DJYSRV

In Shakespeare's play the Tempest a bit of the dialog goes like this . .

-- I can call creatures from the briney deep
-- Yes, but will they answer?

The question here is how the 100 million downloads claimed by Mozilla's Firefox browser translates into real users and more importantly market share. eWeek reports (below) that less than half that number of downloadeds are actual users.

More impressive is the claim by the Mozilla foundation that 100,000 people contributed to the various builds of the open source product that has now followed the commercial spin-off from the non-profit Mozilla foundation.

The wealth creation that will come from an IPO for Mozilla's prodcut line (Firefox, Thunderbird) will be fueled by the unpaid contributions of those 100,000 people. If I was one of them, I'd feel like I'd been misled having swallowed the open source idealism hook, line, and sinker.

Firefox Hits Download Milestone
By Matt Hines
October 20, 2005

The Mozilla Corp. announced Thursday that its no-cost, open-source Web browser, Firefox, had reached the 100 million download mark, hitting that milestone less than one year after the software was first introduced.

Launched in Nov. 2004, the browser currently boasts an estimated 45 million individual users, many of whom have already cycled through multiple iterations of the browser.

The group estimates that some 100,000 individuals have built, tested and promoted the software.

[snip]

However, despite the impressive download figure, at least one research group reports that usage of Firefox may actually be sliding. According to Janco Research, based in Park City, Utah, Firefox ranks second in the browser market with 8.8 percent of all users, while Explorer still commands 85 percent of all Web surfers.

[snip]

Janco's third-quarter browser market report stands in sharp contrast to its second quarter research which had predicted that Firefox could take over as much as 25 percent of the sector before the end of 2005.