Red Hat: Who Needs Netscape?

LazyBoy points to this story on Yahoo which says that Red Hat won't be bundling Netscape with its distribution once Mozilla 1.0 is out. And since the (very nice) .9 is out, with .9.1 on the horizon, that shouldn't be all that long from now. Rather cool that the long-heralded failure of Mozilla is proving to be exaggerated, even with a lot of other good browser projects in the ring.

Comments

Death's Road.

[Anonymous Coward]

*Disclaimer* I work for Netscape. This just seems like a bad idea. A few reasons come to mind. 1) Many banks verify (read test) *all* browsers they will allow into their sites. It's unlikely that bank A will want to spend time testing Mozilla (they don't test konq - try it on wellsfargo.com) when they have a partnership with Netscape. 2) Netscape pays for every copy of Redhat installed on developer's machines. Hmmm, maybe Netscape will decide they can just download (legally and legitemately) Red Hat for free and burn hundreds of copies and not pay for Enterprise support - that just might fit better with Netscape's budget. 3) Mozilla will never reach a satisfactory 1.0. (Wine is the only other project of this calibur, and I don't see it ever hitting 1.0) Mozilla's current timeline certainly does not have a bug free browser (or even a performant stable browser) targetted for 1.0!!! :P Red Hat seems to be shooting themselves in the foot.

Re:Death's Road.

[ppanon]

OK, why isn't Netscape keeping up with the Mozilla release schedule? Because they never wanted to release 6.0. As somebody else said above, they did it because of market pressure. Look at the latest roadmap. It even has a an X to mark the spot. You'll see that little X where they mention their current progress, how a bunch of new code has been added, (which are heavily demanded features or for performance improvements) and how the source tree is in flames as a result. Go a little farther and you will see the the blue lines marked 'recommended beta branch time' and 'vendor branches as required'. Those will probably be the Netscape 6.5 beta releases. Mozilla 0.9.1 and 0.9.3, after the addition of silly Netscape customizations like a shop button, will become the Netscape betas and eventually the release version.

It isn't worth it for Netscape to track the Mozilla milestones because the effort to recustomize each time would take up developer time that is better spent on the common source base. Those Netscape-brand customization branches would cause bugs that have to be fixed separately without adding to the end product. Understand this, Netscape 6.0(1) was a 'feature-complete' pre-beta/technology preview. I'm sure that Netscape knows it was pre-beta quality. It was put out there under pressure from journalists and standards advocates who immediately proceeded to about-face and blast the result. So Netscape decided that if that's the thanks they get, they'll release the next version when its ready. What did you expect when Netscape got slammed for doing what everybody else claimed they wanted?

The developers probably told management "We told you it wasn't ready!" and management certainly knew it wasn't ready, but they needed to keep up the perception that they were listening to the user base.

On the other hand, if Netscape is being kept alive by AOL to keep MS honest, Netscape 6.X is only effective as FUD if it is perceived to be a viable threat and not complete vapourware. Until the Netscape 6.X release, crappy as it was, the whole project was in serious danger of being perceived as vapourware and giving MS an effective browser monopoly. At that point it becomes ineffective for use as FUD by AOL and their funding might have dried up. All that bad publicity from NS6 meant that at least people were still talking about Netscape instead of forgetting about it. If NS 6.x was the price to keep Mozilla afloat to get to this point, then it was worth it. It's too bad they couldn't call it Technology Preview 2 instead of NS 6.0

Re:Death's Road.

[SpinyNorman]

Hmmm... maybe Mozilla will never make it to production quality, maybe it will - I suspect the latter, even if it takes a whiel. OTOH Netscape has PROVED that it'll never get to production quality. I'm running the latest non-6.0 Netscape releases on Solaris (work) and Linux (home), and I'd say I typically get anywhere up to a dozen hangs and crashes a day (I'm a very heavy web surfer). I've tried Netacape 6.0 in Windows, and that thing is so vile I refuse to use it.

