Big Blue’s allegiance falls with Firefox
IBM is to begin encouraging – but not mandating – its employees to use Firefox; around 30,000 of IBM’s employees (about 10%) already use it. The company is to start offering its employees technical support for the browser and will host the installation files on its internal server.
The Mozilla Foundation has previously claimed that there are other large corporations which have adopted their browser, but that are too scared of Microsoft reprisals – i.e. jacking up the price of their software licenses – if they go public with the fact. IBM thus represents the biggest corporate vote of confidence in the browser wars, and reaffirms its commitments to open source and open standards.
There’s more at UK Builder and an op-ed column over at The Inquirer entitled “IBM vote for Firefox doesn’t mean IE dead”.