My PC life has always been tied to the Windows family of software tools, with two key exceptions: my browser and my email client. I use Mozilla's Firefox on both my home and office machines. The almost biblical plague of security problems I was forced to endure with Internet Explorer initially made Firefox my preferred alternative. Across time, however, my loyalty to Firefox grew for more positive reasons: solid performance coupled with a growing and desirable feature set.
As Microsoft has already disavowed IE for the Mac, the decision to stick with Firefox on my new Mac was easy (sure, Mac also has Safari and Camino and Opera and OmniWeb, but I have no desire to relearn yet more software!).
I also use Mozilla's email client Thunderbird at home, at work, and now on my Mac as well. Again, Microsoft fails to provide an acceptable Mac solution (for the record, Microsoft does offer an email client for Mac called Entourage, but I'm not about to cough up US$499 for a copy of Microsoft Office Pro just so I can get an email client). By contrast, I pop online with my shiny new MacBookPro, visit the Mozilla site, then quickly download and install both a browser and email client I'm familiar with. No charge. No pain. No Sword of Damocles security threat.
Here's the fun bit: I carry a portable hard disk drive with a neat little variation on Thunderbird called "Portable Thunderbird" (http://portablethunderbird.mozdev.org/). With this setup, I can hot-plug the drive into any Windows box and access my email program, my address book and all my email files and attachments. I assumed I'd be able to also do this on the Mac but soon discovered that the portable version (which is maintained by an individual developer, not Mozilla) isn't available for Mac OS X.
Not to be daunted-and confident of open source flexibility-I installed Mozilla's Thunderbird on my Mac and, with a minor adjustment, taught it to read the data files from the Portable Thunderbird installation. Net result: I maintain my preferred email setup despite working on a Windows PC at one office and on Mac when on the road.
And the kicker: I could also use a Linux system. Windows, Mac, Linux-it makes no difference which platform I choose, I am able to run the same software with essentially the same interface and functionality. Oh, and let's not forget the cost: zero. No license fees, no downtime learning a new tool or juggling data sync.
Mozilla seems to have repurposed an old-school software vendor trick-previously, one of proprietary software's strongest (though frequently unstated) arguments was that it's the path of least resistance: once you were on their system you were essentially married to it as the cost of switching was too high. Mozilla has turned this "negative" benefit on its head: in the past I was loathe to switch (even though I might want to) due to costs incurred, but now I won't switch to another product because there's simply no need to switch! The path of least resistance is now defined with reference to the best tools-in this case, the ones that work across platforms and configurations. The fact that those tools are free is a plus, but it isn't the key determinant. Call me naive, but isn't this how it's supposed to work?
And I'm not the only one who has noticed. The trades are replete with reports of increasing adoption of Firefox. With Vista still vaporware, the abandonment of IE support for Mac, and no significant IE innovations in sight, it's not surprising that Firefox continues to strengthen its market position.
I ran an informal survey of my own to add some meat to this story. Using my web stats programs, I sampled visitor activity across 14 websites that I manage or monitor. In the last month, more than 2,000,000 visitors accessed these sites using either IE or Firefox (other browsers took a minority share in this two-horse race). Comparing IE with Firefox as a ratio: for every 3.73 IE users in my sample set, there was 1 Firefox user. So, while industry pundits report that Firefox adoption has reached 13 percent across the board, my off-the-cuff count shows a significantly higher erosion in IE market share.
Dear proprietary software vendors: there's a lesson here.
Ric Shreves is a partner in Water&Stone, a firm specializing in open source content management systems. He speaks and writes frequently on the subject of Internet technologies in general and on open source in particular. Contact him at ric@waterandstone.com