The CEO of Mozilla made a blog posting which takes Apple to task for its decision to include Safari on its Software Update application.

If you have a Mac, this doesn't apply, as Safari is already installed. If you have a PC and run iTunes, this means that Software Update offers to install the latest version browser on your machine, even if you don't  currently have Safari installed.

Mozilla head honcho John Lilly doesn't much like the idea, and his company agrees. Mozilla is providing the press with links to the post, which says Apple's move  violates user trust and undermines security.

22 Mar 2008

Here are a few quotes from Lilly: It’s wrong because it undermines the trust that we’re all trying to build with users. Because it means that an update isn’t just an update, but is maybe something more. Because it ultimately undermines the safety of users on the web by eroding that relationship. It’s a bad practice and should stop.

On the subject of user trust, Lilly writes... There’s an implicit trust relationship between software makers and customers in this regard: as a software maker we promise to do our very best to keep users safe and will provide the quickest updates possible, with absolutely no other agenda. And when the user trusts the software maker, they’ll generally go ahead and install the patch, keeping themselves and everyone else safe.

Lilly may have a point here, though nowhere near as dire as what he makes it out to be. Apple is doing what essentially amounts to an unsolicited installation, a major no-no in security circles, as the more sinister forms of it are a favorite in the adware and fake security fields.

It also touches on a soft spot for Mozilla. In its previous life as Netscape, the company was all but wiped out by a bundled browser known as Internet Explorer, an incident that eventually lead to Microsoft's famous antitrust hearings.

Don't be fooled, however. Apple's latest move isn't even in the neighborhood of what landed Microsoft in hot water. Apple is offering users the option of not installing Safari and only offering it with other Apple software. Microsoft allegedly told PC manufacturers that they would essentially put them out of business by pulling their Windows distribution rights unless they included IE on every machine they shipped.

Apple has pulled a rather shady move with its inclusion of Safari in Software update, but it's nowhere near the worst tactic ever employed in the browser wars. Perhaps Lilly's posting has as much to do with Safari's market share as it does with the browser's installation practices.