Interview with Christopher Blizzard

Ur@eus writes "We have just put up an interview with Christopher Blizzard of Red Hat Labs and Mozilla. The interview gives insights into many things regarding Mozilla, Linux and Blizzard's participation. The interview can be found at Linuxpower." Yes, yes... He's a Slashdot Author, too, but it's a pretty good interview. Check it out.

Comments

Dear Mr. Blizzard....

[Denor]

What emmett didn't tell you was that Slashdot was going to do its own interview with Mr. Blizzard, but they realized that it would look a lot like this:

1. Mr. Blizzard, are you considering porting Diablo II to linux?
2. While we appreciate all the testing that goes into your games, do you think that you may lose customers with the recent delays of Diablo II?
3. Is there a similar 'collector's edition' planned for Warcraft III?
4. The Mozilla project has, for its mascot, a large reptillian creature. Was this the inspiration for the Zerg?
   And finally:
5. Do people ever think that you work for Blizzard, just because of your last name? Also, could you get me in on the Diablo II beta?
   
   

Coming Attractions

[Green Monkey]

"KARMA"
In this controversial film (currently being protested by the Anti-Troll Defamation League), two trolls whose Slashdot accounts have been temporarily disabled discover a loophole that will enable them to return to the site -- but which will unmake the universe in the process. Can CmdrTaco patch the code before it's too late?

"HOT GRITS CLUB"
In the near future, angry young men turn to pouring hot grits down their pants to escape from their meaningless, materialistic lives. Remember, the first rule about Hot Grits Club is that you don't talk about Hot Grits Club.

"/DEV/NULLINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY"
When the DVDCCA sends cyborgs back in time to kill young Jon Johansen before he can create DeCSS, it's up to Arnold Schwarznegger to save Johansen, stop the DVDCCA, and coin as many cultural catchphrases as possible.

"THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT NATALIE"
A romantic comedy in which two guys chase after every Slashdot reader's dream girl. Features an exciting encounter between Natalie Portman and Medusa.

"THE HOLLAND WITCH PROJECT"
In October of 1994, three Slashdot editors disappeared into the library in Holland, Michigan, while writing a Slashdot exposé. A year later their story was found."

"THE SIXTH POST"
"I see trolls." Bruce Willis plays a psychologist working with a small boy who sees Slashdot posts no one else does. (Watch for the shocking plot twist, in which it is revealed that the boy is reading at -1.)

"MOZILLA 2000"
Feature bloat causes Mozilla to grow beyond its creators' control and escape to wreck havoc on Tokyo's computers. A special effects extravaganza ensues -- but will audiences return after 1998's flop "Geeko vs. Mecha-Go!Zilla"?

"TRANSMETA CRUSOE"
Linus Torvalds is shipwrecked on a distant isle and must survive with only a Rio, the Linux kernel, and an AIBO. An adaption of the classic novel.

"THE X-WINDOWS-FILES: FIGHT THE FUTURE"
Hemos and CmdrTaco investigate the conspiracies surrounding the development of X-Windows. Based on the hit TV series.

Re:Mozilla as propaganda

[JDax]

Is Mozilla then a good representative of the OSS world? The Mozilla team is primarily Netscape engineers rather than the Internet users, as was initially imagined. So do we want to be associated with it? No major OSS project takes such consistent thrashings, and I wonder how well it reflects on the other projects.

I think you just targeted part of the problem in your statement, ie., the fact that quite a few "insiders" were doing this rather than the OSS community in general.

One of the biggest impetuses that brings much of the OS Software to its highest quality is, as ESR has eloquently put it (paraphrase) - it's the programmer's desire to "scratch an itch". &nbsp If you don't have that desire from inside yourself, then it's just a job but not your job.

In all fairness to the Netscape people, they were designated as the "poster company" for Open Source and alot of us trying to push it in our jobs point to Netscape's decision. &nbsp In addition, the Mozilla group made a decison to start from scratch with the code, and they've basically built a "new" (in quotes) browser from the ground up.

One might want to compare them with a Sun, who has taken over the maintenance of StarOffice, to maybe see a different perspective on how a major company handles the Open Source phenomena. &nbsp Maybe Sun is not a good example for the moment, but time will tell on how they deal with their new product.

Suggestion - What to do with slashdotted sites...

[jmv]

As Slashdot grows, the problem of Slashdotted sites becomes more important... I agree that we can't just copy the linked page on Slashdot, since this would (rightly) be copyright violation. However, many of the linked pages are not copyrighted (or have a liberal license) and most of the slashdoted sites are small (often OSS sites) which would allow their pages to be copied on Slashdot.

So why not ask some OSS (and other small) sites whether they'd allow their pages to be copied on Slashdot. This would benefit both those sites and Slashdot readers. If something of the like is not done, it would mean that eventually slashdot could only link to major sites, which would restrict a lot (in terms of point of view) the information available to slashdot readers.