Meet Mozilla Man
Meet Mozilla Man, the kind of evangelizer that every software maker needs.
A story in today's San Jose Mercury News lays bare for all to see the power of committed customers to evangelize - for free! - products that can compete successfully against entrenched competitors supported by high-budget marketing programs.
Microsoft cannot compete successfully with Internet Explorer as long as the likes of Alexander Vincent is motivated to spread the Firefox gospel. Observes reporter K. Oanh Ha:
....Vincent is a mild-mannered secretary for a Vallejo real estate broker. By night, he's an online crusader protecting users of a new Internet browser from glitches and security bugs. If he were a superhero, you might call him Mozilla Man....Vincent is one of roughly 2,000 volunteer evangelists who see their mission as freeing millions of computer users from the tyranny of Internet Explorer. Mountain View-based Mozilla -- with a paid staff of 12 software developers -- depends on volunteers like Vincent to help write code, fix software bugs and market the browser.
The rest of Ha's story reads like a love letter to the communitarian fervor that drives the Firefox volunteers, and the open source software movement more generally.
Links:
Volunteers spread word of Firefox
by K. Oanh Ha, San Jose Mercury News, 29 November 2004
What's the story? Doug Millison also edits OnlineJournalist.org, "on a need-to-know basis"
