PanNotes

Firebug 1.0 was released today. Firebug takes the process of debugging HTML/CSS/Javascript to a whole new level. I could try my best to extol its virtues, but their website would still do a better job.

If you are web developer and you have never heard of Firebug, you need to stop what you are doing and get it now. Run, don’t walk.

An interesting footnote to this new announcement is that Firebug’s creator almost decided to start charging for the product in order to bring on a full time developer. In the end he decided to keep it open source and continue to fund development from donations.

I think there is a lot of room for innovation in “business models” for individually developed open source projects. For Firebug specifically I think any of the following could have been explored:

• A donations drive before the 1.0 release. Preview the features, set a target amount and provide a graph to show how close the community is to achieving the goal. If you don’t hit the mark before the release date, only provide the 1.0 code to the people have donated. Once you reach the target, release it to the general public. This could be repeated for all major releases.

• Corporate Sponsorship. A product like Firebug could probably garner sponsorship from the likes of Google, Yahoo!, Amazon or The Mozilla Corporation.

• On-demand merchandise. With the advent of stores like Cafepress and Lulu.com it is fairly easy for anyone to sell branded t-shirts, mugs, or books (printed documentation) without any start-up costs.

It will be interesting to see how these open source “business models” mature over time. They will make it easier a talented individual developer from Jamaica to develop an interesting product, have it used by thousands of people worldwide and get paid all at the same time.

Panmedia has made a donation to support continued development. If you use and enjoy this product you should consider donating too, even if it is just $5 or $10. Firebug will probably save you more money in a single day than the dollar figure of your donation.

P.S. For debugging in IE you should check out the IE Web Developer Toolbar it is not up to par with Firebug’s features, but it is still very useful. Hopefully Microsoft will feel inspired to make it even better by the time it reaches 1.0.