Slashdot Mirror
CNET And MozOffice: Mountains And Molehills?
roca writes: "Check out this new CNET article, then check out
the thread that spawned it. Some random person in a Mozilla newsgroup said "hey, wouldn't it be cool to build Office-like functionality on top of Mozilla", and CNET decided this means a MozOffice project is happening (WRONG), and that millions of people need to know about this. Naturally, many readers believe them and are now flaming away because "Mozilla hasn't shipped a browser and now they're doing THIS!" What can a free software project do about this? Close the mailing lists or newsgroups to the media? Flame/sue the people who screw up? What?"
Well, it looks like James Russel has set up a site devoted to this idea on which he outlines why he thinks such a confluence would be a good idea, but he honestly notes: "This site is a placeholder that I hope to turn into an organizational centerpiece for what I think has the potential to be the most powerful side of Mozilla yet." And why shouldn't it be? Can't a modular framework grow far enough to cobble some words together? So long as it stays modular, that is. Even if a pipedream, it's an interesting that will no doubt inspire further inquiry.
The media always does this kind of stuff. They take whatever out of context that they can, so that ppl will take the time to look at their service, so they can sell more ads. Journalists shouldn't report rumors, just verified facts (Btw, I think slashdot has been very good about sticking to that point. They tend to reject stories that are just unfounded rumors).
====
Crudely Drawn Games
...that don't actually listen to every word of gossip on the net, But it would be nice if reporters got thier facts straight....yeah and in a perfect world my windoze box would run forever without crashing (maybe like my linux box).
"Never wrestle with a pig, you both get dirty and the pig likes it."
And the problem isn't that the article is talking about future extentions to Mozilla, it's that it's talking about them like they're part of the main functionality of it... That's what prompts the flames to finish the browser first, from people who think they're taking a browser coder and making them work on useless office funcitonality.
Gecko, the rendering engine, seems fairly stable, and has been for a while. Some complex pages give it trouble still but it's well known which ones. Then means that if you want to use XUL to write an application front-end for whatever, be it a Galaga/Galaxian clone, or an office suite, using Mozilla code *is* a good way of going about it.
We should be hearing about tons of apps using Mozilla components, and doing things less relevant to a browser than an office suite... That's why Mozilla was written that way, the only problem is when some idiot thinks that just because Mozilla is open source, they're going to want to incorporate all wacky unfinished projects into the main browser...
I like rumors, but I prefer they come from the rumors site, that way I know how big of a grain of salt to take them with.
--
J, Internetist
crazy-smart people that are an order of magnitude ahead of the crowd.
But there are a lot of crazy dumb people out there too. Have you ever watched Jerry Springer?
- Isaac =)
I thought (and this is not attempting to be cute, I'm really not sure) that many, if not most, of those developers are Netscape employees who are specifically paid to work on the Mozilla project.
Whether or not it's MPL/NPL, AOL/Netscape would be *nuts* in the eyes of their investors to put the future of the company in the hands of "the OSS community." The next release of Netscape depends on this project.
"Oh, I hope he doesn't give us halyatchkies," said Heinrich.
this is what made unix rule. PIPES! having the same thing for small gui apps that you can use to build bigger application is a neat idea.
Time does not wait.
Forget the fact that if the one who submitted this article actually read it, they would realize that at least 1 web site has been created to deal with the topic.
The real question here is why has it now become popular to complain about Mozilla???
Here is my theory...everyone who is complaining either knows what is really going on or doesn't. Those that Don't are not seeing much because they probably don't keep track of the project...they are the ppl that say "me too".
The rest of those complaining know exactly what is going on and waht to take some of the fame for themselves...why???
Mozilla Tinderbox
Check out this link...here is where the builds and descriptions of bug fixes get placed. Anyone who has been watching tinderbox knows that there has been alot of bug fixes in the past few weeks...plus, the tree in now closed for M17.
This means a new Milestone release is pending...now, why are they complaining that Netscape hasn't done anything???
Mozilla Milestones
Well, there you have it. M17 is overdue, the page mentions that it is unlikely that M17 will be released within 2 weeks of 6/28. Now the question is why is there so much fuss about Netscape PRODUCING SOMETHING??? Could it be because the next step is a push to Beta2 for Netscape???
That's right. Within a month of the release of M17, Netscape 6 Beta2 will be released.
Now, read of this what you may, but it sounds to me like a few people want to take the limelight for Netscape releasing Beta2...
Just my $.02 worth, I could be wrong.
- Rackham
"You can't protect anyone.... You can only love them."
Oh, so its a research project?
Name one other commercial web browser developed using Open Source Techniques. You can't? Sounds like "research" to me.
Silly me, I thought they were actually trying to get a piece of software out the door
Do you really want just another bloated, buggy POS web browser? The Mozilla team needs to do more than just another "piece of software". Mozilla is about completely rethinking the way software is designed. Or maybe you don't think there's any room for progress? Sorry, but reactionaries are always proven wrong.
(well, actually I quit thinking that a long time ago, as well...)
Yes, IE needs more users. Back to Uncle Bill's sheep farm for you.
-- Floyd
-- Floyd
They may be slow, they may have rejected my reproducible bugs as WORKSFORME, they may have that damn white menu bar but... I love 'em!
I think it's great that they aren't all about getting a product to market. That is one of the things that is so bad about modern software. I hope they take their time and produce something of excellent quality, and let it be integrated into all the web pads and wearable computers of tomorrow.
To those who say Mozilla is dead: No way! Saying such a thing is tantamount to saying that linux is dead, since, last time I checked, there is no Internet Exploder for linux.
We keep hearing here that Mozilla is dead because IE has 80% share. What those yelling it seem to forget is that they're talking about 80% of the Net market, which like everything else in the world has lots more dim people than clever ones because there are lots more dim people than clever ones.
What difference does that make? Well, as we all know dim people don't like to learn new things: they will therefore always stick with IE. Clever people OTOH don't mind learning new things because using the same old anything for more than five minutes is boring. Those people (let's call them '/. readers' :) will therefore love Mozilla because it's not only different from IE, but it's also a lot better. Try M16; I just did and it's superb! Ugly default skin yes, but who cares? Give it a new one!
The conclusion: while Mozilla will never displace IE from all of those slow minds, it will thrill the rest of us no matter when it's finally finished; ergo it's not dead. QED. Kudos to everyone involved in creating it.
NOTE: I'm not saying that only dim people use IE, but that dim people will only use IE. It is a subtle difference but /. readers will recognise it.
Oh, and one last thing: if you don't like the sheer size of Mozilla's running footprint, get Galeon. It may be misspelt, but it's tiny and launches in no time.
"We reject kings, presidents and voting. We believe in rough consensus and running code." Dave Clark, IETF
"Or are you another pathetic little twerp with no skills?"
Oh great. Another one. The biggest downfall of
the open source movement is going to be shitheads
with the attitude of, "If you're not a programmer
then shut the fuck up and be happy with whatever
we decide to give you."
