I predicted Peter Torr would start a flame war with his Firefox post, and sure enough… To his credit, he’s addressed most of the criticisms directly in this follow-up post, entitled, I love Slashdot. My favorite part:
You’re spreading FUD
Well, yes, I suppose I am.
- People should fear code they cannot easily verify
- People should feel uncertainty about downloading and executing code that they cannot easily verify
- People should doubt the integrity of code they cannot easily verify
And, to re-iterate what I said earlier, manually checking MD5s or compiling the source does not qualify for 99% of users.
This debate is very, very healthy. If Microsoft pays attention to the success of Firefox and improves IE to remain competitive, we all benefit.
Ed Bott 