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.
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 =)
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.
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.
"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
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
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
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!
----------------
Programming, is like sex.
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!
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
- 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?
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
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'
You're looking for Konqueror. Comes up in <8 secs, loves keyboard input and has no composer or built-in e-mail :)
--
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
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)?
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.
I think you're confusing 'average' with 'median'.
That's a "mean" thing to say!
--
There is no soup either.
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.
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
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
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?
"Any chance of getting adding to /. preferences the ability to screen out stories posted by a given editor?"
Try your Preferences.
--
--
The real Raunchola isn't cool enough to have any imposters
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
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.
XUL is the XML+CSS+Javascript+DOM monstrosity that describes Mozilla's interface. It lets you redesign Mozilla in any color you like, but it makes Mozilla much more bloated and may cause a serious perfomance hit and contribute to instability... the jury's still out IMO.
It's not too hard to use and it's relatively (for an open source project anyway) well documented. The lack of absolute positioning is a drawback, I think. They want you to define all your UI elements in terms of minimum/maximum sizes and springs, which is much harder than saying "make a 64x64 button and put it *here*.
--
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
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
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.
You are a fucking twat.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
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"?
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