Not all of us are programmers, and not all of us
have the time to spare from our lives to be
heavily involved with a multi-year development
project. The point remains that adding all sorts
of bells and whistles to mozilla is damaging to
the project for two reasons:
1) It's putting the cart before the horse. There
still isn't a general, feature-complete, stable
and fully functional _browser_ to come from the
project. Build a solid core. Then extend. Not the
other way around.
2) Take a look at the comments from all of those
pathetic little twerps with no skills. (i.e. the
users) The biggest reason that people are watching
and waiting for mozilla is to get a small, fast,
streamlined browser. If it weren't for the huge
footprint and feature bloat of Netscape 4.x,
most people probably wouldn't give a rat's ass
about Mozilla.
Now grow up, and brush that chip off your
shoulder.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
His last Mozilla scoop accused AOL of being at cross-purposes with itself over instant messaging because Mozilla contained an IRC chat client written by a contributor and that another developer was writing a Jabber client for Mozilla. Yeah right.
or wine!
Being observant, I have noticed that a hell of a lot of stories on slashdot are misrepresented, 1/2 sided, or just plain wrong! The slashdot public shouldn't get all worked up over this. I think cnet should post another story, (obviously take the other one down first) and set everything strait. I know Mozilla has been taken it hard as of lately, they don't really need another thorn in their shoe. On a lighter side, I would really hate to see mozilla with a office suite tacked on; They would might as well call it "Bloatzillaoffice 2000".
Buying a Dell computer is equivalent to dropping the soap in a prison shower.
.. hey guys, let's SHIP A GODDAMN FULLY FUNCTIONAL RELEASE VERSION OF THE BROWSER FIRST?!??!?!??!??
(yes, I know it's redundant and obvious, but the delays in getting a real Moz ver out the door are leading to this kind of loss of concentration. CONCENTRATE ON THE TASK AT HAND and get it done first, _then_ start thinking about other new widgets...)
(pre mod'd down for your convenience)
Your Working Boy,
When I got interviewed by Wired Magazine and others for an article or two about a little web thing I was doing, Leander and all the reporters were sure to get me on the phone to repeat my comments to them, even if what I was saying to them was exactly what I had written on the website. A bunch of the smaller outlets did what C|Net did this time around and just copied my more conversational comments from my website, put quotations around it and made an article from it. I thought that was a little sketchy even while this was going on, but I was still happy for the coverage.
I suppose there's two points of view here. You could consider a web page or mailing list like a press conference, roundtable or demonstration where anyone who attends can write about it, but also you could hope that the reporters would put a little more effort into their stories and actually try to get original quotes when people like the Mozilla planners are so easy to contact via e-mail and telephone.
Or maybe in the tech news obsession to scoop the next guy, they're losing what professionalism is left. I sure hope not.
Not to point fingers, but Slashdot hasn't been exactly innocent of this lately, either.
--
Rob Carlson
What if he's not a native english speaker?
I think the guy who submitted this overreacted a bit. The fact of the matter is, it seems that there is at least one person out there who believes that the Mozilla project will give him the tools to build an office suite, and I have no doubt that he is at least going to take the first steps of this project.
Should it have made cnet? Why the hell not? All too often, it has been demonstrated that net-only publications are operating under an entirely new paradigm of journalistic responsibilities. This story wouldn't have made the New York Times (or the Hometown Gazette-Newsletter) but numerous times have we seen similarly insubstantiated articles on, say, slashdot.
While it is a fact that idle speculation on mailing lists should not be used as the basis for news articles, let's not make an example of this situation. There are much better ones to focus on.
yours,
john
Instead of what you suppose, it could be that people are getting tired of using one of the most needed apps for a Linux desktop that is also one of the most buggy/unstable applications for the Linux desktop.
Until either the KDE team, Opera, or Netscape/Mozilla officially deliver something stable, the most stable and usable browser currently available for Linux is Netscape 4.72-ish.
While it's better than the older versions, it's still very unstable. I get hangs from missed DNS queries (The rendering engine should be in a seperate thread from the one doing the fetching and the UI should be seperated as well.). I get hangs and crashes from sloppy resource utilization (If I've been running Netscape for a while (it's been up for a day or so...), the stupid thing just quits displaying pages altogether until I exit and restart.). Java and Javascript crash the thing fairly regularly (about 30-50% of the pages I visit, I can't visit unless I'm using a Windows browser...). Sometimes, when you successfully (or catestrophically) close the UI, the thing leaves behind parts of itself that you need to go through with PS/TOP/KTop/etc. and kill off the process that Netscape's off in la-la land with.
To be sure, it's very likely that some of it is what you're claiming, but, I suspect much of the ire that's coming from this is due to what I just said and the likely possibility that it's getting old for some people.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
However, I have to agree with the suck.com article when they say that mozilla should have released a 1.0 far sooner. I want a good browser, and I think a lot of other people do too. Netscape sucks and people are getting tired of using it. I really really just want a (galeon like but without all the hoops you have to jump through) good browser that renders well and in compliance to standards (whatever they are).
I don't need mail, news, XUL, XML, XBSL, a mozoffice, a mozchat, a mozOS or anything else (yes, I know that some of those don't exists, but you get the point right?). I just want a browser.
IMHO once a 1.0 browser has been released, bug fixed, etc, then add in all the other stuff, like mail, news, chat, etc. XUL is cool so that people can skin everything, but do you really think that that's needed by 99% of the people out there? Esp the ones like myself who have basically 2 choices for graphical browsers under linux (netscape and mozilla).
Again, don't get me wrong, I've been using the milestones and nightly builds and watching things get better and more stable all the time and been loving them and singing the praises of mozilla. I just want a good browser.
Regards
How can they put an office suite into Mozilla when they haven't yet got Quake and Space Invaders in there yet?
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
They usually are execept until the iMac they had horrible timing. They starting using SCSI on their boxes when nobody dared putting it on a desktop. Apple was moving forward into multimedia before most PC makers even considered speakers necessary.
They stole the whole GUI thing from Palto Alto guys and actually had the balls to try and sell it. They are constantly doing things like that but they usually implement badly or time it wrong. I still think that home PCs will eventually come by default with tv cards and such like one of the old PowerMac home units they put out a few years ago. They have a good feel on the technological next step.
This does not mean they always implement correctly.
ACK
Sign me up for that!
If we're going to compete with closed-source corporations, we need to be responsive to users, deliver on-time, stable software like they do, and do it just as good or better than them. The time for excuses is over, we're in this to win.
nt
--
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
It's Steven Hawking. No 's'.
Did this just shoot C|Net's Credibility down a few (or more than a few) notches? Oops.
Nobody could be that dense, you must be a troll.
In case you really haven't read through the preferences, try following the Customize Homepage link, scroll down to Exclude Stories from the Homepage, look on the left at Authors, and check off the ones you don't want to hear from. I've got Jon Katz checked off on mine, and I never see anything by him. I suggest you check off anyone you don't like.
This sig is false.
----------------
Programming, is like sex.
The best thing would just be to let it go.
Maybe we could make fools out of the folks at CNET by posting an article on Slashdot that describes their foolishness. That would learn 'em!
Easy, automatic testing for Perl.
I will not think of the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man. Seriously though, Suck was right about skin's being a giant backward leap in interface design. Customize away your usability instantly, woo hoo. Yeah, I know in theory that a more usable application could be developed with skins, but how do you keep it from being lost in the noise?
