Principal Mozilla Engineer Mike Hanson Departs

[James]

Hanson joins Greylock from Mozilla, where he has been a principal engineer at Mozilla Labs for the last three years, playing a central role in conceiving the company’s distributed identity verification system, also known as BrowserID, and developing APIs and apps for Firefox’s apps platform — among other things.

http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/09/mike-h ... hCrunch%29

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[Antony]

Recall from my memory, about 6 years back, Mr Ben Goodger left Mozilla Foundation and went to Google. He now works as a lead on the Google Chrome browser, a browse many Mozilla supporters hate.

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[James]

You see... I just don't understand a person "hating" a browser. It's nothing more than a software program so why hate it? I can understand that someone might have a preference for a certain browser since it works better on his computer and he prefers the way he can customize it. But to attach an emotion to software, I think, is a childish thing. Geeze. Right now I'm using IE9 because I like the way it displays pages. Granted, I usually use Firefox as my default browser but the point is, I'm not above using any browser if I think it will do the job for me.

For Mozilla to lose a key engineer like Hanson is a big blow. Unless they can fill those shoes pretty quickly, this is going to hurt the development of Firefox.

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[Antony]

I have been trying hard to understand why many Mozilla users and open-source guys do not like the Google browser. It is understandable that most of us have a preference on almost everything, for example even TV channels. But somehow, it is easily to sense the strong "loathe" against certain companies from certain extremists.

One of the thing I discover is that the company brand is a major decision factor (of "love" and "hate") for certain extremists. Many of those extremists claim that they are not loyal to any company brand, as a matter of fact, most of them are very brand-aware, in the level of "avoiding" or "hating" certain products. And that decision was usually made well before any proper review and/or fair comparison.

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[James]

Microsoft has always been a company to hate by many younger men and because of it's predatory practices in the past and it's overwhelming phenomenal success, it's understandable why. Today Apple's pockets are deeper than Microsoft's and so it is increasingly becoming the company to hate out of jealousy. I don't buy into this sort of juvenile silliness.

I do think the loss of this software engineer will set back Mozilla for the time being.

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[Antony]

Back to the browser topic.

These days, there aren't much difference between Firefox and Chrome in terms of web page performance as well as web language support. But to certain devotees, there's always a good reason to attack non-Firefox products.

A side note from the interesting presentation at Air Mozilla, Mozilla's Alex Limi admitted that he didn't have a good reason on choosing Firefox over Chrome since Firefox and Chrome did pretty much the same thing, and perform almost equal well. However, a Firefox devotee (from audience) confirmed what I concluded... he said it was because "Google" (the company).

It is well known that most open-source extremists simply "hate" any big companies, except "Google" (and some even excluded "Microsoft"). Unlike Microsoft, Google has been one of the very few big companies gaining the support from open-source extremists.

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[James]

Because of Google's beginnings, a lot of users still gravitate to them under the thinking that Google "does no evil". However, as Google continues to thumb its nose at privacy concerns, I'm sure we're going to see a greater percentage of users turn their backs on Google the way they did on MS.

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[Antony]

Very good point James.

Well, I was about to add that "open source products" do not necessary win the thumb of approval from "open source extremists". What I was saying was simple: just take a look between Firefox and Chrome, both open source. But majority of "open source extremists" simply hate Chrome, because of the names associated behind.

I know it the "hating" thing is a bit stupid, but it is the simplest way and still the accurate way to describe.

Back in late 80s when I got my first computer, it run the then popular Microsoft (MS-DOS). (I know I am old.) I've been following Microsoft Windows and most recently, Windows 7 (which was expensive I shall add). I also bought an Xbox (original) back then, but I suck at games (Wii games are much easier). Unlike those extremists, I don't avoid certain products due to the brand name.

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