Is Mozilla Scared of Apple?

In light of Apple's usage of the iTunes and QuickTime software update mechanism to push

Safari 3.1 onto Windows users, Mozilla Corp. CEO John Lilly scolded the Cupertino folks for their bad behavior in a blog post on Friday. Although he is pretty right about many aspects concerning Apple's move, as he continued his debate in a follow-up post on Sunday the man said his reasons to think Apple is "undermining" the Internet aren't about competition. Just one day later, Lilly claims it is, in fact, about competition. So is it, or isn't it?

"As a software maker, we promise to do our very best to keep users safe and will provide the quickest updates possible, with absolutely no other agenda," Lilly wrote Friday on his blog. "Apple has made it incredibly easy -- the default, even -- for users to install ride-along software that they didn't ask for, and maybe didn't want."

Which is very true, since the Cupertino-based company didn't even add a small warning sign or anything telling people that they might end up downloading an "update" to a web browser they didn't even have on their computers. "This is wrong, and borders on malware distribution practices." Lilly confidently stated.

As for why Lilly blew up like this over Apple's software update...

"It isn't about competition [...] To the contrary, competition is good -- necessary, actually," he wrote in his Sunday post. "Competition -- or, more the point, the ability of people to choose what tools and services they use -- is essential, and without it nothing gets better."

(the paragraph above contains excerpts from John Lilly's last blog post on the Safari topic, dating Sunday, March 23.)

Here's the CEO's position on Monday, according to Computerworld.: "Not once did money come into my head when I was thinking about this. Competition, yes. In many many ways, this is about more competition."

Has Lilly changed his mind about the competition thing through the weekend? We'd have agreed it was only natural after a couple of weeks of thinking over, but since the two contradictory claims were made within 24 hours (give or take), we can't help but wonder whether Mozilla's CEO actually is a bit scared of the situation.


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