1. Rumor #1 (Why the hell am I numbering this twice? Am I writing this in basic? Is Mozilla written in basic?): Mozilla is late.
2. Debunk #1: Mozilla is not late. Despite the fact that we have a timeline for Mozilla, and it's behind schedule, that does not mean it's late. You will note we took the "1.0" off the timeline, thus Mozilla will never be late no matter how many thousands of years it takes us.
3. Rumor #2: It'll never ship. Too much feature creep, too late.
4. Debunk #2: Of course it will ship. Just because, once again, we don't actually have a 1.0 release planned doesn't mean it'll never ship.
5. Rumor #3:They're trying to turn it into an operating system.
6. Debunk #3: No. It's a platform, which apparently is like an operating system but slower and less useful.
7. Rumor #4: It's too flexible. It trues to do too mch. It's too easy for people to hang things off it.
8. Debunk #4: Mozilla is certainly not too flexible. Everyone wants modularity. Ask your mother if she's happy with Internet Explorer. "Hell no," she'll tell you, in between shots of Wild Turkey. "I want a browser with an XUL interface! So I can give it a 'Dawson's Creek' theme!"
9. Rumor #5: It's too slow.
10. Debunk #5: It is most certainly not too slow. When you start it up, it's doing all kinds of complicated things with plugins and modularity your puny brain could never possibly understand. You should be thanking us for it only taking 30 minutes to get going. When you click on a menu, and it takes 4 minutes for it to come down, that's breaking a world record for XML parsing! 4 minutes is fast for all the modularity you get!
11. Rumor #6: It's too bloated.
12. Debuk #6: It's not too bloated! Who wouldn't want to spend a mere 30 megabyte download to get not just a medicore web browser, but a mediocre mail client, mediocre news client, mediocre chat client, and HTML editor that's about as enjoyable as licking pennies! And don't forget...modularity! So people can build all kinds of amazing mediocre functionality into it! Believe me, this is what you want. This is what everyone wants. The Mozilla project will drag you there, kicking and screaming, whether you like it or not. I should probably point out Galleon, to try and excuse the fact that the web browser in Mozilla sucks ("If you're one of those crazy 'hacker types' who wants a custom browser that boots in under an hour...").
13. Rumor #7: Wait, how is all this FUD? Aren't these legitimate arguments?
14. Debunk #7: No. Any and all arguments against Mozilla are wrong and thus automatically FUD.
15. Rumor #8: Aren't you just arguing all this because you're in denial about backing a losing browser/platform/whatever the hell you want to call it?
16. Debunk #8: No. If Mozilla really was lousy, which it is not, I would be able to handle the fact that I've wasted hours and failed to lose my virginity over a mediocre computer program. Really!
Wait! Come back! Let me tell you more about themes!
Well, you know how dumb the average person is, right? By definition, half the people out there are even dumber than that.
I think you're confusing 'average' with 'median'.
How many time was a rumor posted on /. or /. just got the information wrong. Plenty of times.This nothing new.
This guy James Russel was just talking about the idea of using Mozilla as the front end of Star Office.
Then the media takes it and make into a big deal.
How many times we heard Microsoft was going to open up thier source code?
We need to take everything with a grain of salt. Think about it.
Try Konqueror in the latest KDE beta releases. You just might like it.
Free BeOS, runs from a Linux partition
``But seriously, one would think that after a couple of years people would understand that 98% of the 'information' you see on the Net is rumour, innuendo, falsehood, deliberately misleading or aggrandizing.''
Not just the net, this applies to the entire media in general. I hate to say it, but all mainstream "news" is is glorified gossip. This mixed with the First Post Complex (FPC) that we see here on slashdot ever so frequently makes a very dangerous combination. It's sad to see how many misunderstandings have arisen because a news outlet had to get "First Post" and completely screwed up the story in the process.
They might as well start working with sun directly and just change their slogan to "Mozilla is the computer"..
Admittedly when it comes to the debate on Mozilla being bloated and 'why can't we have just a browser' I think that a well written app of that magnitude will probalby and should be easily extended into other things. Its not a sign of bloating but good software design that people rather tack something on it.
MozOffice, vs Gnome Office vs KOffice means more to me that we have good frameworks for making integrated office applications (phil begone, its unnatural!) I still would like to see SIAG and such make a run for it also. And who knows, the dream of JavaOffice still might not be that far off.
Did I hear shudders? I wonder how many linux puppies are not looking into a future of even better things. As if they have arrived and say 'six xterms and a soda Pop and I have a GUI. I want it small and light and easy to program in 1986 technology!'
Such is the barnacles that induce drag on any forward moving ship.
Someone is saying my thoughts out loud.
There are definitely some problems with people in electronic media that want to "scoop" their competition. News gathering has become increasingly competitive, and with the explosion of web-page news sources there is even more competition.
/. the readers will give a poster of lousy stories hell when they post BS like this.
The result of all of this activity is that news organizations tend to publish stuff even before the report can verify the facts... and sometimes get it wrong. In earlier times the time pressure was still there, but there were a lot of really good editors who would filter out crap so it wouldn't get published. It also took quite a bit longer to become a major reporter, so you would have to prove yourself and develop the skills to know what is pure Bulls*** and what is a legitimate rumor. Now days anybody with an e-mail address can throw up a web page, and call it professional journalism.
With this situation: I will blame C-Net. Their editors should have done a much better job of checking up on this story... by calling up Netscape or at least e-mailing some of the people directly in the newsgroups that posted. It wouldn't be that hard to verify the information before they posted the article. At least with a news fourm like
"What can a free software project do about this? Close the mailing lists or newsgroups to the media? Flame/sue the people who screw up?"
In a case like Mozilla, why close yourself to the media? About the only coverage of Mozilla I've seen is right here on Slashdot. A little more exposure for Mozilla certainly can't hurt. Maybe it could even draw some more people to the project, who knows? But just closing your doors to the media and saying "Go away!" will just divert some much needed attention away from your cause.
As for suing / flaming, that won't do any good. As somebody already mentioned in this thread, the reporters have Constitutional protection, as long as they didn't know it was false. As for flaming, well...go ahead. But let's remember people, this is their job, and besides, nobody's perfect. Hell, I'm sure Slashdot has taken a rumor / false story all the way as well.
--
--
The real Raunchola isn't cool enough to have any imposters
Has anyone done a good comparison of Mozilla and Emacs yet? Seems to me they both have a lot in common... and the kitchen sink.
Wah!
Is it safe to assume that it already practices cunnilingus, or is the fellatio plug-in a concept-in-practice-in-work and the wimmenfolk have to wait for M19?
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
I'm one of the guys he quotes in the article.
Yesterday, he emailed me for more quotes. I told him a few of the quotes and then basically told him that "MozOffice" was just an idea and was not newsworthy. Here's exactly what I said in my email to him yesterday (LONG before this article went up):
> I do think the ideas in my post have merit, but
> please don't convey the impression that this is
> something Mozilla will or might do. Mozilla is
> open source, and probably every day someone
> comes up with some half-baked idea for something
> cool they could do with it. I don't think that's
> news.
