Congrats to Mozilla’s Download Day
Posted by Peng on 19 June 2008
Mozilla decided they’d mark the release of Firefox 3 with an attempt at setting a new world record for the most downloaded software on the first dsy of its release. While the owners of this blog didn’t participate in it, I want to congratulate the Firefox 3 team on over eight million downloads in the first 24 hours that Firefox 3 was available. The unofficial number is 8,290,545, and it will take several days for the Guinness World Record people to certify a number, but any way you look at it that’s one hell of a lot of bandwidth, especially after the Mozilla servers crashed just before the official launch and the launch itself was delayed by about an hour and a half. Luckily it had been in hardy-updates for at least a week so Ubuntu users didn’t have to worry about rushing to download it.
Unfortunately the news is not all good for Firefox 3, as the first vulnerability was announced while millions of people were still helping go for the record. Window Snyder, Mozilla’s Chief Security Officer (or as they call her at Mozilla the Chief Security Something-Or-Other) says they’re working on it, and with no exploit available publically and even the details being kept private the risk to users is minimal.
I also need to post one more link about the release of Firefox 3. Paul O’Shannessy, an intern at Mozilla this summer, wrote “It’s Awesome for a Reason.” As someone who seems to ignore the concerns users have for the nickname of the Smart Location Bar, he also shamelessly points out the negative response people get if they dare criticize something about Firefox 3 or it’s new features.
So just give it a shot and quit complaining. Yes, it is a complete paradigm shift. But it’s not called the Awesome Bar for nothing; it really is awesome once you give it a chance
Yes, one of Mozilla’s interns is pretty much calling us idiots for not embracing the Smart Location Bar and it’s nickname. You, sir, are an asshat and a with that attitude a discredit to the Mozilla community. That type of attitiude has been pushing people away from Firefox 3 for the past several months now.
Fx3 said
The research who found the vulnerability sat on it for weeks, maybe even months without properly disclosing it to Mozilla during the beta and RC periods, truly utterly reprehensible and irresponsible behaviour. The announcement during Download Day was purely to damage the release of Firefox 3. And TippingPoint paid this irresponsible researcher?
Peng said
It says a lot about Tipping Point on all sorts of levels. I doubt it did that much harm to Download Day. The attitude of some members of the Mozilla community toward people who weren’t gung ho about Firefox 3 probably did more harm than this vulnerability.
Jason said
Sheesh, get some perspective Peng! Some people are passionate about their work/past-times/interests are really like to share/educate others about their passion. In this case, it’s an intern at Mozilla … and for that you label him/her an asshat. I don’t even know what the ‘awesome bar’ is and can’t find it in FF3 menu for toolbars, so after completing this comment I’m off to find out about it for myself and make my own judgement. So thank’s for re-posting the interns comments and helping educate/reveal tome what may be a great feature in FF3 that I will enjoy using or help make me more productive with it – regardless of what it’s name/title is.
You, respectfully, deserve more of the asshat label than this intern. He’s passionate and wants to shout/educate his passion to the world, and you want to disparage him and call him names. The world in general, not just Open Source, needs more passionate and sharing/educating people and far less of people like you that want to tear them down for but the slightest of enthusiasm or poor choice or wording/phrasing in their enthusiasm.
And since I’m giving my own thoughts .. you need to build a bridge on the FF3 issue and move-on. I’ve stopped reading yours/nanci’s blog @ nancib.wordpress because of your ongoing negativity. And now I’m about to try and figure out if I can block particular blogs/authors on ubuntuweblogs.org! FF3 is, to the majority of us (me included), just a browser that does it’s task/job well and out-performs other alternatives.
As Mr Miyagi would say … wax on, wax off!
Peng said
You’re misreading what I said. I didn’t call him an asshat because he’s a Mozilla intern and posted such a belittling comment, I called him an asshat for being yet another person who treats any user who doesn’t agree with the choices the Firefox 3 devs like we’re either an idiot or our opinions are less important simply because we disagree. The fact that he’s a Mozilla intern and hasn’t been briefed to be more tolerant of people who disagree with the choices in Firefox 3 (or disregarded the instruction, and there are many reasons to disagree) simply makes it worse.
The “Awesome Bar” is the moniker attached to the new, improved address bar. It’s not an addon to use or not use, and it’s not a feature we can disable other than hacking in about:config or installing an extension.
I understand your desire to move on from the negativity over Firefox 3. So would I. I had posted one more post about it to clarify my dislikes about it and a followup on the Download Day and I intended that to be my last word on the subject. If you no longer want to read our blog that’s your call. If UbuntuWeblogs decides to remove my posts from the feed over it, that’s their call.
With this I’m closing comments on this post, as well as my other Firefox 3 post from this week. As President Josiah Bartlet would say, “What’s next?”