Some thoughts about Flock

Last days where we had a big wave, first press articles, blogs and whole IT community was praising Flock, then the reaction was quite fast and people who don’t understand the reasons behind the Flock started blaming it.
Let’s sum up most common issues:

Flock is a plagiarism

No, it’s not. Open source is about being able to reuse the code. When you decide to make your code Open Source, you agree that anyone can take your code, fix things that you don’t and give a better product to the market. And in this situation, the user wins which is good, right? So if you develop Open Source, you agree that if you fail to do The Right Thing, user is not doomed. There is a great chance that someone will decide to fix it and the user will be happy again.
This also applies to any other change.

Ok, but it’s still not fair that Flock team took Firefox code and rebranded it as their own

Was it OK that Apple took KHTML and used it for Safari? Yes it was. And there should be no question if it’s OK. We can discuss if the Flock team is going to play fair. Those are moral problems, but Open Source has a wide area of non-law-related stuff. And my answer is – yes, I’m sure that Flock team will play fair and will give a lot of good code, bugs, testcases, to Mozilla project in reward. Different browser based on Gecko makes good to Mozilla project because it gives another way to spread Gecko around, promote open standards and give user a choice.

Ok, ok. But why the hell Flock team just contribute to Firefox project?

Because they have different goals!

What for another browser similar to Firefox on the market?

Because there is still space. Firefox is a great browser. It’s simple, generic, great alternative to Internet Explorer. It’s the browser that should and can rule the web, because it’s development model ensures that the Web can progress under their rules. But there is space for others – Opera is another browser that is simple, easy to use and fast and can be widely adopted. But Opera is a bit more specific. It has more predefined functionality so it makes the user use them. Firefox is trying not to do that beside of very basic needs. The space is the market of browsers that works “out of the box”. Firefox is a good thing for my mom, dad, secretary or grandma. But you can’t create “the browser for everyone” – once you are near to the ideal “generic browser” there will be need to create a “specified browser”. Flock, in my opinion, has a chance to became a very good web tool that will use the experience of Firefox, Google and make a tool for users who are using web on their everyday basis. I can see the space between what Firefox and Mozilla Suite. And why basing on Firefox? Because Firefox is a great tool!

So why not just create a few extensions?

Because it would break the idea of “out of the box” tool. There is much more beside of code what makes the product. Marketing, promotion, quality assurance, development process, choices, roadmaps, set of functionality that lies around the browser (like Devmo, addons.mozilla.org, reporter tool etc.). I understand the threat of “many browser” that is in people who remember IE vs Netscape browser wars, but remember that Flock bases on Gecko. And Flock will contribute to Gecko.

I’m not convinced. I still feel that it’s not fair that Flock is so similar to Firefox

Easy, easy… it’s very first version! 0.4.9 – remember? And there is a lot of time, work, and ideas to do before 1.0. Remember Phoenix 0.4? I have no doubt that Flock will make their contribution to browser market. Firefox is going to stay the generic browser, and Flock can fly in the direction its user will want – guys at Flock team don’t have to make a generic browser, because there is already Firefox for people that wants it. Flock can focus on bringing some more complex solution for user experience. Flock will be very different from Firefox once it’s in 1.0 version for sure.

How do you know that? Are you this mythical Bart Decrem or maybe, ah! I know… they payed you, right?

No, sorry, I’m not, and they didn’t. I just believe that the way of open source is to reuse the code and contribute your ideas. I also believe that there is a space on the browser market and the more good browser we have, the more choice user have. And I believe that Flock is a quite interesting idea that can be developed into very good browser. And help Firefox reach it’s goals.

If you have more questions, for sure you can ask Flock team and they’ll answer. If you don’t like Flock – don’t use it. But give those guys a chance, don’t blame them just for that they want to try create something useful and give it to you for free.