BTW you don't work for Netscape - you work for AOL! Deal with it! ;-)

Re:JWZ

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I'm sure he is... his Mozilla resignation letter sure makes for entertaining reading now.

Entertaining? It still looks pretty relevant. It's nice that Mozilla and NS 6 are mostly working now, but:

Why? Because the company stopped innovating.

still applies. There's hardly anything innovative or to be proud of in Mozilla (or any other recent web browser, even Opera). I can easily see why a hacker, or anyone who likes doing cutting-edge stuff, would be disappointed.

His complaint was that it never got to shipping, and now two years later, it's still not at 1.0. He was right.

An object lesson in the value of sticking with it, through thick and thin?

If Mozilla teaches a lesson about sticking with it, through thick and thin, the lesson is: don't do it! It's an ok browser, but not spectacular, and a single programmer could write (and this has happened several times) a better browser in three years.

JWZ was right.

Not *quite* ready to rpm -e netscape

[Micah]

As much as Netscape 4.x has been a boil in the arse of Linux for the last 4 years, it needs to stick around a tad bit longer. Some sites still work best with it, at least in parts.

Take Datek Online for example. While I can access all parts of the site under Linux, sometimes I need to switch browsers, depending on what I want to do with it.

Netscape 4.x can access the whole site, but the Java applets sometimes (usually) hang it. It's also butt-ugly.

Mozilla can get to almost all of it, but the Account Options menu simply doesn't show up if you're screen isn't GREATER than 1024X768. Before 0.9, the PSM also hogged almost all the CPU's power when going to a secure site, and kept doing that until you closed Mozilla. Fortunately 0.9 fixed that.

Opera can get to pretty much everything but Java.

Konqueror can get to the whole site, but the JavaScript chart doesn't show up. I haven't tried Java with it yet.

Also Netscape is a little less quirky than Mozilla for Web developers in some areas still, but Mozilla and Konqueror are definitely just about there.

So...I'm finally able to get along without Netscape 99% of the time, but sometimes something just works better with it.

I understood him..

[Cardinal]

He can read just fine.

You said IE on Windows is the best option.

He said that was good to know, in case he chooses to run Windows under Linux.

What's so weird about that?

Re:Jamie Zawinski, is -I'm sure- Thrilled about th

[Tony Shepps]

I wonder if he's changed his mind about the nature of time, organizational behavior, and how to get things done fast since it's been forever getting his nightclub redone. I don't expect he figured it would be this long getting done. Of course there's a lot he had to rewrite from scratch at the club.

I've been running nightlies regularly

[Tony Shepps]

I know a lot of Slashdotters use /. moz updates as personal reminders to go get the latest build, just for browsing purposes.

I've been following the nightly builds pretty closely, and I would suggest waiting for 0.91 for most browsers. There have been a few bugs that crept in over the last two weeks or so. The most well-understood one is a problem with right-click context menus, at least on Win32. It sounds like they have the problem in hand, but it makes life painful.

I think there are some problems that have been introduced into the rendering engine, because I have gotten a few really unexpected and unusual crashes. In some cases the browser window just completely disappeared without a trace or any error.

And I have had a few *really* annoying crashes while composing messages in textareas. (Like I'm doing now.) That is extra painful because you lose what you were writing!

So your best bet is to wait on this one if you have a stable build that you're running, and pick up a nightly build or 0.91 build in a few weeks.

Other than that, recent changes in how pages are built make everything seem a lot smoother and faster. I forget what they called the one fix... it had a funny description, but the upshot was that you can now click on things on an "outgoing" page if your new page hasn't loaded yet. For us impatient browsers who give up on crappy-loading sites, that one was a real breakthrough!

Re:I've been running nightlies regularly

[jesser]

Other than that, recent changes in how pages are built make everything seem a lot smoother and faster. I forget what they called the one fix... it had a funny description, but the upshot was that you can now click on things on an "outgoing" page if your new page hasn't loaded yet. For us impatient browsers who give up on crappy-loading sites, that one was a real breakthrough!

