Desire for the little NewsGator subscribe widget prompted my first fumble under the covers of an open source product. Mozilla proves to be exactly as I would have imagined it, had I ever imagined what a grand collective of idealistic computer science grads would produce.
The architecture is smart. Reusable objects. Hardcore C++ for the hardcore bits, fluffy Javascript for the fluffy bits. Human-readable, extensible UI - XUL is proper Astronaut stuff. And it works. Firefox - with a few extensions added - is the best browser I've ever used.
But my Mum will never use it. Why? Because of marketing. Distribution. Anti-competetive behaviour. Because as the architecture nears stability, a different bunch of geeks will come along and take it to the next level. Because that's the whole point of open-source: it's a place for the astronauts to soar.
And Microsoft will learn a shitload for IE 2007.
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