Submitted by Bob Sutor, Vice President of Open Source and Linux at IBM confirmed on his blog that the entire IBM company is moving to Firefox as its default browser. Though it seems like various users in the company have been able to use Firefox for quite some time, it looks like now they’re going to be encouraging everyone to use it, and all new computers will be provisioned with Firefox as the default. Sutor has plenty of glowing praise for the open source browser in his blog post.He says:
- Firefox is stunningly standards compliant, and interoperability via open standards is key to IBM’s strategy.
- Firefox is open source and its development schedule is managed by a development community not beholden to one commercial entity.
- Firefox is secure and an international community of experts continues to develop and maintain it.
- Firefox is extensible and can be customized for particular applications and organizations, like IBM.
- Firefox is innovative and has forced the hand of browsers that came before and after it to add and improve speed and function.
It will be interesting to see whether this move will have any effect on other large companies adopting Firefox, either because they’re directly working with IBM Global Services to help them with technology, or simply taking IBM’s lead.
As usual, IBM is part of the laggards. Still, good to have some corporate validation.
Well, IBM did have some exceptions to the “laggards” part, with Linux and Open Source in the ’90s, when they moved faster than some of the smaller, more agile companies
I’ve always thought that changing things or moving fast is “just” a matter of will. The only question is whether the will comes from the top boss or the anonymous developer at the bottom of the ladder, with no influence and no say in anything.
Edited 2010-07-06 10:17 UTC
it depends, they want something tested and reliable. if you’re moving quickly, you’re not getting reliable.
For a browser these days, it’s probably a good move. Actually, IE8 isn’t that bad either anyway.. but Firefox’s extension system is probably easier to use.
For Linux, moving quick was probably a good move as well. IBM has made considerable effort to promote Linux and contributed code as well.
It doesn’t mean they are “the best” or “always good” but it’s not the opposite either.
I hope this is a trend for years to come. I don’t really care if they use Firefox, Opera or some WebKit browser, aslong as they switch away from the awful nightmare that is IE!
Mozilla Firefox has almost 6 year with us now, but there are one deadly sin committed by Mozilla they hasn’t release an official Group Policy Objects extension to install and control Firefox in an active directory environment, denying the grow of Firefox at the corporate level.
Don’t get me wrong, I know outside there is one tool for accomplish this, but I also know that we would like an OFFICIAL extension, no someone hack.
The route for Firefox in the enterprise world would be really easy if Mozilla decide to create something like this for Firefox 4
That’s just a missing feature. Not a deadly sin. If you want it urgently, help prioritize development by paying for it.
How Can I do that?
Hire some devs to do it for you.
Sadly I work in a country where only propose this should be ignore right away.
But thank you.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/firefoxadm/
Should be good enough. Other option is reg hacks pushed out by GPO or login script.