Firefox Pro & Cons

[geekerati]

I just received this in my eMail account today. It's from the Langalist Standard Edition
Please have a look for yourself. It really boils down to who is the target for attacks, and that could be anyone using any browser. Both could show up on the radar screen!


FireFox Pros And Cons

For an industry built on logic--- at their deepest level, computers are
logic circuits--- blatant illogic somehow manages to cloud many issues.

Take FireFox http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ , for example, a
very nice browser from Mozilla.Org http://www.mozilla.org/ . It's free,
Open Source, and the result of literally years of development. It's also a
cross-platform application, available for Windows, Mac, and Linux--- a
huge plus in computationally diverse environments because the
configuration and training/learning curve is basically the same, no matter
what platform the browser's installed on. Its human language support also
is extensive, with versions in everything from Afrikaans to Welsh. No
question: it's impressive software.

Some also like it simply because it's not from Microsoft. I think this
approach has some merit: Whenever Microsoft loses serious competition in
any software category, it grows complacent, and the pace of innovation
slackens. IE6, for example, came out in 2001; an eternity ago, in
computing terms. Except for a boatload of security updates and patches,
it's still basically the same browser it was then.

But, US-CERT (United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team), a
partnership between the Department of Homeland Security and the public and
private sectors that impartially tracks all manner of security issues in
operating systems and major applications, shows that the list of IE's
current vulnerabilities is shorter than those for FireFox, Mozilla, and
the other alternate browsers. Likewise, it also lists fewer Windows'
vulnerabilities than for the other OSes.

The last time I mentioned a similar US-CERT finding, by the way, Linux
partisans leapt up to tell me that US-CERT didn't know what it was doing.
Linux *couldn't* have more security flaws than Windows! Everyone *knows*
that Open Source software is so much better than anything from Microsoft--
- right?

Well, to the dismay the more rabid anti-Microsoft partisans, reports from
other independent observers corroborated CERT's findings.
For example, between July 1 and December 31, 2004, Symantec documented 13
serious vulnerabilities affecting Microsoft Internet Explorer, but found
21 vulnerabilities affecting each of the Mozilla-based browsers.
But don't take my word for it--- read the reports for yourself, see the
methodologies for yourself, and decide for yourself: The article posted
now (free!) at
http://www.informationweek.com/story...leID=160900911
has all the details and links you'll need.

I wrote that article to try to help readers interested in FireFox in
particular and Open Source in general to make an informed decision. There
are many, many excellent, proven, objective benefits to switching to Open
Source software--- but there's also a lot of misinformation, and some
very, very *bad* reasons to switch.

For example, the "common knowledge" that FireFox is "more secure than IE"
simply is false. Switching to FireFox for that particular reason--- in the
belief that you'll magically and automatically be more secure--- is just
plain wrong.

But again, don't trust me, or any third party: Come see the source
material for yourself, and make up your own mind. It'll only take a few
minutes, and one way or the other--- whether you agree or disagree with me-
-- you'll have the facts at hand, and so can make an informed judgment,
rather than one based on "common knowledge."

Click on over to
Information Week