So this CNET story didn't go up out of plain ignorance. At best, it's negligence, at worst, it's naked deception.
Rob
With regards to roca, I think that he may have read a little too quickly through the CNet article. The assumption that the article is based entirely on this news thread is well refuted by CNet's quotes from MozOffice project leader, James Russell, and his web site on the subject.
Also, neither the article nor the MozOffice web site (or roca himself, to be fair) implies that MozOffice is a part of the Mozilla project. It is a separate project which plans to use the Gecko engine and Star Office's existing code (soon to be open-sourced) to create a cross-platform office suite. Claims that this project will further delay Mozilla are simply misinformed.
- Stealth Dave
Evil is as eval("does");
Hunh. Independent creation. Who'da thunk it.
--
www.kitchengeek.com -- Nosh for
MozOffice is happening, or at least the ''random person'' is trying to make it happen. It is a very interesting project, and comes after people have succeded in using it to program games and otherwise try and create a cross-platform Web browser/OS suite. CNET didn't get anything wrong--they are very clear that it was another entity apart from Netscape and Mozilla proper that was working on this project, and it appears that the only entity mistaken (before millions of /. readers read only the quoted paragraph on the home page), was the submitter.
Unfortunately, I tend to agree that Mozilla is nigh death, failing under the burden of its own bloat. However, I have high hopes for Galeon. If it succeeds, Good Things are ahead. The largest problem still remains: combating the Win/IE monopoly on the desktopm which is only worsended by the fact that many sites are now optimized for IE (causing more people to use it, and here we have a Catch-22 for ya').
Only time will tell if a combination of an MS break-up and a ''Best of Netscape'' browser can turn the tides in the browser world. Then again, one wonders if netscape/aol is the answer we want.
Closing comment: It worked for Emacs!
--
Never trust anyone over 90000.
I think you are confusing jokes with reality! :)
I thought someone said there was going to be free beer!
Actually, I'm a french Canadian.
A few years ago Apple released a framework called OpenDoc that allowed you to take a bunch of components and latch them together to make custom tools suited to your needs. It was much better than bloatware because you could choose the objects you needed and the OpenDoc wrappers would make it all work together through a common component architecture and custom APIs. This was an incredibly ambitious project, unfortunately killed because all of Apple's big software suppliers (read: M$, Adobe, Quark) hated the idea that all of their products would be obsolete.
:-)
Doing this on Linux has a lot of advantages, but it would be a huge amount of work, as most of the system isn't even remotely there. I encoruage people interested, though, to check out the old OpenDoc whitepapers and documentation.
After all, what was Apple's first OpenDoc application? CyberDog the web browser, of course!
I think the article is pretty clear. Here's a quote:
The nascent, independent MozOffice has barely registered on Mozilla's or Netscape's radar.
I read the article and it sounded to me like someone had an interesting idea and it has little to do with the Mozilla team itself. Tell me again the problem with this article? Sounds to me like some flame-happy jerks got themselves all in a self-righteous huff over nothing... and that's CNet's fault how?
Even the sniveling dribble and clueless clacking of a script kiddie druling on his keyboard . . . wait for it . .
This is the price you pay when you open things up for public scrutiny. Mozilla has been the only browser on this peecee (PIII 450 128RAM) for about a week now (I'm typing this in nightly build number 2000 07 23 20) and I respect everyone involved in building the lizard. Do I care if the finished lizard morphs into the next killer app? no. As long as they ship at least one version, and can demonstrate that the project has legs, I'll be contributing all that I can.
To quote someone who put it well:
"You can gain, or loose, a lot of customers fast on the net".
This flame war of the day is just an illustration of that.
Actually, by definition, you're thinking of the median.
- Rackham
"You can't protect anyone.... You can only love them."
As far as I know the Mozilla developers, and I am one in a small way, their attitudes are:
-- Mozilla needs to ship solid code ASAP? CHECK
-- Mozilla needs to be able to browse the modern Web? CHECK
-- Mozilla needs to not be so far behind IE when it ships that people write it off? CHECK
-- Mozilla needs to have a mail/news client so that the millions of Communicator users aren't driven away? CHECK
-- Did I mention ship solid code ASAP? CHECK
Doesn't feel like denial to me.
Actually, Festa emailed me for quotes and I told him that "MozOffice" was pure vapor and that this spin (which I suspected was what he was going to write) was just plain wrong. I told him that yesterday, long before this story showed up. They ran the story anyway. See my other comment for details.
Seriously , anyone , myself included , who has tried to put together a word processor will tell you that the bastard lies in the document renderer. It's an absolute prick. The two big users of these document renderers are ... web browsers and word processors. Surely I am not the only one to see this. Remember Composer? As severely half-assed as it was, the thing was my wordprocessor of choice for ages.
Whack in a word filter (bar evil probs with loopy ActiveX streams etc) and your laughing.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
As a QA tester person, I can understand the anger somewhat over what's going on with Mozilla.
But I realize all I can do in my role with testing software is of course, reporting and verifying bugs. It's not my role to fix 'em, nor have really any say on new features.
In fact, the most I can do is reject a build if it is way super-unstable, and wait for a better one(acceptance testing).
But in my job I have seen more-important bugs go by that i have reported, but the programmers don't feel like fixing. With some I am a bit more zealous about, knowing that the users of the soon-to-be software would be screaming bloody murder about it.
SO, after my whining, what do I see? Bug not fixed, and they added in some stupid feature nobody will really make use of.
Oh well. I've done my part.
Just my 2 cents.
What they seem to want it some kind of magical context -sensitive universal container/editor -- fine, just redesign OpenDoc and OLE and make it work on a finer-grained level than anybody has ever attempted before. Piece of cake !
Bzzzt. "Average" is a generic term, "mean" is a specific term. Just like they teach little kids, modes, means, and medians are all forms of averages. Although in general (non-technical) usage average equates to mean, in technical usage it is non-specific:
"A number that typifies a set of numbers of which it is a function." (from www.dictionary.comIt can be used to refer to mean, mode, median, and other, more esoteric averages.
--Matthew
While I applaud the gumption of the guy that wants to do this, I gotta rant...
I want non-bloated software that works. Everytime I start a new word processor it takes longer than the one I had last year. The same for web-browser, text editor, or any other damn thing.
The reason is that most of these programs are loaded down with useless features, inappropriate features, and just plain BS. I don't want a browser that will manage my "net life" but can't remember the passwords for my p0rn sites.
I have been using linux since 95, and the only thing to change is my text editor. Pico, coral, kwrite... I have Star Office installed just for the purpose of converting MS word docs. And that takes to #$%^& long.
Give me a browser that comes up in under 10 seconds, doesn't mind getting keyboard input, and doesn't ask me if I want to open my Url in composer or communicator. (If I wanted the damn file to open in composer I would be using composer already!)
The only bright star in the sky... Opera for Linux...
HamNDie
This message interrupted by a browser cra....
"I want it NOW! And its got to be FREE! And it's got to be PERFECT! It's called INTERNET EXPLORER!".
