Open-source guru talks up Firefox

Ben Goodger

The lead developer of the hugely successful Firefox internet browser, Ben Goodger, talks fast with a Californian accent and uses lots of web jargon.

But that suited just fine an audience of web developers listening to Goodger speak at last week's Webstock conference in Wellington.

Born in England and raised in Auckland, Goodger is on the cutting edge of the open-source software movement and currently works on two of the hottest internet properties - Firefox and Google.

But he cut his teeth helping out for free at former internet darling Netscape, the Mozilla open-source foundation and ultimately the Firefox browser, which emerged unexpectedly out of the demise of the much-loved Netscape Navigator browser.

There have been 177 million downloads of Firefox since version 1.0 debuted in November 2004.

"The initial target was to get 10 million downloads in 10 days," Goodger says.

The target was easily exceeded. Firefox offered features that rival Internet Explorer didn't, such as tabbed browsing, which makes it easier to navigate multiple web pages at once.

Firefox was also designed with better security and was less prone to being targeted by hackers who had already seriously compromised IE's security.

Now, Firefox is the browser of choice for 12.25 per cent of internet users. In some European markets, Goodger says, penetration is around 25 per cent. The rapid growth is the surest sign yet that the open-source software movement can deliver to the masses.

But Goodger and his team have copped criticism for what ardent fans of the browser see as its "dumbing down".

"When a user installs Firefox, what they get is a familiar and comfortable environment," says Goodger, who acknowledges it adapted the favourite features of other browsers.

He believes Mozilla has the similar aim with Firefox as Netscape had with Navigator - make it useful. That also means it should be easy to use.

"There are very intelligent people out there, but they don't want to waste time interfacing with their browser. They just want it to work."

Still, he adds: "Techy people tend to like Firefox more than the average consumer."

Formed in 1994 and locked in the "browser wars" with Microsoft's Internet Explorer through the mid-1990s, Netscape was in serious trouble by 1998, Goodger says, burdened with programming code that wasn't flexible enough to keep up with changes on the internet.

The decision was made to release Netscape's code, begin open-source development and change the layout engine from Marriner to a new system based on open-source standards and dubbed Gecko.

Goodger, who was a second-year engineering student at the University of Auckland at the time, was one of a global team of volunteers who worked on Netscape 5.

"I made small patches and wrote specifications [for Mozilla], things like that," he says.

Netscape recognised his ability and offered him a job. But the shift to open-source development was initially problematic and didn't fit well with Netscape's way of doing business.

Despite being a "bubble company", Goodger says, the company had a rigidly hierarchical management structure. Senior executives knew Netscape 5 would be a disaster.

"They knew ... they would be fired. They said 'if we cross our fingers and pray really hard, it won't suck'. We all know what happened."

Netscape was slow to load, unstable and ultimately, unpopular.

"People gave up and used Internet Explorer," Goodger says.

The sixth version of Netscape was more robust, but the company's thinking still hadn't evolved sufficiently.

"At the same time the product management and marketing teams were still brain dead," he said.

Goodger says the Netscape.com portal marketing team opposed a pop-up advert blocker being built into Navigator because it would discourage their own advertisers. Meanwhile, Mozilla, which sat within Netscape, was providing the now standard feature with its own unbranded browser. The philosophical and cultural differences proved too much.

By early 2003, Netscape's market share had dropped from 15 per cent to low single digits. Many mourned its demise.

Mozilla emerged as a stand-alone group after internet provider AOL bought Netscape, and has thrived ever since.

Now at version 1.5 of Firefox, Goodger is hard at work on version 2 and even has ambitious plans laid out for version 3.

A regular visitor to New Zealand, Goodger was heartened by the news that Telecom's high-speed internet monopoly is to be dismantled with further regulation. He remembers the not-so-distant bad old days.

"I paid a $400 bill each month to Telecom for a 1.5 megabit per second [internet connection].

"That was irritating."


BEN GOODGER

* Favourite gadget: "Gadgets are fun, but costly. I've mostly reined in my habit of purchasing things I don't use. I have a growing collection of music, organised in iTunes on my G5 and made portable by a first-generation 10 gigabyte iPod."

* Spare time: "I (obviously) enjoy driving. I've driven some distance around the North Island of New Zealand, and around central California, and (on one occasion, soon to be two occasions) from the San Francisco Bay area to New York and back."