State Department: FireFox Costs Too Much

[exfileme]

Apparently the free web browser FireFox costs too much to administer and maintain.

State Department: FireFox Costs Too Much : Read more

 

[Guest]

The expense doesn't come from the deployment of Firefox, it will come from redesigning government websites and other services to use Firefox. Currently many government websites only allow the use of IE 5.5 or higher and direct you to use those instead of Firefox. They would have to recode most of the websites to allow users to use Firefox.

 

[Guest]

Not first

 

[Sicundercover]

How about we move a few of those branches that use the IE 5.5 and higher browser into the Private sector and they can find a way to make it profitable.

Ohh well I just went to DMV.CA.GOV in Firefox and that worked. Hell if the DMV can do it then there is no excuse for any of the others.

How about someone does a study of how many labor hours are spent on IT trying to fix problems that were caused by the use of IE in the first place?

Just a thought.

 

[Ciuy]

wtf, what expense? stupid americans

 

[P_haze420]

F*** YOU GOV!!!!!!!!! Kiss my f**king ass.

 

[Guest]

The expense of updating, retesting, other the goverment internal web applications that were coded for IE only several years ago.

 

[turboflame]

[citation][nom]Ciuy[/nom]wtf, what expense? stupid americans[/citation]

This coming from someone who apparently is illiterate.

 

[Guest]

Yeah, because Firefox doesn't support html and javascript, you'd need to code special webpages that Firefox is capable of viewing...

Idiots...

 

[kato128]

The biggest expense I can see is bandwidth. Most organisations maintain wsus servers so they only have to download updates once and IE is included in that setup. Firefox doesn't plug in to anything like that so you'd potentially have tens of thousands of users all downloading a 10mb update straight from the internet.

 

[doomtomb]

The whole expense excuse is a stretch and pathetic. It is a free browser. You download and install it, it does the rest for you. How is Internet Explorer different except for the fact it's worse?

 

[maigo]

And here I was, thinking IE costed more time and money to install and patch. Silly me, I didn't know IE updated its self and applied security patchs for it's many flaws on its own. Live and learn, I guess

 

[mdillenbeck]

My boss actually came in commenting on this article, stating that most people don't understand it is easy to administer IE centrally but Firefox doesn't have this capability. Thus, if we were not using App-V and pushing this out with scripts/configuration manager/whatever to the hundreds of computers in our labs it would take a lot more bandwidth and work hours to deploy. (As is, App-V and Firefox need some tricks so we can get preferences and bookmarks to migrate with users as they jump around to different computers.)

So, yes, it may make a great private/home user product - but if a product isn't designed to be centrally administrated in an enterprise environment (where your IT department may be in Hamburg, your support staff in Beijing, and your marketing department in LA) then there is a cost associated with the product.

 

[Doctor Rob]

Hello!!! It is VERY easy to move profiles in Firefox around to new computers... Move one directory and you are set... At my place of work we all use Firefox. Also you can set up Proxy Server for your network and only have to download the file for Firefox once.

 

[pirateboy]

dumb ass politicians are expensive too

 

[Honis]

Here we have a bunch of people who have never designed a real webpage.

The DMV is not the national government, they don't have the entrenched security (or attempt at entrenched security) that the national government does. Jus because you can load a Java Acript or web page does NOT mean it will open a webpage that has certain security settings! Its these security settings that they would need to go through and change! Costing thousands of man hours to test and make sure something that is secure today without the change is just as secure with the new stuff they would need to add to make other web browsers work!

Frankly I'm glad this administration is finding ONE thing they aren't going to print new money to pay for!

 

[NoCaDrummer]

I guess they don't take into account the expense of time lost (or files corrupted, stolen, etc.) because IE allowed malware to install itself (thanks to Active X), whereas Firefox doesn't.

 

[anamaniac]

Damned government institutions...
The only reason I use IE was because of a government online course I had to take that supprted IE and Safari (somewhat), but not FireFox...

 

[tacoslave]

yeah its not like politicians siphon money out of tax payers pockets! theirs a shitload of politicians that only became politicians to make money.(or fuck things up, bush anyone?)

 

[gregor]

@Honis.
That wouldnt be the case if they had made them standards compliant in the first place would it?