In an effort to be more open

Today I noticed that the Firefox start page at Google (http://www.google.com/firefox?client=firefox-blahblahblah) has a link to Firefox’s Download Day Page (“Help set a Guinness World Record by downloading Firefox 3! Learn more.“)

I’m not a big fan of what they’re trying to do, namely, getting people to pledge to download Firefox in an effort to set a world record. Personally, I’m not pledging because: 1.) they don’t tell you what day is Download Day, so I might be on vacation or busy or forget or something; 2.) I don’t want to tell the world I’m going to do something to make someone feel good and then not do it.

But I am a big fan of the Firefox. And open source software in general. So I’ll take this opportunity to make a few plugs for my favorites:

	Firefox is my favorite Web browser. No, I haven’t tried them all, so if you have a suggestion maybe I’ll take you up on it. Firefox is just superior to Internet Explorer. I’m not just saying it because I’m on some sort of “I hate Microsoft” bandwagon – it’s my personal experience that Firefox works better for me than the Big Blue E.
	I use Thunderbird 2 as my e-mail client at home and at work. I didn’t have a good experience prior to 2008 (maybe the older version 1.x was the problem), but it’s been golden since I installed version 2.
	Ever wish you could have a full-blown office suite (word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, graphics, database) without having to pay for and deal with the activation and licensing that goes along with Microsoft Office? You can with OpenOffice.org!
	This site is powered by WordPress, a freely downloadable blogging/content management system. It’s written in PHP and uses MySQL for database storage, which is fantastic.
	PHP Hypertext Preprocessor – scripting language well-suited for developing server-side Web applications such as shopping carts, this WordPress Web site, and other cool things like you’ll find on neilandginger.com.
	MySQL – a robust, stable, open-source database management system.  MySQL Community Server is the flavor that’s free for anyone’s use.