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Firefox 3.5 Preview Shows New Hope For Open Media Standards
The preview release of Firefox 3.5 is showing some neat tricks relating to online video, but not the kind that comes in a little proprietary bubble of Flash.
For example, the new Firefox 3.5 will be able to smoothly resize videos on the fly within the page. The interesting part, though, is that these videos are in OGG format – in other words, entirely open. With such a mainstream browser showing off what can be done with open video formats, there is a good chance that flash will lose its dominant position, or at least have to share a little. I’m not one to say “death to Flash” just because it happens to be proprietary, but an open video standard would allow for so much innovation. Already numerous projects are attempting to unify our media-watching experience. Just imagine the sudden freedom to create an even better experience if all that media was available in open formats.
Flash has been essential to the rise of sites like YouTube, but it might be time for something more flexible to replace it.
Open-Source Applications Drawing More Attention
Microsoft and Apple have PR people and marketing budgets to get the word out about new software, but open-source projects, for the most part, don’t. They rely mostly on word of mouth (or blog) promotion. Apparently, at least for OpenOffice and Firefox, this works.
As many people already know, in the first 24 hours of Firefox 3’s release, there were over 8 million downloads. More recently, and without any special event, OpenOffice 3.0 got 3 million downloads in the first week. Perhaps people just really like the number 3.0, but I think there is something going on here: people are really getting excited about these major new versions, even outside of the open-source software community.
As I mentioned before, there are no PR companies or advertisements to promote the launch of Firefox 3. People learn about it largely through news articles and word of mouth. This would be expected within the Linux community, but to get 3 million, or 8 million downloads, you need a lot of Windows and Mac users, in addition to the Linux users. So what these numbers really show is that the popular open-source applications are becoming mainstream enough for millions of people, using all the different operating systems, to go out and download them. This is definitely a good sign for open-source software.
In the past few days we have seen a debate explode over the inclusion of a EULA in the version of Firefox to be included in future Ubuntu releases. Some argue that Ubuntu should just leave the EULA in, while others argue that something like IceWeasel, an unbranded version of Firefox, should be included. I am not prepared to take a side in this argument, but I do think that this argument is important.
In the rest of the software world, no one would blink an eye at this change. In the free software world, though, it spurs a major argument? While this might seem a little crazy to an outsider, it is important that we not simply give in to the way the rest of the world works.
I see this as similar to the way Microsoft treats increasing computer resources. They view it as an excuse to let more bloat into their operating system. The most recent version of Ubuntu with Compiz set to “Extra,” on the other hand, still runs (fast) on my Dimension 2400 from 4 years ago or so that has 512MB of RAM and a Pentium 4 processor. Ubuntu could simply give in to the “norm” of computers (to use more and more resources), but it has not. As a result, this otherwise-junk computer that I am typing on now is more than usable.
Just like the hardware situation, Ubuntu could simply give in and let the user deal with EULAs popping up everywhere, but they don’t.
If Firefox has to have a EULA pop up once, it won’t be the end of the world. I am just glad to see that this argument is happening, instead of everyone ignoring it and passing it off as “normal.”
Firefox 3 Averages 2 Million Downloads Per Day In The First Two Weeks
Just about everyone, including the Mozilla developers, were amazed at the success of the Firefox Download Day. Just on the release day, Firefox 3 got over 8 million downloads. Perhaps more impressive, though, is the continued stream of downloads even two weeks after the release.
If you watch the download counter, you will already know that Firefox 3 has, at the time of writing, nearly passed 28 million downloads. This means that the average number of downloads per day over the last two weeks (since Firefox 3 was released) is almost exactly 2 millions downloads per day! Even if you don’t include the first day it still amounts to about 1.5 million downloads per day. That is an impressive number!
In the past few days, I am have been seeing about 1000 downloads per minute, according to the download counter, in the morning and around 500 per minute at night. I look forward to seeing if Firefox can keep it up at this pace. Even if it can’t, it has already done two impressive things, getting a ton of downloads in 24 hours and keeping up a steady stream of downloads over the course of two weeks. Great job Firefox!
The Importance of the Windows Ubuntu Expierience
With the huge success of Firefox 3, I think it is fair to say that a lot of people have been wondering how Firefox’s success could be achieved in other open-source projects. Firefox has two key advantages over other open-source software that have nothing, or very little, to do with Firefox itself. First, web browsers are used by almost everyone who uses a computer. Ubuntu shares this advantage, because everyone who uses a computer uses an operating system. Firefox’s second advantage, however, is not shared by Ubuntu, or any Linux distro. Firefox runs on Windows. Ubuntu has taken steps, however to make itself run on Windows and should take more steps in this direction.
Before Ubuntu Hardy Heron (the current version), the following are the steps you would have to give to a new user to let them try out Ubuntu:
- Put the CD in the drive
- Reboot your computer
- Make sure your BIOS are set to boot from the CD drive
- After you’re done, reboot your computer again
While the steps to try out Windows or OS X are even harder, even this set of instructions is not easy to convey to a non-technical user. In other words, it could be easier. In Hardy Heron, it is. The new instructions are just:
- Put the CD in the drive
- Install it (with Wubi)
These are not only fewer instructions, but also simpler and more ordinary instructions. This is the current state of things and, while this is really very good, it could be even better. How about this:
- Put the CD in the drive
- Start using Ubuntu
This would be possible if virtualization were built into the Ubuntu CD (or a separate special CD). If this were done, Ubuntu could almost be considered a Windows application, at least in terms of the advantages it brings for promotion. It would be incredibly easy to hand someone an Ubuntu CD without any explanation. After someone gets the chance to try it out, they might decide to try the Wubi installation or even the full installation.
Including this kind of virtualization capability would remove almost all barriers to people trying out Ubuntu and provide the chance for Ubuntu to have Firefox-level success, or even more success.
Firefox: An Model for Open-Source Promotion
Almost every open-source project, no matter if it currently has ten or a million users or even more, would like to grow and have more users. Few projects, though, are good at promoting their software. Strangely, the same ideas are talked about over and over again, while there is an incredible example of an open-source project that has volunteers spreading it very successfully in all sorts of creative ways. This project, as you may have guessed, is Firefox.
You have probably already heard that Firefox far surpassed their goal and reached over 8 million downloads of Firefox 3 in just 24 hours! This is not, by far, though, the only promotional project Firefox has succeeded with. Everything from crop circles to newspaper ads to volunteer “Firefox Campus Reps,” Firefox has tried it. Firefox is easily the most widely recognized open-source project that I can think of. The point is, Firefox is really, really good at promoting itself. Because of this, other open-source projects should look to them as an example of how to spread their software and name. Granted, Firefox has an advantage in that it can be used by anyone, no matter what OS they use, and in that almost everyone uses a web browser, but still, more open-source projects should look to Firefox as a model for good promotion. I don’t mean everyone should copy exactly what Firefox has done, just be inspired by it. If every open-source project followed the example of Firefox and other widely-known open-source projects, my guess is that the number of projects that are common-place names would skyrocket.