Mozilla has a defining deliverable: ship functionality equivalent to Netscape Communicator, but with support for a certain (fixed) basket of modern Web standards. Maybe that's too ambitious, but that's what it is.
"MozOffice", such as it is, is not part of that, which is why I don't expect any resources to be devoted to it in the forseeable future.
I hope you'll be pleasantly surprised when you find out that you're wrong.
I believe a MozOffice could grow to be something that is a MS .NET killer. Just think about it, the technology is there, and it is better that MS has, or MS will probably ever have in the forseen future. Let's do it!
-- ERICmurphy -- www.jabber.org for open-source, XML-based IM
means and medians are both forms of "average". you'd expect half to fall either side of the mean...while medians are a better measure of central tendency when the curve is skewed
then there are root mean square averages...weighted averages...the thingee they call the critical pt
Because of the philosophy of mozilla (It's a platform, not a browser), you can do *anything* with it. At the moment, you'd be brave to build an office suite on it(unless you have about a terabyte of RAM). But you could. All the bits are there.
Whenever I use mozilla as 'just a browser', I feel guilty. It already does so much that it's astonishing.
I offer a free beer to the first person who sends me a solution to the Tower of Hanoi problem to me written in XUL. For the first person to write a C compiler in XUL, I'll buy their first session with a psychiatrist. They'll need it.
Well, you know how dumb the average person is, right? By definition, half the people out there are even dumber than that.
Nahh. That's not really true. Imagine you had 99 people with a 100 IQ, and 1 person with a 150 IQ. In this case 99% are dumber than average.
Now, by definition 50% of the people are smarter than the "median" person right? But out of 6 billion people, I really don't know how to go about figuring which one is the median. How am I going to judge the rest in comparison to some person I probably haven't even met?
Well let's see if I can get somewhat back on topic:
As for Mozilla, I'd like to see a cross platform Galleon (Gecko Only) project. Take what's good and leave what doesn't need to be in there out, and have it work on all the platforms (for instance other than just Gnome).
Of course I can't find a link right now, so file this under "I read somewhere":
A year or two ago, a Phoenix evening news show ran a story about how a group of "hackers" had gotten ahold of the credit card numbers of all AOL subscribers. The source for the story was a forwarded email.
-B
Like you did. What was it you shipped?
And since when didn't mozilla work? I run M16 all day happily as a browser. The mail stuff works. The usenet browser is one of the best there is. The IRC client runs fine for me.
</Sense of humour failure>
I hope you get your +5, funny. Then I really hope you download the source, compile it, play with it and have a lot of fun. I do.
Share and enjoy.
I don't think you were the first.. didn't Thoreau say all news is gossip? Hence the 'drop out' approach to living (as in Walden)... According to literature mainstream media has always sacrificed accuracy to get the 'scoop'
I thought someone said there was going to be free beer!
Oh come on... did you ever see a little button with "Preview" on it?
Tomorrow will be cancelled due to lack of interest
Go to preferences and put a tick next to timothy.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Homepage Programmers Guide
Class Reference
And, finally, a petition to add OpenDoc functionality to Java.
Enjoy!
Netscape Communicator is to Mozilla as Navigator is to the Galeon browser. Galeon is a stripped down Gecko-based browser for GNOME, without WYSIWYG HTML editing and mail, news, and AIM clients.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
no the message is stop bitching because most of these people who are doing this isn't getting anything from unconstructive criticism. it's alright to speculate on the status of an open source project but if you're not a contributor you have no right to bitch. constructive criticism however is good for the project, better yet contribute bug reports.
shit i want to see the unification of physics but you don't see me flaming steven hawkings for not being able to deliver on the promise.
Skins/XUL have brought about the best usability advance to date in Mozilla - the ability to turn on the "Netscape Classic" look n' feel. I know it's goofy, but Moz just "feels" better when it looks like 4.x. It even crashes less than 4.x on the recent Linux nightlies. For all those who tried M16 or the NS 6 Preview and think Mozilla sucks, do try out the latest nightly and turn on the 4.x skin. It's a whole other experience.
Many news portals don't bother to update their news at all.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
I will be the first to admit that cnet does some stupid stuff, however, in this case, if you actually follow the links, in the cnet article, you will find that someone IS proposing this project, and most of the cnet article is just analysis (crappy analysis) of this concept. I fail to see how cnet could be guilty of any crime worse than simply poor analysis with this acticle
1) The CNET article mentions the mozilla.general newsgroup (actually, they call it "the "mozilla-general" discussion board". This isn't the first time CNET has had a problem with calling USENET what it is. Why? And for that matter, they mention it, but don't include a link. Why? 2) Why is it wrong for CNET to assume there's a project? Isn't that what the webpage says? Isn't that what mozoffice.org is all about?
icqqm [ICQ:11952102]
Just because C|Net does not have a clue and their reporters/editors can't figure out context certainly does NOT mean that the list needs to be closed.
;-)
If you look past the headline (if you can) there is a wealth of information in the orgs that are whining, i.e., look them up by person (not firm) that is whining and add that to your list of idiots that you no longer deal with. Second, look at the firms, submit resumes to the managers of the idiots complaining (to replace the idiots doing the complaining).
If this makes no sense, either the Fosters flowed too much or you need to go back over it
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
It isn't the Mozilla team would be working on this but a seperate group of people who have no connection to AOL. One of the goals of Mozilla is to be an appliction framework so that other people can do projects such as this.
After thinking about it a bit this could actually be helpfull to Mozilla's developement because as more people decide to code within the Mozilla framework they might slowly migrate to coding Mozilla itself. Someone might not give a damn about Mozilla the browser but if their app encounters a bug in Mozilla they might try to fix it.
Of course roca read it. He's quoted in the damn thing (Robert O'Callahan).
The problem with Galeon is that it requires Gnome and Mozilla. Lightweight? Gimme a break.
You had me at "dicks fuck assholes".
except that Galeon is not cross platform, so I'm out of luck on my current crop of desktop machines..
how's gnome on osx coming along?
You're right of course, you can't protest against something that you don't pay.
But Mozilla raised expectation so people are frustrated because of the long wait.
And then if a free OS wants the desktop domination, it needs to have a full featured browser, I for one don't use Linux regularly because Netscape isn't very good..
Okay, I'm going to take the opposing view here. First, I think that the creator of MozOffice.org--James Russell--maybe very ambitios and a little too optimistic. Whether or not he got the idea from a Mozilla support group is irrelevent. Russell has decided that the idea is a good one and he has decided to attempt to turn that idea into reality by creating a website to publicize the idea. Russell obviously hasn't worked much (or even at all) on this project yet (especially considering that neither Mozilla nor an open-source StarOffice has been released), but his website reflects this fact and only asks for help. C|Net just decided that his idea and his effort were newsworthy and so they did a story about it. Who knows, maybe Russell is the next Linus. A lot of people probably thought that Linus was a loon for attempting to single-handedly create a UNIX clone. Instead, he took his code and asked for help and he created a wonderful operating system (or kernel for you purists). Essentially, this is exactly what Russell is doing; he created his website in order to recruit some help in creating something truly great. The fact the project hasn't created anything tangible yet is irrelevent. The source of his idea is irrelevent. The facts are that James Russell wants to merge StarOffice and Mozilla and he wants some help doing so. C|Net thought that this was newsworthy. Whether it actually is newsworthy remains to be seen. If this project turns out to be an overwhelming success, then C|Net can claim the scoop. If not, then the world will move on and nobody will really think about it again. In the mean time, take the story at face value--a story about a man that is attempting to create something revolutionary.
