Television Interview with German Translator of Mozilla FirefoxSunday April 18th, 2004Abdulkadir Topal writes: "On Monday (19.4.2004) at 23.15 the German TV channel SAT 1 will air an interview with me, the German translator of Mozilla Firefox. I talked about the history of Firefox, why it was invented and the way it's developed (open source). I explained the Foundation and mentioned big companies, like IBM and HP, that use and contribute to Mozilla. I also tried to show the advantages of Firefox over Internet Explorer, like the pop-up blocker, Find As You Type and extensions like mouse gestures. One big subject was security. I explained that Firefox developers won't accept any compromises regarding security, but that Firefox is still as easy to use as IE. "SAT 1 is one of the biggest TV channels here in Germany and despite the fact that the program is aired that late, it usually has around 1-2 million viewers. So I hope we can get some new Firefox users but even more important: the audience will know about Firefox when they hear about it the next time (maybe when a friend recommends it) and people will realize that there are alternative and better solutions for using the web. "BTW: Firefox is represented very well in German TV. It's shown in the computer show GIGA Help on NBC every workday at 9 pm and the anchorman praises its usefulness pretty often. On an other note, you can see Firefox in action when MTV promotes its website. It's quite clear to see that they use Firefox for that. Seems like the word has already started to spread, even though it's not final yet." Good news. Bravo! This is good news. :) I personally don't really care for how much more common IE is, but mostly just want Mozilla to become common enough for certain webmasters to care. That seems like a pretty achievable first goal, since it doesn't need to be that big before the percentages using Mozilla starts adding up to a whole lot of visitors. Alternatives to the InterNet Explorer?: The PLANETOPIA ON-LINE Browser test It simply is THE platform to access the WorldWideWeb: The InterNet Explorer. 95 per cent of all computer users have it, use it - and bear it. Because the system has holes like a Swiss cheese: Only last wednesday, Microsoft made available new safety patches for download, in order to close new dangerous gaps. PLANETOPIA ON-LINE ONE tests other browsers such as Opera and Firefox: Could they be better than the InterNet Explorer? Is that the same cumulative patch that supposedly disables SSL (or sets it to '0 bit'): http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/46620 http://lists.netsys.com/pipermail/full-disclosure/2004-April/020246.html http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/360548 what's the time zone? are you already in Daylight Saving time? we have SAT-1 here, although i don't know a word in German :) Standard time zone: UTC/GMT +1 hour Daylight saving time: +1 hour Current time zone offset: UTC/GMT +2 hours Dear Abdulkadir: The main advantages of Free software are not technical ones, but freedom: -No vendor lock-ins, you can’t be CAUGHT -You can modify it the way you want -You do not depend on a company with particular interests, left with stalled programs (like internet explorer, notepad, wordpad, etc) with unresolved bugs (and not being able to do nothing about it!) - You can trust the code you see, you can know how it works - And so on… "The main advantages of Free software are not technical ones, but freedom:" Not a single person who watches this show cares about that. Nobody is going to DOWNLOAD FireFox because its open source if it doesn't have an advantage over Internet Explorer. > Not a single person who watches this show cares about that. Talk about YOU, if you don't care being locked-in with a program so incapable, stalled as the internet explorer, the preferred tool for internet exploiters, with stalled development and unresolved bugs (just because they have already most of the market). Everyone who whatches this show understands this language, can you see? Uhm, you don't get the point. Fewer security holes IS an advantage for an end user (->people who whatch this show). Open source is NOT directly an advantage for an end user, as I said, why should they care if both, IE and Firefox are free (or come with windows, I know IE is not "free"). "why should I install Firefox?" "because its open source, you can fix bugs by yourself!! and its cool!" "I see, but I am not a programmer, I can hardly manage to INSTALL a programm..." "yeah, but you COULD fix bugs by yourself..." > Uhm, you don't get the point. mmm... maybe it's both of us. > "why should I install Firefox?" "because its open source, you can fix bugs by yourself!! If you don't fix it, your friend can and if not... pay someone. But you CAN solve your problem. You don't depend on a stalled product with bugs, poor implementations (like the CSS ones) and so on. You are not LOCKED-IN. > and its cool!" Don't tell it like if I have said so, because that banal expresion has been only written by you Seconded. People don't run their computer for ideological reasons, they want to get stuff done, and if Mozilla helps them do that (and they know about it,) they'll use it! like every RMS follower will tell you (and i'm not one), mozilla is not free software (free like the freedom of speech, as they like to put it), because it's licence allows integrating it into closed source software. not to mention that mozilla has at least a few dozens of bugs more than a year old. > not to mention that mozilla has at least a few dozens of bugs more than a year old. What does that have to do with being free or not? The claim is not that there are no bugs, but that there are no bugs you can't do anything about. Which is true -- if a bug bothers you, no one is stopping you from fixing it or paying someone to fix it (I suppose that given a bug in IE you could try paying MS to fix it, but to make it worth their while it'd have to be a totally different order of magnitude payment). > mozilla is not free software (free like the freedom of speech, as they like to put it), > because it's licence allows integrating it into closed source software. Funny that you chose free speech for an example... Who can prevent somebody from quoting a sentence spoken freely in a secret (closed) document? Apart from that, I'm not sure how limiting possible usage of something can make it be more free! > mozilla is not free software because it's licence allows integrating it into closed source software. Go and read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html and tell me where it says that you shouldn't be able to integrate free software and closed-source software. That's not one of the four things you need for software to be free. Mozilla is free software (the MPL is in the FSF's list of free software licenses) and also open source software (the MPL is in the OSI's list of open source licenses.) Gerv What they showed from the interview lasted only a few seconds ... no info on the foundation or anything similar, but firefox still got a good review. well, the slight resemblence between English and German allowed me to understand what they're talking about, although i couldn't get the details. like it often happenes on TV, they eventually showed about 1 minute of Abdulkadir, and then moved to a comparison test between Firefox, Opera and IE. Firefox won, of course :) Well, we talked about three hours, so this 30 second snapshot, was actually a bit disappointing :-( That's normal on TV/Radio ... disapointing for you and the reporter. I'd done 4 hours of walking through 'Halle an der Saale' to talk to people for a radio station ... 30secs was the result on air :-( Greetings Alex// PS: Have someone the report as a video file? I'd forgotten to look tv :-/ i have, but since as someone else described already, it was quite short (about 6-10 mins i guess), and they didn't go in-depth, i deleted it right afterwards. very short comparision, few pro/cons (fx got 3 pro, opera got 2 pro/1 con, IE got a black-skull-virus full screen ;) ). but that's about it more or less (i don't understand german either, but it was kinda obvious what they're talking about). |