During the latest US Department of State Town Hall Meeting, secretary Hilary Clinton was asked to let the staff use Firefox.

You can see it in the video below at 26:30.

Full Transcript of the meeting.

According to Under Secretary Pat Kennedy, the concern cost, not of the software (which of course is free) but the cost of deploying, training, and supporting a new piece of software in a world wide operation. Jim Finkle, the employee who raised the question also mentioned that the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency has already done it.

It’s not news that Firefox has a long way to go before being more attractive for large IT deployments. Mozilla has been continuously asked for MSI packages in the past and while it has been targeted for some releases (Firefox 2 or 3, if I recall correctly), no one has stepped in to take care of this limitation.

Mozilla contributor, Michael Kaply was one of the few people who put some great effort on making Firefox better suited for corporate environments, organizing a Firefox in the enterprise group, and even producing and still maintaining CCK Wizard, a Firefox extension that helps produce another extension with a number of important customizations to ease corporate deployment.

After five major Firefox release, more than a fun fact, this should be a call to finally prioritize the business side of the web.

Via Rob O’Callahan’s blog.