# They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. --Fran
Point out that the article is a crock and have a go at their credibility. You may not see a direct affect over one article but if they don't learn, they eventually lose hits.
eg. Does anyone here automtically take anything MSNBC produces as gospel before they verify the facts of a story elsewhere?
ZDNETs another example... They may be pulling hits but do we really care if they pull the wool over the eyes of the inept? - nobody with a true tech. oriented background takes anything ZDNET posts at face value either...
'sapientia potestas est'
I read the article.
Heck, I was quoted in the article.
The article strongly conveys the impression that there is a real MozOffice project backed by Mozilla.org. That is false. All there is is a few people chatting on a newsgroup. I bet James Russell is real surprised to find out that he's the "leader" of a project that aims to compete with MS Office.
Even if CNET had skipped the misleading impressions and had run a "blue sky" story or editorial about the idea, it's still seriously questionable whether this is newsworthy. For if this is newsworthy, then start trolling gnome-devel, linux-kernel et al. and start reporting on every half-baked idea anyone ever comes up with.
This is all the worse because when I mailed Paul Festa yesterday I was afraid he'd write an article like this and it would get the knee-jerk reaction it did. I told him "MozOffice" was pure vapour in a few guys' heads, but he ignored me.
Quit being a whiny lil bitch
I'm begging for a karma adjustment. First, I defend Hotmail, now this.
/. would be an interesting read, because most of us missed it while blinking.
Did any of you read this article? Did roca? Did timothy?
James Russel has a web site and provided quotes to CNET, sounds like more than an off-the-cuff remark to me.
The fall of
You know, maybe it wasn't ever really any good. Think back to your first visit, didn't you read a -2;Flamebait posting talking about the good old days when Slashdot was relevant? The only thing that keeps me coming back now are the grits, sweet miss Natalie Portman, and naked Jackie Chan ASCII art.
As soon as Trolldot comes online, I am outta here!
I know the difference. "You know how dumb the median person is, right?" doesn't scan as well as what I wrote.
--
www.kitchengeek.com -- Nosh for
cnet links to the following URL:
MozOffice.org
This means that the project is happening.
It may never come to fruition, but it's in the works.
What can a free software project do about this? Close the mailing lists or newsgroups to the media? Flame/sue the people who screw up? What?
Hey, I have an idea. How about nothing. Isn't that the point of open source? The cream rises to the top even without million dollar prime-time ads, and regardless of silly reporters. What need is there to retaliate at all? Why not just go about the business of writing code. Or should the community become as litigious as our enemies (MPAA, RIAA, etc)?
I'm seeing a clear pattern here. Nearly every story Timothy posts is either exceptionally stupid, or it's a rerun of of something that's been discussed here recently. I am sure that if I screened out all of his stories, I wouldn't be missing anything important or interesting.
/. preferences the ability to screen out stories posted by a given editor? I'd be happy to cut things down to Rob, Neal, Nate and Roblimo if I could.
Any chance of getting adding to
No offense, Tim. I'm sure you're a swell guy. But jeez.
The message is: Contribute.
Read the FAQ, browse the source, help with a bug, do what you can to help and the product will ship quicker.
Most of the help needed doesn't even require you to be a programer. Helping to narrow the focus of bug reports helps the programer focus on the problem instead of the fluff. It's a huuuge help.
Given that it's been two years and it still doesn't run as well as the 4.X versions of netscape.. That the development team has been busy with an fully integrated office suite instead of fixing bugs and working twards release dates can be the only reasonable explanation.
After the suck article I figured I'd give mozilla another shot. The interface is big and clunky (and looks like crap), it won't save preferences (I have to change the butt-ugly fonts every time I start it), and that it still crashes and has problems rendering things. It's no more stable or functional than it was six months into the project..
Of course who needs basic functionality or stability when you can add UML, XYZ, and PDQ support and do this and that sexy thing.
Thank goodness netscape/aol never found out that the money that was supposed to be used tward the next generation browser was really blown on quake matches, raves, and underground bondage fetish parties. Of course the result is that there's still no browser.
-- Greg
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
I think you're confusing 'average' with 'median'.
That's a "mean" thing to say!
--
There is no soup either.
I'm sure you want a useable browser. How are you helping? Have you contributed code? Submitted talkbacks? Are you downloading the daily builds?
Or are you another pathetic little twerp with no skills?
Oh, sorry. You may have one skill: Screaming "I want it NOW! And its got to be FREE! And it's got to be PERFECT! Or I'll moan and moan and moan until I'm SICK!".
If that is your skill, then stick with it. One day, who knows, you may be good at it.
The only way that an open software project can quash these kind of rumours is by keeping everyone, including the media, informed. I think a lot of teams (being primarily programmers, rather than pointy-haired types) overlook this. If the project itself is not seen as a credible, authoritative source of news pertaining to the project, then those looking for information will go to newsgroups and the like, and start reading whatever they like in to the random line-noise they find there.
Even open software projects need to manage public and media expectations.
hey, wouldn't it be cool to build Office-like functionality on top of Slashdot.
NEWS FLASH: SLASHDOT ANNOUNCES slashOffice, A NEW INFORMATIVE OFFICE FUNCTION BASED OF OF SLASH CODE.
I don't recall Slashdot being in a particualalu good place to talk about other's vredibility. It almost seems these days that there is at least one story in here that's full of content for a Slashback feature article.
Okay, okay. Now I see it. I missed it among the 8 other blocks of checkboxes on that one of the three vaguely-named prefs pages. Phew. Much better.
But seriously, one would think that after a couple of years people would understand that 98% of the 'information' you see on the Net is rumour, innuendo, falsehood, deliberately misleading or aggrandizing.
I think it behooves reporters to consider the Net to be a source for story ideas, but that nothing can beat picking up the phone, making a call, and asking for confirmation before printing a story.
--
www.kitchengeek.com -- Nosh for
Because of the philosophy of mozilla (It's a platform, not a browser), you can do *anything* with it.
Uh, sorry, but no. There are a large number of people who just want a good browser. I don't need a browser that has a 30MB memory footprint just to start up. People complain about "bloatware" -- Mozilla is among the most bloated pieces of software out there.
---
---
"Go Metallica. Die RIAA." -- Linus Torvalds
And C|Net just bought ZDNet? What can we expect from them. Whoever found this "article" deserves to be fired. C|Net I trusted, and now I'm not to sure. You never can believe what you find in the news :)
It's not bloated and it's not slow. Unless you're trying to run it on a 386 SX with 4 mb of RAM, it's fine. I'm running Windows 98 and M16 and it has never crashed and it runs extremely fast. So shut up. Go spread FUD elsewhere. No one, cept maybe the total Mircosofties, are interested in your FUD meistering. Haven't you got anything better to do than spread FUD about other peoples' creations? Mozilla is an excellent peice of software. As for the "sites that only work under IE", that's not Mozilla's fault. That's the web designers' fault. They're either Microsofties, or braindead and using some "pretty" web designer like FrontPage or Dreamwave 3000.
no sig
AirSupply: go ahead, cut me off.
