Alternative Browser Alliance

After the flame war between Mozilla Firefox and Opera users got really too hot, one person formed a website to bring efforts to spread all non-IE browsers under one roof. The website named "Alternative Browser Alliance", its job is to spread knowledge of the alternatives to unsafe Internet Explorer and hopefully bring Mozilla Firefox and Opera users together.

From the site:

I launched this site in response to the overblown rivalry between Firefox and Opera users. The way I see it, both groups have a common enemy: dominance of the web by a single browser, currently Internet Explorer. At this stage of the game, every percentage point Firefox pulls from IE is a win for Opera, and vice versa, because it spreads awareness that there are alternatives, and that it might be worth trying them out.

This site is intended as a truce. We're in this together.

I applauds this effort because I agreed with the fact that the rivalry between Mozilla Firefox and Opera users are getting out of hands. Both sides need to be reminded that most of the planet are still using Internet Explorer and we need to help them to be aware of what they are surfing the web with and how to make it safer and more enjoyable.

Web Developer Rip-off

Seem that a company ripped off a perfectly good GPLed firefox extension and sell it under different license.

AEVITA is currently selling Web Inspector for Internet Explorer. Judging from the look of the screenshots, icons, documentations, and behavior of the web inspector, it is clearly a rip off of Chris Pederick's Web Developer extension.

AEVITA clearly has several violations:
1) Some icons are trademarked by Mozilla Foundation.
2) The documentations are copyrighted by Chris Pederick
3) Selling (possibly stolen) GPLed codes under different license.

It is very upsetting to see a company taking a perfectly good GPLed appication and then sell it under different license without giving credit to the original developer(s). Something have to be done about it. Aza Dotzler is calling on everybody to contact AEVITA and complains to them that their action is wrong thing to do.

Since blogger.com don't have talkbacks, here are the couple blogs (and discussions) about it:
chrispederick.com blog
Asa Dotzler's Blog

Update 1: AEVITA removed Web Inspector from their website.

Update 2: The AEVITA website just went down dues to exceeding bandwitdh limit (meaning, too many people getting into AEVITA website). In a way, its a small victory for open source community. Rip off a popular open sourced app and you will face pressure from very large open source community.

Internet Explorer Boycott

Paul Thurrott called for an Internet Explorer boycott after detailing the problems of Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1 and the lack of actions of IE team to fix them. He also noted that the IE team is not planning to adjust the IE to work with the web standard or even try to pass the Acid2 Test which is considered to be the ulimate test on web standard compliance.

Paul Thurrott said:

My advice is simple: Boycott IE. It's a cancer on the Web that must be stopped. IE isn't secure and isn't standards-compliant, which makes it unworkable both for end users and Web content creators. Because of their user bases, however, Web developers are hamstrung into developing for IE at the expense of established standards that work well in all other browsers. You can turn the tide by demanding more from Microsoft and by using a better alternative Web browser. I recommend and use Mozilla Firefox, but Apple Safari (Macintosh only) and Opera 8 are both worth considering as well.

Paul Thurrott is well-known for his site, SuperSite for Windows.