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August 11, 2004

UnEconomic

Someone on MyOpera asked, with reference to my professed belief in the free market, how I could concievably support Mozilla - hence -

I suppose that's a fair enough question. But it seems pretty simple to me - I'm a consumer in this equation, so I simply choose the product from which I gain the most marginal utility. But cost is not simply derived from money spent, but from effort. If I have to do all the configuration and troubleshooting for a particular browser that I do not enjoy, that is a cost to me. This may not seem to be the most logical of decisions but in many ways consumers are eerily teetering between being rational and irrational. In certain ways I can claim utility from being a professed Opera Fanboy.

On the other hand, there is not a zero cost to the production of Mozilla. Sure there is an aspect to which it is un-economic, in that no profit is directly derived from the "sale" of the browser and its developers aren't directly paid (mostly). But even then it is not so much an alternative to capitalism as a "parasite upon capitalsim" (search the Economist.com for the quote). Without discussing that in too much length, it seems simple enough to say that just as I get utility from being a Fanboy, people who contribute code to OSS projects get utility from being Geeks. And again, while the Mozilla foundation might not be founded on an instinct for profit, it is not *unsustainable* - it intends to be a well run public service, which sustains itself by selling support/installation CD's, and recieving donations from big companies (in both time of their paid employees who work on the OSS and money). Those companies in turn are motivated by profit and do not support Mozilla out of the kindness of their hearts - they get an okay browser to bundle with their linux distributions etc. They also gain mindshare against a competitor: Microsoft.

Long story short, Mozilla is well within the realm of economic action. The wonder of Economics as a religion is very clear: "When the facts change, I change my mind, would you that it were otherwise?"

That said, the reason I mercilessly whale on Gecko based products (giving some kudos where due) is that I simply find that OSS has a deficit in creating really smooth and innovative UI - for some reason development for "Geeks" is more about feature addition and (often pointless) proliferation of skins than it is about (wait for it) *polish* - something that proprietary companies can tend to have in spades - Opera, MS, and, for instance, Elby, who develop CloneDVD - I nearly fell off my chair and pissed myself when I saw those animated sheep.

Posted by subtitles at August 11, 2004 4:03 AM | Computer Stuff

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