May 22, 2005

So much for the 'Spirit of Open Source'

Netscape patches 1-day-old browser | CNET News.com

"If security is important to you, this demonstration should show that browsers that are redistributions of the official Mozilla releases are never going to give you security updates as quickly as Mozilla will itself for its supported products," Goodger wrote."

Take that same statement, replace browser and Mozilla with CLR and Microsoft/.NET and you've got yourself a statement that every single naysayer and disbeliever of the standardized intentions of MS is salivating for some MS Exec to state so they can pounce on them and say "SEE!!!! I told you they're the Evil Empire!!!"

[NOTE: The following is the same quote from above with a few words changed here and there to make a point... THIS IS NOT A REAL MS QUOTE]

"If security is important to you, this demonstration should show that CLR implementations that are re-creations of the official Microsoft .NET releases are never going to give you security updates as quickly as Microsoft will itself for its supported products," some targeted MS Exec wrote."

Careful Mozilla... you're starting to sound a little proprietary-esque, a little annoyed, and a lot like what you claim as a reason and need to develop the open source Mozilla and now Firefox browsers in the first place.

I'm not taking you to task, I'm simply suggesting that if your intentions are what you say -- and I don't doubt they are... sounds more to me like you're probably just a bit annoyed by people taking your stuff and calling it their own... understandable, for sure. -- then you simply need to be a little more careful in how you state things. As one who has found (more times than I care to admit) his own words taken to mean something that was never intended I can assure you people will most certainly (and in most cases innocently) take your words and turn them into something quite different if you give them the opportunity to do so... ESPECIALLY when your in the "BigManOnCampus spotlight" like you are now.

For a well seasoned reporter, PR exec, and/or Spin-Master all that is needed is a few well placed ellipsis teamed with an unfortunate sequence of letters and words that when taken out of context turn you from Angel to Demon in a matter of milliseconds... it sucks to be in that position, I realize. But its where you are so, for what its worth, there you have it. You've done such a fantastic job of creating the worlds best web browser (IE does have you beat as an application development and web-based application hosting environment but your'e catching up and they have the entire Win32 API and .NET platform to work with, something you chose specifically not to target, and for good, sound, security-based reasons so don't read too much into this statement...) and as such it would really suck to see you all demonized in any way, shape or form... and I promise you their are 100's and maybe even 1000's who are watching and waiting on every word you speak to find that golden sound byte that wins them a promotion and you a special spot on the list of celebrity inpatients at Betty Ford. After all you've done you don't deserve that type of treatment (the "slammed in the headlines" treatment as opposed to the Betty Ford variety... lets hope you don't end up needing that! Avoiding sound bytes like the above will certainly lean well into your favor in this regard.)

Keep up the *GREAT* work!