The expense doesn't come from the deployment of Firefox, it will come from redesigning government websites and other services to use Firefox. Currently many government websites only allow the use of IE 5.5 or higher and direct you to use those instead of Firefox. They would have to recode most of the websites to allow users to use Firefox.

Not first

How about we move a few of those branches that use the IE 5.5 and higher browser into the Private sector and they can find a way to make it profitable.

Ohh well I just went to DMV.CA.GOV in Firefox and that worked. Hell if the DMV can do it then there is no excuse for any of the others.

How about someone does a study of how many labor hours are spent on IT trying to fix problems that were caused by the use of IE in the first place?

Just a thought.

wtf, what expense? stupid americans

F*** YOU GOV!!!!!!!!! Kiss my f**king ass.

The expense of updating, retesting, other the goverment internal web applications that were coded for IE only several years ago.

This coming from someone who apparently is illiterate.

Yeah, because Firefox doesn't support html and javascript, you'd need to code special webpages that Firefox is capable of viewing...

Idiots...

The biggest expense I can see is bandwidth. Most organisations maintain wsus servers so they only have to download updates once and IE is included in that setup. Firefox doesn't plug in to anything like that so you'd potentially have tens of thousands of users all downloading a 10mb update straight from the internet.

The whole expense excuse is a stretch and pathetic. It is a free browser. You download and install it, it does the rest for you. How is Internet Explorer different except for the fact it's worse?

And here I was, thinking IE costed more time and money to install and patch. Silly me, I didn't know IE updated its self and applied security patchs for it's many flaws on its own. Live and learn, I guess

My boss actually came in commenting on this article, stating that most people don't understand it is easy to administer IE centrally but Firefox doesn't have this capability. Thus, if we were not using App-V and pushing this out with scripts/configuration manager/whatever to the hundreds of computers in our labs it would take a lot more bandwidth and work hours to deploy. (As is, App-V and Firefox need some tricks so we can get preferences and bookmarks to migrate with users as they jump around to different computers.)

So, yes, it may make a great private/home user product - but if a product isn't designed to be centrally administrated in an enterprise environment (where your IT department may be in Hamburg, your support staff in Beijing, and your marketing department in LA) then there is a cost associated with the product.

Hello!!! It is VERY easy to move profiles in Firefox around to new computers... Move one directory and you are set... At my place of work we all use Firefox. Also you can set up Proxy Server for your network and only have to download the file for Firefox once.

dumb ass politicians are expensive too

Here we have a bunch of people who have never designed a real webpage.

The DMV is not the national government, they don't have the entrenched security (or attempt at entrenched security) that the national government does. Jus because you can load a Java Acript or web page does NOT mean it will open a webpage that has certain security settings! Its these security settings that they would need to go through and change! Costing thousands of man hours to test and make sure something that is secure today without the change is just as secure with the new stuff they would need to add to make other web browsers work!

Frankly I'm glad this administration is finding ONE thing they aren't going to print new money to pay for!

I guess they don't take into account the expense of time lost (or files corrupted, stolen, etc.) because IE allowed malware to install itself (thanks to Active X), whereas Firefox doesn't.

Damned government institutions...
The only reason I use IE was because of a government online course I had to take that supprted IE and Safari (somewhat), but not FireFox...

yeah its not like politicians siphon money out of tax payers pockets! theirs a shitload of politicians that only became politicians to make money.(or fuck things up, bush anyone?)

@Honis.
That wouldnt be the case if they had made them standards compliant in the first place would it?

Guessing that this article is not about installing and distributing the browser you get from firefox's website. Problem is likely that the web programs developed by the government 5-10 years ago and beyond are not necessarily compatible with firefox. This is not a discussion about something we likely just type in like "dmv.ca.gov", but proprietary software. Additionally, many branches of the government probably go by certain security standards that go beyond the scope of a script blocker.

That being said, politicians tend to know jack about the internet. Ted Stevens being one of the best of them at knowing nothing. Series of tubes.

@ People who don't think firefox comes with a price tag in a large organization:

It's very expensive to deploy ANY software across a large organization. While it may only take 1 minute of a tech's time per user, when you have thousands of users, it becomes a big deal.

One other thing to keep in my **ALL** US Federal webpages must be what is called SECTION 508 Compliant meaning that deaf and blind people must be able to access/read/ them. Many of us take for granted than when a webpage loads with FLASH or some video or whatever that we can **SEE** the page and read it. However federal agencies must use special software so that their employees with disabilities (blind, deaf) can "see/hear" these pages. Government agencies has been doing this for years under IE5.5 and thus part of the reason why IE5.5 is still entrenched in most agencies.

