![]() This move indicates a lack of sensitivity to the Open Source philosophy, and seems to complete Mozilla's move from a community-driven project to a market share obsessed company. If all we're trying to do is get everyone to use the same software that we do, why do we even care if that software is open source to begin with? Should we be spreading a philosophy, or just trying to get as many people using our favorite software as possible? If we're trying to spread the Open Source ideal, then partnering with a company known for distributing spyware and generally embodying all of the worst aspects of closed source software is a bad idea. This move really underscores the rift in the Open Source community as to what the goal of Open Source really is. Associating themselves with a company that is almost universally reviled by geeks is a huge slap in the face to Firefox's core group of supporters. They may get more people downloading their browsers, but Firefox's core market has always been geeks. I'd be thoroughly surprised if even 1/10 of those were actually RealPlayer downloads. ![]() They most likely include everything else downloaded from their servers, including music from their subscription service, short video clips that noone wants and everyone makes their player download automatically at startup, patches, updates, programs like Firefox, etc. Or, oh, you mean the "2 million downloads a day" boast? Note that they don't say 2 million _RealPlayer_ downloads a day. Not when it's a fringe heading steadily towards extinction. When youtube, google, and even a neighbour's vacation videos are. So, really, what popularity? I'll call a format or player popular when it's the format you run into on every other site. rm file on the net lately? Almost everything these days is WMV, DivX and QT. Other than a couple of minor older sites, have you even _seen_ a. Exactly what kind of popularity are we talking about? It's a format that rose to prominence just on the back of some deals with porn sites, and which in the last years has steadily been dumped by everyone _including_ those porn sites.
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