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Jaffer makes an interesting observation that while the entire world is trying to set a world record of software downloads in a day when Firefox3 officially launches, Pakistan has very few pledges to also be a part of the action. Says Jaffer:
So far there have only been 1971 pledges from Pakistan. That puts us in the same category as countries like Ecuador, Belarus, Sri Lanka, Algeria and Egypt. Iran has a whopping 8684 pledges! And they’re right next door to us. (there’s no point in drawing comparisons with India)
Wasn’t Pakistan supposed to have one of the fastest growing tech industries? I thought our software industry and our ‘techies’ in general were a lot more enthusiastic about technology and generally well informed.
Jaffer - if I had to guess, I’d just say we dont generally try to be a part of fun things like this. When Gmail did their "Why gmail" video series we had only ONE video submission from the entire country.
| Written by Osama A. on 06/17/08 in Software & I.T. |
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June 17th, 2008 at 9:28 am
I monitor analytics for more than one pakistan-centric blogs and websites, and they usually have more FF visitors from Pakistan when compared with IE or Safari etc. so I’m pretty positive this has a lot to do with us worrying about the price of food and fuel these days, and perhaps being too busy doing stuff that actually matters
Speaking for myself, FF has been my primary browser for a few years now, and I will just let adept upgrade from 2 to 3 whenever it wants to… and to be honest, I don’t really see the point of pledging to create a software downloads world record. What are the FF people trying to prove here? Doesn’t everyone ALREADY know that its a much better option than IE? I’m sure each new episode of Battlestar Galactica gets many more downloads than a browser
June 17th, 2008 at 9:55 am
Doing stuff that actually matters? What could matter more than getting the world rid of IE6?
http://www.savethedevelopers.org/
June 17th, 2008 at 9:59 am
I m the one who also opted for world record..I didn’t kept the option of world record in mind but the ease of use and extensions that are associated with firefox was my main concern.
Already m running on Firefox 3 beta!!!
FF Rocks!!!
June 17th, 2008 at 10:24 am
one of the reasons I can think of is that people are not aware that such a launch is going to happen, and that there’s pledge to make.
In my case, I only knew about the pledge through this blog post. I’ve been using Firefox 3 CR. and naturally been expecting the firefox 3 full realease, and in most cases firefox does the update itself, you only have to restart the browser, eliminating the need for me to go to the website and check for the latest updates.
Pakistanis are great technology enthusiasts just the same my friend.
June 17th, 2008 at 11:22 am
@punslinger
As long as IE6/7 have the lions share of users on the internet, people at Mozilla will need to keep doing such things because, clearly, not a lot of people know or have used Firefox. (think about non-techy people using non-linux OS’s)
These activities are also meant to celebrate free and open software. But I guess that’s pretty hard for us to appreciate, considering I can go out and buy a Rs.60 CD with a host of Microsoft applications in it. We live in a country where I’ve had people argue with me as to ‘why’ its ‘wrong’ to buy pirated software, so I guess appreciating FOSSoftware goes out the window … :/
June 17th, 2008 at 11:26 am
We live in a country where I have to argue with people ‘why’ its ‘wrong’ to lie to your employer saying your ‘grandmother has pancreatic cancer and you have to go back to your village for the next 10 months’ just to get out of a non-compete agreement and work for your competitor.
Especially when ‘they’ are telling me I’m ‘wrong’ for wanting to tell the former employer.
“Yar if you do that, he will get in lots of trouble!”
Duh!
June 17th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
surprise to see that even Afghanistan is above 1000
besides developers, students didn’t even know about Firefox
June 17th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
What I’m really interested about is how Iran has so many pledges. What’re they doing that we aren’t doing?? Any social scientists out there who have the answer?
June 17th, 2008 at 10:56 pm
for those who can’t get through Mozilla’s website being DDosed by genuine traffic, here’s a link to the Firefox 3 download:
http://www.mozilla.com/products/download.html?product=firefox-3.0&os=win&lang=en-US
thanks to http://www.besttechie.net/2008/06/17/download-firefox-3-early/
June 17th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
uumm.. i’m already using firefox 3.. ? why should i pledge for something i already am doing?
p.s. if you want to increase the pledge amount, put a pledge link up here too
June 17th, 2008 at 11:52 pm
Hmm.. what I’m really curious about now is why this post in particular got viral and got so many hits… to be fair its not a particularly exciting title or content piece.
Is it because the title says “party”?
June 18th, 2008 at 1:35 am
Its coz the post is about firefox
June 18th, 2008 at 9:18 am
Though I wasn’t much in favor of downloading it on 17th … for a record .. that does not matter. Was alreday using Beta version. But Pakistanis can’t resist either :~)
June 18th, 2008 at 9:20 am
BTW, KSA’s got more pledges than us o_O
June 18th, 2008 at 9:27 am
Yes, because people in KSA are very excited about Firefox 3. Almost everyone I know here is not much fan of IE.
June 18th, 2008 at 10:34 am
@Osama
It’s because the post is about Firefox 3. If you have party and Firefox3 in the same sentence, Firefox3 will always grab more attention ;D
June 18th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
There still haven’t been as many downloads from Pakistan, as there should have been. But as a local web master, I can testify to what ‘punslinger’ has said. In my personal experience, I’ve seen more Pakistanis use FF than IE.
June 19th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
I think the word didn’t get out that quickly (at least here in Pak). Despite being an early adopter of FF 3 RC1, I wasn’t aware that FF 3 is releasing on June 17th (:$), nor that there is a pledge to make.
I have blogged about the issues I faced with FF3 RC1, so I would have been more than happy to make the pledge.
As for the lack of interest of Pakistani technologists, I would highly agree with Asjad’s comment on the original post (on Jaffer Haider’s blog).
June 20th, 2008 at 9:14 am
I pledged for it after I accidentally came across it. One of the reason maybe Pakistanis are not avid news and blog readers.
Although pledge was for around 1,900+, total downloads crossed 9,000+ mark (http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord/). Although India has around 145,000+, look at Iran 419,000+ downloads, higher than China, India and Australia.
People wouldn’t have switched to Firefox 3 at work because of lot of web based projects have aim to be Firefox 2 compatible, although there is workaround of running them both people generally avoid it.
I am using Flock for online living and run Firefox 2 & 3 for work. Flock 1.2 will be based on Firefox 3, so there is time when it will come out.
June 21st, 2008 at 9:19 am
http://www.millionface.com/l/the-download-day-and-the-iranian-record/