

Firefox: it's just too darned expensive - jgamman
http://gizmodo.com/5315634/us-state-department-rejects-firefox-which-is-entirely-free-due-to-expense-questions

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jsz0
Testing, deploying, and supporting new software costs money. There's no way
around it and it's not directly related to the expense of the software
licenses required.

~~~
JBiserkov
\+ IE can be managed via Group policy => tweak once, deploy to all.

This could be possible with Firefox too(I don't know), but I would require a
specific tool to be developed, tested (by Mozilla for example) and LEARNED by
the admins.

The tool itself needs to be deployed...

~~~
windsurfer
<http://www.frontmotion.com/Firefox/fmfirefox.htm>

First result for "Group policy Firefox"

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bradgessler
Awesome project; but the presentation of this as a solution to big
organizations/companies is lacking, or to put it more bluntly, their website
sucks. It would be great if the Mozilla Foundation would host this project and
make it more presentable.

~~~
vdm
Agreed; Firefox needs to have this out of the box, for free, to compete with
IE in corporate IT.

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Goladus
The guy doesn't even say it would be more expensive than IE. Just that adding
IT support for a new browser is an expense question and hasn't been answered
yet.

~~~
jrockway
It's too bad that the people they pay to write web apps don't add "IE support"
as a line-item. The project just goes over cost and becomes late instead, so
they don't realize that "the expense question" actually comes out quite
favorably for Firefox. (Your tax dollars at work.)

~~~
TomOfTTB
This doesn't make sense. If they are mandating IE for all their computers than
their whole App is built solely for IE. For all it's faults, of which there
are many, IE isn't harder to use or harder to develop for if you're just
writing for IE.

(With the notable exception of lacking the Canvas element. Seriously IE team
what is up with that?)

Look, I'm no fan of IE. But if Firefox advocates want to make headway in
business and government arenas they need to stop making BS arguments and start
looking at the facts. Saying there's no expense to switching to Firefox (on a
mass level) or that IE development is a big money drain are both so easily
discredited that they make the overall argument (that Firefox is better) look
invalid. Because they make those making the argument look like they're just
acting of irrational hatred of IE rather than actual facts.

~~~
jrockway
Maybe there _is_ no reason to use Firefox for the business?

IE actually saved me some time the other day. A client is using TinyMCE and
wanted spell-check enabled. I thought this required a PHP script on the server
(which is not going to happen, our infrastructure is not set up to run PHP),
and that I was going to have to port that script to Perl. Turns out it can use
IE's built-in spell-checker instead. Since the client only uses IE, the
problem was solved.

This does not make up for the thousands of hours I've spent on things that
work great in Firefox, Safari, and Opera, but immediately kill all scripts in
IE. (The error messages are crap, and the debugging tools don't work. Nice!)

~~~
Malus
Last time I checked, Firefox and Safari have built-in spell checkers too (and
both browsers probably had the feature before IE did). The only reason not to
use Firefox is because it would cost too much to make all of the IE-only sites
work in it.

~~~
eli
Even if the apps already work on Firefox, it would cost additional time and
money (creating/updating documentation, another set of security patches to
track, etc) to support the new browser.

Even just _testing_ all the apps on all the sites to find out if they are
compatible with Firefox costs time and money.

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dtf
Does Firefox officially provide MSI packages yet? I seem to remember people
saying there were a number of issues which made it painful to administrate
(for a large corporation) compared to IE.

~~~
rbanffy
Properly integrating with Windows management tools should be a priority for
the organization.

Many organizations won't even consider a switch unless it works with their
tools.

As many big organizations, the DoS is dependent on Windows. The harm
(depending on a single vendor solution) has already been done and it will take
some steps to undo.

BTW, I would fire a developer who does a web app that only runs on IE, even if
IE is the only browser mandated by the organization. Stupid rules are no
excuse for employing incompetent people on public money.

~~~
eli
Would you also fire a developer for creating a Windows-only desktop app, even
if Windows is the operating system mandated by the organization?

~~~
ekiru
That's a different question. It's similar, but the situations aren't really
the same. Developing a desktop app that runs on multiple OSes either involves
using something like Gtk and probably having a noticeably non-native app on at
least some systems or writing separate user interface code for every platform.
I don't have much experience in web development(or desktop development for
that matter), but given that all commonly-used browsers share at least a
certain subset of HTML, CSS, and Javascript, is it really as hard as creating
a desktop app that looks native on every major platform? Since there's no such
thing as a native look for web apps, it's not really something you have to
worry about, so you just have to deal with the differing HTML/CSS/Javascript
implementations across browsers.

Besides, an organization is and far more likely to switch browsers than to
switch OSes because changing browsers is a less dramatic change that is less
disruptive to their old way of doing things.

~~~
eli
I think it's a lot more similar than you realize. It's just that most web
developers don't have the luxury of deploying to a homogenous environment, so
they take it for granted that the site has to work in half a dozen browsers.

Or, turn it around: would you insist your intranet apps support IE 6, even if
using IE 6 is forbidden by IT policy?

~~~
rbanffy
I would insist all applications to warn users IE6 is forbidden by IT policy,
to record its usage and to fire upgrade requests for the IT services team.

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windsurfer
I find it funny that the US is doing this, while here in Canada, the
government still only officially supports Netscape, even though Netscape
itself is no longer supported.

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edw519
The initial expense of doing something is almost always greater than doing
nothing.

The long term expense of doing many things is often less than doing nothing.
Otherwise, no one would ever do anything.

A myopic bureaucrat? Naaa...

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miracle
IE is also free and more secure. Why would they want to switch?

~~~
Goladus
As an organization, the question wasn't about switching the question was about
allowing both. Individuals have numerous reasons to prefer one over the other.

~~~
pj
and if they allow both, they have to increase development costs for _all_ web
apps because we all know supporting multiple browsers costs more.

