Mozilla CEO: We are no 'Frankenstein'

The Mozilla Foundation is no "Frankenstein," haphazardly thrown together in open-source development, CEO Mitchell Baker said this week.

Baker, speaking at CeBit Australia 2007 in Sydney, also challenged the perception that open-source vendors are just ad hoc organizations and took the chance to bang the security message home, claiming that Microsoft's Internet Explorer was vulnerable to attack for 285 days last year, compared with just 9 days for Firefox.

In a separate interview with ZDNet Australia, Baker took a swipe at Microsoft and the software giant's definition of collaboration.

"I don't think you should let a word or concept as important as 'collaboration' be defined by Microsoft to mean calendar and e-mail integration. Collaboration, especially for millions of people on the Web is about many other things," she said.

Baker said she believes that the creation of the Mozilla Foundation and the Firefox Web browser are living examples of what collaboration can produce.

While she wasn't dismissive of e-mail and calendar integration, Baker said the level of collaboration that Mozilla and other open-source projects demonstrate dwarf the interaction between those two pieces of software.

The Mozilla CEO also acknowledged that competition is heating up in the browser space. According to Baker, Microsoft is taking notice of Firefox and "is back investing in the browser".

"It is very clear that IE will have a least one nice feature that we don't. That I think we should take as a given," she said. "Most people like Firefox and they trust Firefox, and that is because of the way we build it. We don't have anything to hide behind. We can't hide behind our mistakes because they are all out there in the public," she added.

Munir Kotadia and Scott Mckenzie of ZDNet Australia reported from Sydney.

[WJeansonne]

What a bunch of hooey!

Sounds like sour grapes to me. These people are always harping on a great American success story--Microsoft.

[anarchyreigns]

You have no idea what you're talking about. <rolls eyes>

<eom>

[t8]

Microsoft a success?

Adolph Hitler was a success up until he failed.
Microsoft is evil and successful. But not forever. In the end when the people don't like you, you lose.

[rcsteiner]

If MS created technically-sophisticated software...

...maybe we'd be more motivated to give them credit.

Instead, they seem happy to give their captive customer a few new bells and whistles with each release -- while mostly ignoring the performance, security, and functionality shortcomings in their product lines.

There's a reason I left the Microsoft fold in 1992, and I don't regret it a bit!

[NoVista]

WJ is right!

Microsoft truly represents American business ethics in the 21st century. Why, it ranks right up there with Enron. Oh yeah.

Well, alongside Halliburton, Blackwater, SAIC ...