Firefox Is For "Regular" Users, Not Businesses

nk497 writes "Some have argued that Mozilla's switch to a faster release cycle has made it more difficult for companies to use Firefox, but the open-source browser maker isn't too bothered, according to one employee. Asa Dotzler, community coordinator for Firefox marketing and founder of Mozilla's quality assurance scheme, said Firefox is for 'regular users' — not businesses. 'Enterprise has never been (and I'll argue, shouldn't be) a focus of ours,' he said. 'A minute spent making a corporate user happy can better be spent making many regular users happy. I'd much rather Mozilla was spending its limited resources looking out for the billions of users that don't have enterprise support systems already taking care of them.'"

False

[eldavojohn]

For many years my employer stuck to IE6 [cnet.com] while I used Firefox in my home. Why was this? Was it because one browser was superior to the other?

After raising questions, it turned out that for the longest time (although it should be changing soon if not already [mozilla.org]) there were enterprise controls like group policies, remotely configuring proxy, enterprise settings, locking down the browser, etc. that were actually considered better on Internet Explorer (even IE6) than Firefox.

The fact is that at some point, there are some features that matter much more to large corporations. Will I ever use any of the above in my home? Never. But that was the sole reasoning behind a Fortune 500 company clinging to IE6 for a dangerously long time. Your assumption that "better" for a user is "better" for an enterprise is often false (though I'm not claiming the two are mutually exclusive). Further improvements for the enterprise are likely to be far outside a home user's need. Hell, making the settings tabs more confusing is probably detrimental to mom and dad configuring their cookie settings or cleaning up their cache.

Misguided

[siride]

Asa speaks as though all corporate users of Firefox are these giant behemoths that have large IT departments that can reprogram add-ons and webapps designed for Firefox with their well-funded programming department. The reality is that there are a lot of small and medium-sized businesses who don't have such luxury, but do make webapps or add-ons, or otherwise depend on Firefox functionality being backwards-compatible. And they employ a lot of people. And if they get cut out of the loop, that's users lost. And these users will go home and say "I don't want to use Firefox because it doesn't work at work" and then they download Chrome or just go back to IE (horror!).

LTS, what Mozilla doesn't get, and firing staff

[Kamiza Ikioi]

Ubuntu is for home and business, because they offer LTS. They do this, and I am happy to wave their banner to home users and at my work where Ubuntu is replacing old XP machines, rather than Windows 7. But I don't EVER use Firefox. It's too slow, and nobody wants to use it anyways. I use Chromium. It's quick and stable.

Firefox fell out of favor with me over a year ago. It's bloated and their add-on system hasn't evolved fast enough. And without LTS, I won't install it at work.

And here's what they DON'T get (feel free to flame me, I was a FF fanboy once too). If I install something other than IE at work, users here are apt to use the same at home. If I don't install Firefox, they probably won't install it. And if they do run it and ask why we don't run it, my answer is simple, "It's crap."

Go ahead, Mozilla, flip the bird to sys/net admins. We can flip the bird right back and drain the core of your installs to 0. I can't believe you'd say what you did to a major administrator like you did. If you are trying to adopt the Apple snotty attitude, YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG.

Who the hell do you think actually runs most of your installs? Schools, businesses, and even government. Are you so high on your horse that you think you are the only good browser out there now? IE doesn't suck as bad, Chrome is fast as hell, and Opera has always been solid. As you continue to lose market share, I want to make a serious suggestion. Fire some of your staff. That is the fresh start you need.

Ubuntu at least knows who butters its bread. It's the institutions that are pushing the numbers up. Mozilla doesn't have a clue.

He's right. Not for my business.

[DogDude]

I have to say that I agree with the article, although not for the same reasons. Firefox was unceremoniously dumped from my business in favor of Chrome after months (years) of nonstop "upgrades" that broke extensions, bugs that never got fixed, and more memory leakage than I've ever seen in a widely used application. We're very happy with Chrome, and I don't see trying Firefox again any time in the the future unless the project radically improves and gives me a reason to spend precious time to give it another shot.