I have an old Apple PPC G4 that I use for browsing and reading email. All of the software products offered by the Mozilla Foundation stopped supporting the Apple PPC platform in April 2012 – how odd, how convenient.
I can’t help but wonder what relationships the Mozilla Foundation has crafted with third parties like Apple and Google, for example. The browser sponsored by Mozilla, Firefox, provides data about users in great detail to any website that a user might visit and provides little, if any, protection to the user of the “open” products Mozilla offers. No doubt any corporate URLs accessed via Firefox, those that “want” every tidbit of information about Firefox users they can get their hands on are happy when users of Firefox land on their sites. Firefox is “open source” in name only – their browser seems to be owned by the highest bidder. Hold what is important to you close – everybody wants what you have. Thinking back to that old SNL skit about landlords – can you say SCUMBAG?
As far as I know Mozilla is pretty transparent over their funding. Having said that, a HUGE portion of it is google.
Tot be honest I think you’re seeing ghosts here. Even non profits like Mozilla need to ensure their resources are send where they matter most. Given that the crooks of Apple support only their current and previous systems, there are not many systems around older than that. Especially giving many (not you) Apple users are close to being religious fanatics.
http://www.dilbert.com/dyn/str_strip/000000000/00000000/0000000/100000/60000/4000/700/164765/164765.strip.sunday.gif
Thinking about that a bit more, Mozilla also stopped actively pushing the further development of Thunderbird. Reason, as far as I know is rather simple (and formulated simplistically here) that the work is done. There is not much more to add to an email client (it has everything you need, all security protocols, all multi platform goodies, and actually, one of THE enablers of making switching from Windows to Linux easy. Next to that, people, like it or not, are rapidly switching to webmail. I see my kids do only cellphone mail and webmail. Personally, I don’t see anything wrong in Mozilla using their resources elsewhere.
Hey yoh-there thanks for your insight. I was really upset when Mozilla partnered with Google – heck I still am (obviously). The timing of the Google hook-up and the formation of the Mozilla Foundation was, I think, just a bit too obvious. Part of what concerns me is that bit I posted about browser profiling a while back it would seem to me that the “REAL” end user of Firefox is not the consumer with a browser, which I think was the original model.
Your observation that Thunderbird is no longer in active development is interesting. Apple dropped its support of professional users of Final Cut Pro (software I depend on), additionally Apple has not been upgrading its workstations, nor have other manufacturers. Much of the speculation in the video and audio community is that we are going back to the “old ways” – an SGI like model if you will – where machines that are flexible enough to support specialized operations, formerly embraced by many consumers, will be sold by specialty vendors while the mass marketeers peddle pads and such; the changes in computer marketing should be interesting – maybe the word “computer” will be dropped from the vernacular? Ugh.