I like to post random LQ stats every once and a while, and with the recent release of Firefox 3, now seems like a good time for a browser update. Here are the stats for July:
| Firefox |
66.05% |
| Internet Explorer |
20.86% |
| Mozilla |
4.98% |
| Opera |
4.28% |
| Safari |
2.07% |
| Konqueror |
1.59% |
Now, breaking down the Firefox numbers:
| 3.0 |
56.52% |
| 2.0.0.14 |
18.02% |
| 2.0.0.15 |
12.66% |
| 2.0.0.6 |
1.59% |
| 1.5.0.12 |
1.37% |
| 2.0.0.11 |
1.34% |
I have to admit that I’m a bit surprised, but quite impressed with the uptake up Firefox 3. To have well over 50% of the Firefox market share that rapidly is a remarkable feat. If they’d just fix the CSS overflow bug that makes LQ code tags scroll horizontally, it’d be even better 
–jeremy
Having just completed my first podcast in a while, I was looking for some additional information on the recent failure of OOXML to gain ISO approval. I commented on some of the alleged nefarious activity that had taken place, but I admit I missed this coincidence:
During the voting process the reputation of ISO as a dependable technical standardization organization was questioned. For example, in Sweden a Microsoft representative was caught offering to recompense partners for voting yes to OOXML. Also a sudden interest from countries like Ivory Coast to the OOXML issue has been found suspicious.
We studied the relation between the corruption level and voting behaviours of the countries. We found that more corrupted the country is, the more likely it was to vote for the unreserved acceptance of the OOXML standard proposal.
We used the [Transparency International's] 2006 CPI index (Corruption Perceptions Index) as a measure of corruption. CPI index is a number between 1 and 10. A small CPI index means that the country is perceived to be very corrupted, while a large CPI index means that the country is perceived to have little corruption. Haiti has the smallest CPI index of 1.8, while the countries perceived having the least amount of corruption (Finland, Iceland, New Zealand) have a CPI index of 9.7. In barplots below the CPI index has been rounded down to the closest integer value.
ISO received a total of 87 votes, of which 70 was given either by the Secretariat country (USA), participating members (”P Member”) or observers (”O Member”); in the graph below only these 70 votes are shown. The votes are counted according to the complicated voting rules of ISO. The remaining 17 countries – most of which are perceived to be relatively corrupted (median CPI index 3.0) – mostly supported the OOXML (approval 13, approval with comments 2, abstention 2, disapproval 0).
I’ll leave whether or not this is sheer happenstance up to you, but the full EFFI article is worth a read.
–jeremy
(I briefly mentioned these in a previous post, but here’s a bit more detail. As I catch up on things that happened while I was at OSCON, you’ll likely see more frequent posts that are a bit more terse than usual.)
Microsoft wasn’t the only one to make a licesning announcement at OSCON.
First, SugarCRM announced that the next version will be licensed under the GPLv3. This has been a long time coming and Sugar has gotten a lot of criticism in the past for not being “Open” enough. Kudos to them for burning the boats.
Next, the Common Public Attribution License (CPAL) that Socialtext submitted was approved by the OSI. For those of you unfamiliar with the CPAL, it’s an attribution license. It was interesting to hear Ross talk about the approval process and all that was learned along the way. The license went though a number of iterations, and in fact started out as a vanity license. To me, that’s an indication that the OSI approval process is doing what it was indented to do. How it will handle the recent Microsoft submissions will offer a fascinating insight into that process, as I’m sure it will be scrutinized even more than normal.
–jeremy
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