Flock discussion to date uniformly positive

… and I have to admit, that surprises me somewhat. That’s not to say Flock is a bad product. I’ve been beta-testing it for a while now, and it’s excellent for a still-private beta. It’s not my default browser because it doesn’t yet play nicely with the Firefox extensions I’ve become used to (it will – but not yet), but with work, I could see me using it all day, every day. This glowing story from Wired is largely accurate.

That said – from the moment I first started playing with Flock I expected and having been watching for a more nuanced conversation to develop around it, since Flock is a direct competitor to Firefox. Yes, I know that in the Wired article

Decrem notes that Flock will not attempt to compete with Firefox, which he helped launch last year. “Open source is an important part of our DNA,” he adds.

That sounds good, and it’s probably what I would say in the same situation, but I don’t see how this statement can be justified. Flock is a web browser. Firefox is a web browser. If you build a web browser and encourage people to use it, you compete with all other web browsers, who are after the same market share. Sure, Flock might prefer people to use Firefox rather than Internet Explorer, since Flock is based on Firefox, but ultimately they’d much rather have people use Flock than an alternative. Statements about Flock’s ‘open source’ seem irrelevant; open source projects compete with both open- and closed-source projects all the time.

So, if Flock is competing with Firefox, what does this mean? My initial thoughts:

a) Flock may be based on Firefox, but since they’re two separate projects, their code will increasingly diverge – especially if Firefox chooses to reimplement some of the better features of Flock slightly differently. Extensions will initially work on both browsers but new or updated extensions will increasingly work on one or the other.

b) Two open-source web-browsers with different code bases will naturally lead to two different communities of developers. Each community of developers will likely be smaller than the existing Firefox community. This could lead to lower-quality open-source projects, since the quality of an open-source project is proportional to the number of people who hack on it.

c) A precedent will be set for using Firefox’s current implementation as a base for a new browser, rather than a base to add extensions to. (I’m no expert, but I can’t say Flock’s feature set couldn’t have been implemented with a hefty Firefox extension.) I understand Flock’s motivation – money is wonderful, and they want to make the same strategic deals with search engines that Firefox is making. But once the precedent is set, we won’t have two browsers based on Firefox, we’ll have twenty – all with slightly different feature sets.

d) The people behind Flock are smart folks. I’m sure they’re legally allowed to do what they’re doing. But taking the base code of a non-profit and using it in a for-profit enterprise feels somewhat mercenary. It’s not necessarily a bad thing – I suspect commercialization has more positives than negatives. But I’m surprised it hasn’t been discussed.

e) A for-profit browser can be purchased by a corporation in a way that a non-profit cannot. Build or buy – there’s more than one route to the often-rumored ‘Google Browser.’ Flock is taking money from angel investors to build their product; they’re going to want a good return on their investment. How do you think they’re going to get it? Why do you think they were willing to invest?

I don’t mean the above to be too critical of Flock – I like it, it’s a great product, and I predict its success will spark off a wave of accelerated web browser innovation. However, its unique (for now) status as a Firefox competitor based on Firefox itself raises many issues that have yet to be talked about at all, issues I would love to understand further. Shall we start a conversation?

UPDATE: Now that Flock’s released, read this post from CEO Bart Decrem, “Flock, Firefox, and open source.”