Seems this story was about "what to do about misinformation regarding open source projects" however the cnet article was as accurate as it could be, and since there IS a MozOffice embryo out there, whats the issue? Anywho... Just my two cents, I dont see this as any big deal at all, I could take the Mozilla code and add the ability to play tetris in it, TetriZilla... So, NOW, if we see an article about TetriZilla(tm) then we can complain!! heh
Uh, guys, M17 still hasn't been released... speaking of bad reporting :-) (I know, I shouldn't nitpick - sorry).
BTW, a clarification: the Mozilla source tree has branched. The M17 / nsbeta2 branch is being stabalized, and should be released fairly soon (speculation). The M18 'unstable' tree is where all the new features are going in. Once M17 has been released, the two trees will probably be merged.
BTW, you can get both pre-M17 and pre-M18 nightly builds from ftp.mozilla.org.
As to the actual story, CNET is just ignorant. Like any company in a capitalist economy, it only exists while there is demand for it to exist. If you make it well known that CNET is biased and inaccurate, the 'proles' will turn to another source for their news. Eventually, people will realize that better news sources exist, and use them instead.
So when will I have built in cvs capabilities, a RAD IDE, and built in GIMP-clone module to go along with the nifty browser, instant messager, email, word processor, html editor, news client, spreadsheet all-in-one package?
We just need to put a team in place, scrap all the current StarOffice code, and go at it!
(ok people, I'm being sarcastic)
Fsck cluebie moderators. I'll say what I want, offtopic or not. And fsck having to qualify every bloody statement just
It's about exploring new ideas in software, both in the development approach and in the software components themselves.
Oh, so its a research project? Silly me, I thought they were actually trying to get a piece of software out the door (well, actually I quit thinking that a long time ago, as well...)
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Money doesn't really enter into this. The Mozilla project is starting to suck. They should probably know about that (although I'm pretty confident they've heard it all by now, so continued complaining won't accomplish much). If I'm paying them money, all of a sudden I gain the right of hegemony? I don't think so. Money doesn't enter into this at all.
A few stories down from here is the headline that says "Hotmail about to collapse under load". Of course, anyone who actually reads the story finds out that the story is about Microsoft adding/replacing some of the *nix machines with Windows 2000 machines - and that Hotmail is obviously NOT collpasing under the load. But C-Net messes up a story concerning free software and suddenly it is "HOW DO WE DEAL WITH THESE BASTARDS?!?!?!?!?!"
The real question should now be how do we deal with Slashdot? I mean, this is bulls**t. Don't go blasting a someone/thing else that you yourself are obviously just a guilty of!
Or is this ok an acceptable because slashdot ripped on Microsoft (the cool thing to do), while C-Net screwed over the open source community?
I have a plan to solve these tedious situations that keep arising amongst rumor driven sites. It's as simple as this: when a company plans on announcing something rather radical, the CEO will write it on the ass of someone he has slept with in the past month, weeks before it's been released/announced/etc. The first person of a rumor site/printed source to pleasure the girl with rumors writen on her ass will get the rumor. But beware of ass forgeries. Asses will be compared if necessary, and penetrated if found to be false. Remember, Steve never writes out his first name, and often in parody of himself, calls himself S. Hand Job.
In conclusion, I would like to present a definition of a word I find relates very well to this article: Douche.
Douche is defined as:
A stream of water, often containing medicinal or cleansing agents, that is applied to a body part or cavity for hygienic or therapeutic purposes.
b. A stream of air applied in a similar way.
2. The application of a douche.
3. An instrument for applying a douche.
Obviously this douche is very important, and we must address it in relation to CNET very soon, before we can succesfully find the 30 girls S. Hand Jobs has had sex with recently.
Written with sodomy and candy,
Bongo
Sultan of Swing, King of Konishiwa
It looks like CNET was on target. /. community is freaking out.
/.
Somebody *is* looking at the possibility.
The only problem I see is the lack of seperation between the MozOffice group (person?) and Mozilla.org.
But... the information and the links clear that up.
People need to read the article and should look at the coments that the person submiting makes. He was off base, the title is off base and now, the
Get the facts, report the facts and leave speculation alone.
In this case CNET did a *better* job than
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
Microsoft is opening its software GPLing everything it owns! Windows 2001 code comes first, on September 1!
Now we just sit back and wait for the C|NET exclusive expose on Microsoft's new open source strategy...
J
Not to be flamebait, but how could anyone believe it anyway. They still have to ship a stable working browser before they could have even worried about an office addition.
Bring it on Suck, bring it on CNET, bring it on Web Standards Project (actually no, the WaSP can go die, they are the ones who have made the stupiest statements about Mozilla, the little Microsoft knob-gobblers), bring it on, cause when Mozilla ships, you'll be left with a few old articles noone cares about and Mozilla will gain market share from all the inevitable "wow, mozilla actually shipped - and it's good!" stories.
In the meantime, I reiterate, the web standards project is the lamest industry group ever and need to prioritize beyond their current "hey maybe if we make totally inappropriate attacks on Mozilla, Microsoft will listen to us and buy us more plane tickets to Seattle".
sig:
sig:
See the "..for smart people" banners Wired runs here? Look elsewhere guys.
No, the LASER was invented in 1949 and Star Trek first went on the air September of 1966.
Hey, I'm not one to defend CNET - But this is just a report on the idea of integrating this functionality into Mozilla. So why not flame/sue the flamers? They are the ones getting their panties in a bunch over this issue, even though it is NOT a Mozilla focus.
Of course the 'media' is going to pay attention to this story, for the same reason that featuritis creeps into most projects -its 'cool', and sure it would be cool to have *Fully Functional* office support, but thats NOT the way they are headed right now.
--------------------------------------
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Vices - what I lack in originality, I make up for in volume.
Why are people flipping out about mozilla? It's not like you paid money for it. The developers working on it are doing so because they enjoy it and think it's a good thing for the future of free computing. Bagging on them for being ambitious is ignorant. If you want a trimmed down browser, then you go, take the Gecko engine, pop it onto a canvas, and get something like Galeon.
I could see this if it was an upgrade to something you paid money for. It isn't. You should be thanking the developers for even trying! If it's not happening fast enough for you, go see how you can help Moz, Galeon, or any of the other alternatives out there. Otherwise, sit down, shut up, use Internet Explorer like a good lemming, and stew, because bitching about things isn't helping. Maybe bitch at RedHat if you bought it for not having a stable, argueably critical, component of their operating system present. Or, hell, contribute to Mozilla!
Kudos to the developers on Moz for trying; Shame on anyone complaining.
..don't panic
I don't want to release lousy code.
