I just read Paul Scrivens’s post about the Flock.
What can I say is that yes, Flock was overbuzzed., yes it made bad to Flock since it’s in early development. The rest of article is absolutely missing the point. For the very first author seems not to understand the way of Open Source. Man, GPL and LGPL and other licenses are not only a toys, they define the way we’re evolving. And taking something, making it better and releasing *is* the absolute native part of this system. So blaming Flock for doing so, seems to be a really big misunderstood. And yes, it means also that you can take Open Office, Gentoo, kernel and others, modify it and release under your brand. Suprised?
And we’re not doing so “by mistake”. It’s the way we *want* to go. And it’s one of our best values. Because in this scenario, the only one who wins is the user.
Author also said that he see no reason for another browser, since Firefox is doing so well. It’s also not the way software is evolving. We don’t stop trying creating new software just because another good app is already on the market. Right?
Firefox is a great generic browser. It has a great chance to replace IE in the future as a market king. But we made open standards, remember? So there’s no reason to have only one browser, and Opera, Flock, K-Meleon, Safari, Camino, Seamonkey and others have their reasons to live.
He also assumed that if browsers are OK for last 15 years, we should not touch it. I hardly can find better example of thinking that could block improvements. “Hey, Thomas, stop it, we have a candle, right?”.
Firefox will take more and more of the market share and it will, in the future, make it less and less flexible. It will have to make smaller changes, not to loose users. Flock will be there by that time to make what Firefox is doing now.
It’s another issue. People keep looking at Flock as it is today, ignoring “Developers preview” note. It will evolve, it will change, it will create it’s own set of features, and what you can see at the point is just a very early preview of the direction Flock chose.
“Flock is solving problems that does not exist” – “Firefox is solving the problem that does not exist. IE works”. We see a problem, and we think that in near future this problem will evolve, and Flock can solve it.
Ok, that’s all for now. Thanks for all comments, warnings and feedback. I’m, as always, very suprised to see how many people are angry because someone is trying to create something.
Alex, c’mon, can’t we just send a letter?