Mozilla Firefox, the prominent open source web browser, is getting a major update today (June 17) with the release of Firefox 3. To get media attention and (more importantly) have fun, they are asking everyone to download Firefox 3 today in an effort to set the world record for most software downloads in 24 hours! According to the Firefox Twitter, Firefox 3 will be released at 10am PDT, so when that time hits, download away!

I’d just like to take this opportunity to say what a great project Firefox is for free culture. It is an excellent web browser, and its popularity across every platform provides a nice example of open source software for us to refer to when explaining the concept. It’s also notable that one of the greatest things about Firefox is its add-ons / extensions, which are unmatched by any other browser as far as I’m concerned, and the fact that Firefox makes it really easy to play around with its guts is another great talking point when explaining the open source ethos. (I frequently compare proprietary software to a car with its hood welded shut, while open source projects are more like ordinary cars.)

Firefox has not been perfect. For starters, it has not been completely open source software, since its crash reporter in Firefox 2 was the proprietary program Talkback. This will be fixed in Firefox 3, which replaces Talkback with the open source project Breakpad, and that alone should serve as a good incentive for free culture advocates to download it ASAP.

Also, the silly trademark controversy when Mozilla refused to let community-produced versions of Firefox bear the Firefox name or logo did a lot to generate (minor levels of) ill will within the open source community. Personally I think that Mozilla’s treatment of the trademark issues is heavy-handed and excessive. Compare Mozilla’s approach with Lawrence Lessig’s approach towards the “free culture” brand. In 2004 I registered the domains freeculture.org and freeculture.net in anticipation of founding this organization, based on Lessig’s use of the term “free culture” in his OSCON 2002 presentation. I was completely unaware that Lessig was about to publish a book under the name “free culture”. When heard about the release of the book, I immediately e-mailed Lessig to apologize for grabbing all of the good domains (freeculture.com had already been snapped up by a cybersquatter). His response was something like, “No problem! Let’s take this opportunity to show everyone how unnecessary heavy-handed protection of trademark is. I’ll link to your website from my book’s website and you can link to my website from yours, and that should clear up any confusion that people may have if they accidentally visit the wrong website.” And that’s exactly what we did! You can still see the link to Lessig’s site in the upper right hand corner of our website, and we are still linked to from his book’s front page. When a Linux distribution like Ubuntu or Debian promotes Firefox they are doing Mozilla a service, and Mozilla should just work with them to try to keep the quality of the community Firefox builds up to spec rather than preventing them from giving Mozilla free positive publicity. If Lessig had demanded that we shut down our website or stop using the free culture name, Students for Free Culture may not exist at all today, or at least not in a recognizable form. Perhaps co-founder Luke Smith and I would have been discouraged by this unfriendly treatment and turned to some other form of activism where we felt more welcome, or perhaps we would not have attracted as much support without flying the free culture banner. Who knows? All I know is that this relationship between us and Lessig has been beneficial for both of us, and I’m glad that Lessig promoted and supported it rather than threatening us with trademark law.

That said, these are minor quibbles among friends, and I do not think that these complaints about Firefox are a reason to refuse to see Firefox for the great boon to free culture that it is. I will be downloading Firefox 3 today, and I hope that you will join me in setting a world record!