US State Department Doesn't use firefox, reason? It costs money.

[Psyche]

http://gizmodo.com/5315634/us-state-department-rejects-firefox-which-is-entirely-free-due-to-expense-questions

Apparently downloading firefox and installing it on their computers costs money. Also I lol'd when everyone cheered when someone asked about firefox.

[Drox]

lol lazy bastards just dont want to install it on all their government computers.

[b0red]

hahahahahhaha how stupid can some people get? God, it takes like 2 minutes to install the best web browser ever made and they say it costs money when its open source? Maybe they have dial up and have to us the internet at certain times

[LegalSmash]

hahahahahhaha how stupid can some people get? God, it takes like 2 minutes to install the best web browser ever made and they say it costs money when its open source? Maybe they have dial up and have to us the internet at certain times

I've worked in an agency, they have to call tech o do ANYTHING with the computer. Including remove viruses, install programs, and reattach plugs.. and if you do it yourself you get demerits or written up.

[zero]

My wife works for the FDA and this is one of her biggest pet peeves when it comes to her workstation. From what she told me, she cannot install any applications on her computer unless its approved by the IT department. Firefox has not been approved. IE has. I don't even think she can install any applications without getting some kind of permission denied error. Working around this means a write-up or even dismissal.

This bureaucratic system isn't exclusive to government jobs. I'm sure some of you who have worked for large corporations have run across this issue too. This cost is basically the approval process.

My last job actually had an approval process in place. If you wanted to have a certain application installed, you had to open a ticket. From a corporation/government standpoint (especially large ones), this makes sense. They want some control of there computers and allowing employees to install any application off the internet opens the network up to viruses, etc.

[b0red]

I've worked in an agency, they have to call tech o do ANYTHING with the computer. Including remove viruses, install programs, and reattach plugs.. and if you do it yourself you get demerits or written up.

thats why they won't use firefox because it cost to much money to have 40 techies install a free program on everyones computer, when they could just approve the program for installation and let people install it if they please

[LegalSmash]

thats why they won't use firefox because it cost to much money to have 40 techies install a free program on everyones computer, when they could just approve the program for installation and let people install it if they please

You haven't dealt with bureaucrat workers have you? They are usually computer retarded. I had a guy in the agency i was with try to install AOL IM and crash his comp station. Trust me, 30+ year olds with masters in X or Y major and modern technology does not mix well

[zero]

Trust me, 30+ year olds with masters in X or Y major and modern technology does not mix well

Hey wait a sec, as a 34 year old with a masters in Computer Science, I find that statement offensive. :)

[LegalSmash]

Hey wait a sec, as a 34 year old with a masters in Computer Science, I find that statement offensive. :)

LOL, you have the useful masters in that area... how many accountants does it take to install excel?

[RiotJavelin]

You guys are looking at it from the surface. If you look at the new IE compared to the Firefox, firefox is much easier to hack into than IE. Also almost all the security programs such as proxy servers, firewall, etc are made for use with IE.

[Itch]

There's a lot more to it than just installing the browser once. For example.. for every minor update of firefox that is released someone with adminstrative rights needs to install it.

I run some student labs at the University I work at. For the obvious reasons we don't give the students administrative privileges. Each time Firefox goes from 3.5 to 3.5.1 (for example) we have to install it on all 150+ lab computers. And if we don't disable the auto-update feature within Firefox each time a student launches it Firefox will re-download and attempt to re-install the update at which point the student will get a few errors before being able to browse.

From a corporate environment standpoint where you don't normally give all your users admin rights it's a total pain in the ass to maintain. IE on the other hand is easy to maintain.. Via WSUS (Windows Server Update Services) I can approve updates in one central location which will then auto-install to the computers that I specify. Sure there are 3rd party tools for similar use such as Symantec Ghost Console where you can deploy software update packages. Trust me when I say that there are sooooo many problems with using them (especially with browsers where you have to deal with plugins and other add-ons that don't play well with deployment tools) that it almost isn't worth the time or licensing costs. On top of that most Government/Corporate entities don't want to fork over cash for software to maintain something that they view as redundant.

Until you've been on the IT/Support/Admin end of it you probably won't fully understand what time/cost involved with a "2 minute easy install" is. When you look at all aspects and multiply the cost/time/labor/etc. by thousands of computers it isn't worth it and has nothing to do with being lazy.