That was probably bug 76495, "We tear down the world before having anything to replace it with."

Unfortunately, bug 78680, "if a page is loading but paint-suppressed, can't interact with old page," hasn't been fixed. So while you can see the old page for a longer time as the new page starts to load, you can't necessarily click on other parts of the old page.

Re:I've been running nightlies regularly

[e_n_d_o]

If you've got a Linux box and your browser dies when you're entering your life story into a textarea, there's always su'ing to root and doing a "cp /dev/mem /tmp/mem" running strings on it and then grepping it for words you remember typing. This has saved my ass many times when using web-based email.
--

Who needs it? I do!

[Alan]

Not for the browser... no, I can easily live in my galeon-ized world quite happily without the netscape browser. Unfortunately, I still need digital signing/encrypting ability for my mail, and my company has adopted X509 (verisign) certs for this. As all inter-company mail must be encrypted, I can't get around this.

Yes, I tried to convince them to use pgp/gpg, but the lack of integration with netscape and other (windows) mail clients made that no happen :( I *really* wanted it to.

There is alread a bug about this in the bugzilla database, but it looks like they aren't going to be able to get it in by 1.0 :( Yes, I'd love to help them instead of just bitching, and I would if I had any experience coding this part of the system.

Re:Of course

[Alan]

Konquerer is not all there so that leaves Opra. I don't know but it seems like a pretty sad state of affairs for the Linux camp.

Yup, I agree :( It sucks, especially for those of us who are forced to use X509 signed email.

However, there are a few projects out there, the most promising that I've dealt with is Galeon, a gnome browser based on the mozilla engine. It still requires mozilla and it's libs, but the browser itself is quite stable, has cool features (tabbed and multi window browsing, https support, cookie support, bookmark import/export... ). Lets just say that I haven't used netscape for a while now (except for flash/rm pages) and galeon is my primary browser.

Not the perfect solution, but I'm glad its around because you are absolutely right, browsers are in a sad state for linux right now. Mozilla rocks, but it's just not there (yet) for daily browsing.

I had to admit it, but IE *is* good. It used to suck, but now netscape is basically dead, it's a decent browser. I'd have liked to have seen what would have happened if NS and IE had continued along their competing paths, and if they would have just drowned in each others added useless features, or would have actually improved each other (what that whole "competition/inovation" thing is all about).

Re:Are you SURE you've tried 0.9?

[Trepidity]

Hmm, what sort of processor do you have? Mozilla 0.9 is faster than 0.8.1, I'll grant you that, but it's still by no means fast. I have a Pentium266 with 160MB of RAM, and it's incredibly slow, especially compared to Opera and Internet Explorer. Mozilla takes nearly 30 full seconds to start up! Opening a new browser window in Opera is instantaneous (thanks to the MDI), and takes less than 1/4 of a second in IE, but takes around a second in Mozilla to fullly open, size itself, and render the toolbar. That's just too slow.

Re:Are you SURE you've tried 0.9?

[Trepidity]

Well, Galeon is certainly better than the full Mozilla; it's Mozilla's scripted UI layer that slows a lot of things down. And yeah the tab-mode is cool; Opera's MDI works very similarly. I don't like having 8 or so root-level browser windows open all the time. =]

A natural progression

[mikl]

I would have to agree with RedHat in making this decision. First, Netscape 4.xx is quite old, slow, and doesn't support some of the newest web stuff. Compared to IE5.5 on Win32 or Konqueror on Linux, the older version of Netscape really feels, well, OLD.

Netscape 6 is a miserable attempt at release software. It has completely messed up almost every box I have seen it installed on. Crash prone, bloated, and not giving any of the promised speed increases, it is a failure for a major release of software.

Mozilla, while having some of the same pitfalls as NS6, is better, though not by much.