Right now I'm working on a game that, when it's playable, will be released under the GPL. I even have a sourceforge page ready for it (so I can learn how to use the sourceforge utilities once it's complete). Why am I not releasing the code right now? A few reasons:
- The code's incomplete. By which I mean that you can't tell what my design is by the code. Which means that, if I were to release now, I might get patches from people that, while probably being very high quality, do not mesh at all with how I wanted the game to evolve. This'll be a problem anyway, but once the design is clear, it'll at least be a little easier to tell what kinds of additions need to be made to the code.
- No documentation. I don't mean API documentation, I've been javadoc-style commenting my code since I started. I just don't have any design documentation online. It's all on paper in a three-ring binder. I simply design better when I can draw diagrams and such on paper.
- It's not playable! Right now you've got the title screen, and a dialog where you can select plugins. Everything else is infrastructure. I imagine someone who might want to contribute to the project would like to have something at least marginally playable - the contributor would otherwise have to work for quite some time before any results were visible.
- I might not finish. Don't get me wrong, I fully intend to do this, but it might take me a while. I've seen open-source game projects start up with an announcement akin to "Hey everyone, I've got a great game I want to make, with a website! All we need are some artists and coders, come and sign up!" -- and they're never heard from again. I don't want to end up like that. It'll be a disappointment not only to myself, but also to any other developers, and anyone who was interested in the game.
So yes, I think there are good reasons to keep a project to yourself until it's ready to be given to the world. You just have to know when to let go-Denor
What many people seem to be forgetting is that the Mozilla project is not just about creating the next web browser for AOL (or whoever happens to own Netscape in the future). It's about exploring new ideas in software, both in the development approach and in the software components themselves. Given the number of Open Source Office suites available, is it that outlandish to consider integerating one of them with Mozilla? Consider a suite with fully configurable cross-platform UI, the best Internet integration available, and all the infrastructure of the Mozilla project, and I daresay you have a winner.
Web browser state-of-the-art needs to move beyond <BLINK tags and "Shop" buttons. Mozilla provides this. I think we'll be seeing a lot more than Netscape 6 coming out of mozilla.org
-- Floyd
-- Floyd
I am sure McNealy will be happy to hear it. Since StarOffice is OWNED By SUN. If you make mods to the StarOffice Code you agree to assign the copyrights of those mods to Sun. Read both licences and don't believe hype. C-Net never had any integrity.
Look, its like this. News stories always have errors -- sometimes minor, sometimes fundamental. News is written by generalists who gather information on very tight deadlines. Their job is to capture the gist of stuff and get it "out there" before their competition.
They try, but they never get it right.
Take this from a guy who's given a zillion interviews -- I don't even cringe anymore -- I just wonder WHAT they'll get wrong.
So, here's the deal -- the news guys got it wrong. Tell them the truth, and move on. Get over it.
There's nothing you can do about the media -- they're consitutionally bullet-proof so long as they didn't know it was a lie. And that's the way it should be. You WANT THEM to rush with what feels like a scoop. YOU NEED THEM to do that.
Just don't give them shit when they mess up. They're only doing their job.
the LASER was invented in 1949 and Star Trek first went on the air September of 1966.
... so Roddenbury called his beam weapons "phasers" to sound vaugely like "LASERs" but avoid people saying "But LASERs don't work like THAT!".
Did you ever notice that Star Trek's ship-mounted phasers and photon torpedos behaved JUST like the torpedo and beam weapons in the original PDP-1 spacewar game (right down to the blinking intensity of the phasers' beams in some of the early shows' special effects)?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The lastest version of Mozilla is actually a playoff of the word Mozzarella: GUI, sticky and once you play with it, you have a hard time getting it out of your hair.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Until then, I'll stick to Lynx, thank you very much.
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This is not my sandwich.
I find it intresting that they found something on the net and believed it.. I don't trust much I find on the net unless it's from a major news source (like slashdot). But when the major news source starts to believe stuff they find on small pages, or newsgroups, it makes you wonder. Who are the writers of these things? And who are the editors. C|Net is big, and even bigger now that it bought ZDnet. Hopefully ZDnet doesn't lose quality because of C|Nets ownership.
I hate "me too" posts, but you're right. I'd love to have a quality browser right now but I guess I'll settle for having a quality browser at all. Modern software development concentrates too much on "get it out the door" instead of quality.
Constitutionally Correct
Accually, I've talked to the maintainer of said website, and suppositivly, the reporter accually did contact him with questions regarding the mozoffice suite. The only problem is that while James Russel spoke in speculative terms and stated that the product hasn't even had an ounce of code yet, especially as StarOffice hasn't even been released yet. While the article simply kinda forgot to mention that part.
Depending on scale, I think that open sourced projects should stay closed source until they have a good, defining, deliverable. A defining deliverable is important because it makes people say oh,this can be used for class A of things, instead of thinking, well, as long as we are designing this couldn't we just include class B of things? After all, even though open source always runs the risk of being redirected or split into a different direction, if the object is a good tool for its job there won't be as much call to make it a do-all-but-nothing-well-tool A set of individual tools that can be used in tandem is much better than a monolith like an office suite (even though to some extent a suite is a set of individual tools).
Problem being, for something the scale of mozilla, it may not have been viable to close development until it was clearly defined... or wait; was mozilla based on netscape code and hence defined in that sense, or was it built up from "scratch"?
Mozilla is a gigantic, bloated sack of poo. The Suck article had it right. If the browser worked, without the GawdAwwfull skins crap, they might produce Quality. As it stands, no one even knows what it IS, let alone what it is supposed to do, or when it is 'Quality' work.
Without a directed vision, no development team can produce anything approaching quality. The Mozilla 'team' is lacking vision. Brook's Law applies, as well: Adding more manpower to a late project makes it later.
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Providing the "killer app" to run on Mozilla is a great idea.
Something is needed to showcase the technologies in Mozilla, and assuming that this project did not divert energy from the Mozilla development (which I can't imagine it would) this would be a logical way to do that.
As for the naysayers who say "Mozilla sucks" or "They're not sticking to their release schedule; this would be a waste of time", those people are obviously not interested in adding value to the open source and free software platforms, so they can be ignored.
Mozilla is not being developed based on timeline commitments, as are commercial products. Rather, it is being developed based on quality commitments. So far, the milestones have given ample proof that these quality commitments are attainable and worthwhile. Keep your pants on, people. Meanwhile, do what you can to further the effort. If that means creating "Office" capabilities to run on Mozilla, then so be it. Excellent.
What can a free software project do about this? Close the mailing lists or newsgroups to the media? Flame/sue the people who screw up? What?
First: You can't stop anybody from creating a "bag on the side of your project" to attempt adding some functionality as a patch. (i.e. embedding Microsoft Office functionality in your project's product)
The best you can do (if you have that much centralized control) is not accept their patches into your project's mainline and not warp your design to provide hooks to support them (unless such hooks look like a good way to support something else specific or as a general support hook).
Second: It's the media. Unless they've libeled you all you can do is ridicule them for their errors (and the people who believed them for paying attention to such a ludicruous story).
If a media outlet does such stuff often enough, it eventually lowers their credibility as a source, placing them at a competitive disadvantage. But eventually is a long time. For now the best you can hope for meanwhile is the equivalent of a page-9 retraction of their page-1 feature - which won't stop the flames at you.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way