The cost to "upgrade" hundreds of thousands of computers alone is costly. Add to that having to worry about compatabilitiy issues of the SECTION 508 kind and you see why many agencies are still using WIN 2000 or XP.

As stated before yes it's free and easy for you personally to install on your PC & make it work for you. But when you have to manage 1,000s of PC and they all must look the same (eg. same software, etc..) the free software beings to look less free as you add each users into the picture.

**CORRECTIONS**
my = mind

i can understand his point. I have worked in a very large organization where standards were a must. Using the Windows Update Services you can force certain policies down through Active Directory that affects IE. You can for everyone to upgrade from IE 5.5 to 7 and not allow people to upgrade to 8 from one central location. You can apply the patches that you want and other's you don't want. When you are managing 10s of thousands of computers and you are in the public eye, more control over the internet is must and IE is best suited for this.

Personally, I think IE is over rated, Firefox is great but I prefer using Chrome.

Too expensive to deploy?

Almost any "enterprise" worth a flip has startup scripts for their network clients. To deploy Firefox, all it would take is a well-written script add-on to check for Firefox. Maybe 1-2 hours of script writing time and to download Firefox's installer to a shared directory? $50-80 maybe in labor?

Too expensive to maintain/administrate?

No more than IE, once it's installed. In fact, you can configure Firefox to download and update itself automatically. I don't know any other way to update IE other than manually download it or update it through Windows Update.

I don't use IE at home, so I don't care. I just do security patches to it.

But, I bet it would cost them no more than $200 to deploy Firefox to every PC in the Dept. of State if they knew what they were doing.

Unless they are including in the cost the pay for all the bureaucrats to have 10 meetings totalling 50-60 hours to decide whether or not to have one Windows Network/Server Admin write a script and save Firefox's installer to a shared user directory.

Then it would be $250,000.

Yeah...they get payed $100,000+ a year to work 3 days a week and...well whadd'ya know, they waste our money anyway.

This has got NOTHING TO DO with the actual cost of acquiring firefox for deployment NOR ITS COMPATIBILITY WITH SITES, but rather the administration of it.

For those of you that don't work with Windows Servers for a job, I can tell you that IE does install and patch itself "automatically". When you have a large organization, in this case the government, the PCs are in an Active Directory integrated domain. In the domain, administrators can download updates centrally to a WSUS, test and then deploy from there updates to THOUSANDS of computers with the touch of a button.
You can also restrict, redirect, configure the DNS, run scrips and automatic configuration of proxies with a simple change, in a group or domain policy. Can you do any of these things with Firefox centrally? Unfortunately not.

If you don't see what the cost of supporting thousands of users individualy when just ONE update is pushed, then you are blind.

It amazes me the ignorance that I see in many posts regarding Microsoft technology, when they don't even know 5% of it(to say a number).

Do I believe IE is more secure than Firefox? hell no.
I have been using Firefox since around 0.7 almost exclusively in my home.
But managing so many users or expecting them to update it themselves is unmanageable and uncontrollable.

Again, people think that big organizations can just plop any kind of software and expect it to work. Yes, it might be free to get Firefox, but there are costs associated to it.

Where I work, we have 35k + computers. There are applications that have thousands of templates / pages / links and are all formatted for the browser that is the standard for the organization. Even just upgrading the browser means breaking those thousands of templates (which are the apps themselves). The browser also has apps developed to access mainframes and such. Upgrading for free to a newer version of the browser means it will cost millions of dollars in development and testing.

So no, it's not free.

In a big organization, each patch that is released also needs to be tested by the org. before being implemented. As I said above, braking an application that is essential just because you patched the browser is a big no no. Each time MS releases it's patches every month, it costs thousands of dollars to organizations.

ie is exponentially easier to administer over an enterprise network as opposed to firefox. all security settings can be maintained and forced through GPO, all patches can be administered through WSUS. In sensitive government machines all patches and updates need to be tested extensively before being deployed and active directory gives better control of that for IE. You absolutely cannot allow firefox to update its self as a patch may break a security setting needed or open up an unexpected attack vector that needs to be tested for first. On top of this is the bandwidth cost of all the users d/ling from the internet the updated patches. You would have to script constant queries to check versions and probably dump those into a file for you to scan over daily. WSUS automates that and lets you schedule your update rollouts as well as tell yuou exactly what patches are installed or if there was an error of some kind requiring your attention. And since they would be using WSUS anyway for their windows computers, there would be no additional cost or man hours necessary.

thats part of the administered security settings. typically on a government computer, the average user's IE isn't allowed to d/l or install anything. Only those explicitly administered from the IT department are allowed. Also on a government network, you are behind some fairly impressive firewalls