my blog post, you’d know that I’m well aware that the web goes beyond desktop computers. I use Opera on my Nokia 6600 daily. My blog post’s intention wasn’t to marginalise other devices, but rather to focus on why browser diversity is a good thing.

The web is not only a browser on a desktop computer.

I don’t think that AOL/Netscape would be capable of doing what you say, simply because they don’t get developers to back them up on this. If they approached Mozilla.org with a request to add random proprietary IE hooks, I’m sure that Mozilla.org would tell them (in a sufficiently polite way) to screw off. Can Netscape pull this off on its own without Mozilla? No way.

As for bearing the name of Firefox, the Firefox trademark is owned by the Mozilla Foundation. If Netscape was damaging the Firefox trademark, the Foundation would have legal recourse against them. The upshot of having the Firefox name and branding being trademarked is that no one can use them without the consent of the Foundation.

In any case, these days Netscape is not really relevant as a browser vendor. Firefox surpassed Netscape usage months ago. I’m sure AOL is kicking itself in the rear-end right now for spinning off Mozilla completely from AOL/Netscape.

In the end having Mozilla independent has worked out best for everyone — except Microsoft and Netscape, who have lost out big time.

SO, if AOL is really into it, it can spread another non standards compliant browser, bearing the name of open source and Firefox as its code base. Good or bad? I say bad, but that’s certainly a risk for any open source project and specially successful ones like Firefox.

As a mac user and open source fan, I think that MSFT’s utter dominance of the end-user visible sections of computing has had a really negative impact.

Well, it’s had lots of negative impacts but one of them is that it is not enough for Macs to be really user friendly, or have sexy hardware, it’s not enough for Linux to be cheap and customisable and captial ‘F’ Free.

No, if it doesn’t utterly destroy its competition (and in the process limit the market and kill innovation) then it’s not considered a success by people using MSFT as the measuring stick. And that immediately puts users of different software into direct competition in a way that owners of Ford and Honda cars aren’t.

(To the other poster, I think you’re barking up the wrong tree with that spreadfirefox thing. I use a Mac, and if I discovered another Mac user still struggling with IE I’d hit them with a clue by four and point them at Safari rather than Firefox, unless they would really benefit from a specific feature e.g. web developer extension. Likewise I’d recommend Opera for small screen handhelds. Doesn’t mean I’d consider it wise to invest the time and energy needed to start Win IE users off with anything other than Firefox though)

The point of blog post was that the promotion of other browsers is not mutually exclusive to our goals. But I still prefer Firefox, and promote that over other browsers. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t respect the choice of those who prefer Opera, because it’s not a bad browser, just not one that I would particularly want to use myself on a desktop PC.

Apparently, I wasn’t able to give any specific reasons for why no-one would switch to Firefox, and this made the commenters mostly hate me, I think. And I thought it was such a nice idea, too.