Konqueror has become my browser of choice lately, and I think that, unless something better shows up to the game, it will be the future of web browsing and Linux.

Re:Is this a big deal?

[moonboy]

KDE (and thereby Konqueror) is included with Red Hat. I just installed v. 7.1 and Knoqueror works great.

Mozilla works very well too.

It's great to have a choice isn't it?

Re:We Need Netscape

[GrenDel Fuego]

You won't use mozilla as a web browser because the bundled e-mail client won't do secure e-mail? Why not use mozilla as a browser, and an e-mail program for e-mail. Or hell, use any well evolved program. They all do e-mail eventually anyways.

This isn't a big deal...

[erat]

No Linux distro that is backed by any intelligence will be using Netscape browsers when Mozilla hits 1.0. Why would they? The source code is not available for Netscape browsers, so all bug fixes need to be handled by Netscape/AOL. Add to this the fact that feature-for-feature the new browsers (Netscape's and Mozilla's) are just about identical, and it's clear that there's not much of anything to lose by switching.

The only thing original about this is that Red Hat has announced it first. I'll be very, very surprised if any Linux distro ships Netscape after Mozilla is cooked. It just doesn't make sense.

Re:This isn't a big deal...

[Ayende Rahien]

Netscape *tried* to open its code, no one wanted to *look* at it!
That is how Mozilla got started.

Re:Mozilla

[tjansen]

Yes. The rendering of 0.9 is extremely fast. On those pages that take a noticable time to render, like the evil3d.net link posted today on slashdot, Mozilla seems to be faster than Netscape. However the GUI itself sucks. Rendering of the page is much faster than rendering of the GUI, but if you use a different shell like Galeon this doesnt matter for you.

Re:Who needs Mozilla?!?

[logicTrAp]

Try galeon out - galeon.sourceforge.net. It uses the mozilla core so it's somewhat bloated, but it renders FAST, has lots of neat features (like being able to disable status bar changes by javascript) and is pretty stable. Of course, if you're not on Linux then building Mozilla can be a daunting obstacle, but Galeon might be worth it... As for mail, mutt is king.

The irony....

[Mr. Neutron]

I remember when Netscape/Mosiac was the only application that made Linux a useful desktop system. I could do email, newsgroups, and the Web, and that was really all I needed a PC for at the time (around 1997). Now, we've actually come to the point at which the gawdaful Netscape-built-against-Motif is the worst part of the distribution. Since 1997, we've seen the advent of KDE, GNOME, Mozilla, Konqueror, Quake I/II/II, Gimp, and a bazillion MP3 players, IM systems, cutsey little games and whatever else you can find on Freshmeat. These are the reasons to use Linux - it's no longer Netscape in an FVWM window.

We can actually say goodbye to that awful, bloated, buggy Netscape. I never thought I would see the day.

--
"How many six year olds does it take to design software?"

OS/2 programmers

[Pseudonymus Bosch]

feel free to ask the Mozilla team what they think about the OS/2 programmers they work with.

I'll rather ask of you. What do they think of them? Are there many of them?
__

I've tried 0.9: it sucks.

[roystgnr]

And I say this as a Mozilla advocate since M18!

The new image cache, rendering code, whatever they stuck in after 0.8.1 has some serious bugs. Images getting scrambled, flickers of previous images appearing before the correct image gets rendered, images not getting rendered at all until you click on or click/drag over them, one-pixel-off placement errors with adjoining bars of color... Maybe it's faster, but "faster + incorrect" just doesn't cut it.

Maybe this is all just stuff happening on my system, but my system isn't too far off from standard RH7.1, for which I downloaded release RPMs directly from ftp.mozilla.org.

Don't get me wrong; most of the bugs that bothered me were gone by 0.8, and so it's good to see the developers turning their eyes to performance even at the cost of a little backsliding. But if you're new to Mozilla, and want to see how they've progressed, try 0.8.1 first!!

Re:Who needs Mozilla?!?

