If you use firefox, then you are already familiar with opensource software. If you felt so inclined, you could go to http://developer.mozilla.org/, download all the source code for firefox, and interact with a massive community of developers. Flock is company who were so inclined. They just released their 0.9.0 version of a browser that is essentially a beautifully hacked up version of firefox. It is one of my favorite demonstrations of what can be done with opensource code. Everyone benefits. (Well, except for Microsoft.) And the whole community keeps raising the bar.

“That’s nice Thomas, but what does that have to do with Concordia?”

The Help Desk spends, on average, 2 hours a day on the phone helping people with browser issues. And approximately 15% of issues WebCT has to address are directly related to browser issues. If we had our own browser, based on Firefox’s opensource browser, users would have much higher satisfaction, and our support staff would be able to spend more time developing proactive support.