Hello everyone! My name is Christopher Decairos, I'm a 5th Semester CPAC student at Seneca. I'll be using this blog to document my OSD600 project over the course of the next few months. I look forward to sharing with everyone the things I'm doing to contribute to the Mozilla Project!
My first task this week from Dave was to check out several resources regarding the history of the Free Software Foundation and the Open Source Movement, as well as the origins of the Mozilla Project. The first thing I did was avoid all reading and go straight to the documentary Revolution OS. I found the film fascinating. It took a lot of people a long time to show the unlimited possibilities of open source work and bring it into the mainstream. These guys deserve a lot of credit for the years they spent making open source software a viable alternative to proprietary software.
Since the paper "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" by Eric Raymond was loosely mentioned in the documentary, I decided to check that out next. The paper attempted to show the many benefits of open source projects as opposed to closed source ones by describing a project that the author was personally involved in. It is said that the paper played a large role in convincing Netscape Navigator's management to go public with their source code. That seems to me like the paper had it's intended effect.
Lastly, I read a newspaper article detailing the rise of Mozilla Firefox. When it comes down to it, it is not hard to see why Firefox became so much better than Internet Explorer in the beginning. We as consumers demand quality in our products. When Microsoft stopped improving their browser, they practically opened the door for software that actually had the things people wanted, like oh I don't know... SECURITY FEATURES! ... But now that Microsoft has felt the heat they have been improving Internet Explorer. As well as with the release of Google's Chrome browser, the stage is set for a browser war.. I guess thats where we as a community come in. It is up to us to provide Firefox with an edge above it's competition, which that is what I hope to contribute as a new member in the Mozilla community.