Firefox 3 is slated to be released on June 17, 2008. It is hoping to set a world record in the number of downloads in a 24 hour time span. Their target? A whopping 5 million. So far around 1.5 million people have pledged to download the browser on D day. You can do so here
It is kind of redundant to pledge right now since D day is only hours away (coz of difference in time zones). The objective was to send a mail to everyone reminding them to download FF3.
I am actually a little apprehensive. I initially shifted to FF because viruses were tailor made for Internet Explorer and FF was stated to be a better choice. But if they are targeting a 24 hour download record of 5 million, isn’t that just asking for trouble? I mean advertising the fact of a browsers popularity might help hit out at Microsoft and make a statement for open source. But what about the unwanted attention from hackers and virus writers? Will more people accepting FF lead to more attacks on FF? Will vulnerabilities that went unnoticed earlier be in the spotlight?
Well, until the vulnerabilities come into the spotlight, I’m more than content to scream from the rooftops that fire fox is infinitely better than internet explorer. An added bonus is the Ad block plus plugin It just eliminates downloading all those pesky ads that seem to chew up my bandwidth.
Guess you probably realized it. I’m already a pledged downloader. Time to go help create history. Wanna join?
3 comments:
Well, regarding your apprehensions about popularity giving rise to more viruses, you're forgetting the fact that unlike IE, FF is open source. The moment some smart ass decides to exploit a vulnerability, there will be five others who'll want to fix it. In other words, unlike the limited number of IE engineers around, who own specific components of the browser, there are no protocols or constraints on FF developers as to who should fix a defect. Besides, if you use one of the standard linux distros, you end up getting security fixes every day.. For free :)
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/press/mozilla-2008-07-02.html
Looks like they beat their target amount by a whopping 60%
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