[Eric Smith]

Haven't actually *tried* Mozilla 0.9, have you? I'm running it on a PII-450, and it seems plenty fast enough.

Even works with my Credit Union's online banking!

[Eric Smith]

When I was using Mozilla 0.8, that was the only site I still kept Netscape 4.7x around for. But now Mozilla 0.9 works with the online banking just fine. Hurray! No more Netscape 4.7x for me!

Re:If Netscape goes down what happens to Mozilla?

[Eric Smith]

If nobody uses Netscape and everybody switches to Mozilla AOL is not making any money from those engineers efforts.

I don't understand. How does my use of Mozilla vs. NS have any effect whatsoever on AOL's bottom line? How would they even know that I'm using one or the other (or IE5, for that matter)?

Re:what about java?

[Eric Smith]

Unfortunately I've never been able to get that to work, under RH7.0 or RH7.1, using Mozilla 0.8, 0.81, or 0.9, installed from the Red Hat RPMs. On multiple occasions I've had it install the JRE from the .xpi file, and it claims to do so successfully, but then Java doesn't actually work, and Mozilla fails to start if I exit and try to reopen it.

Based on the info in Bugzilla and the newsgroup, I made sure that the right symlink was installed, and that the environment variables were set right, and a whole bunch of other magic that was supposed to help. But no matter what I try, Mozilla will not start up and even display a window if I have the java plugin (or a symlink to it) in the plugins directory. It just silently exits. When I remove the plugin, everything is fine.

This is my ONLY major complaint with Mozilla 0.9. It's plenty fast enough on my PII-450, and it doesn't crash as often or leak as much memory as NS 4.7x.

Re:Browser alternatives

[Eric Smith]

However, I still use NS 4.7x because of the roaming user feature

I didn't even know NS 4.7x had such a feature, but it's certainly something that's been on my wishlist. Did NS do that using LDAP, or what?

Re:Mozilla?

[Odinson]

Mozilla .9 is faster. I found it to be 1.5 second s faster on win2k (400mhz 256meg)than IE 5.5 viewing uncached default my.yahoo.com.

But benchmarks lie (especially my lame ass ones.) Do yourself a favor and test it on your system. Let us know.

Not to mention you are not tied to one platform! ;)

Re:Are you SURE you've tried 0.9?

[johnnyb]

I've got a PII 200 w/64M RAM, and Mozilla works fine for me. Startup is a little slow, as well as opening new windows. However, Galeon takes care of most of that. I especially like it's tab-mode, where every Internet "window" is actually just a tab in the main window, so I don't clutter up my screen.

Re:More frustration == more contributions?

[johnnyb]

What do you mean that's not how open source is supposed to work? There's nothing wrong with open source working this way. The FREEDOM is what's important, not necessarily the actual contributions.

Re:So they wont be hypocrites..

[ChaosDiscord]

You're missing the point. RedHat ships binaries to users. They also ship source, but that's not really their focus. They may modify the source and ship modified binaries if they feel it improves their distribution. With Bernstein's license, they can't do this.

In addition, you're quoting the GNU project out of context when you say Bernstein's license matches freedom 2 "The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor." the same page that lists the freedoms also clearly says, "The freedom to redistribute copies must include binary or executable forms of the program, as well as source code." Clearly Bernstein's license doesn't allow binary forms of modified code.

Fortunately, as you point out, Bernstein's code "NEVER" has holes in it, so we don't need to worry about it. Of course, I'm more impressed with your ability to travel into the future and confirm this. Unfortunately Red Hat is not able to visit to future to check this, so errs on the side or caution.

In addition, while Bernstein's software has never had any holes under Bernstein's narrow definition, Linux itself might have problems which require modifying qmail as a workaround. This is quite common, and while Bernstein can complain all he wants that it's the operating system's fault, the rest of us need to deal with the reality of the hole and find a workaround. This has happened before, and under Bernstein's license, Red Hat can't ship patched binary to fix it.

Re:This is a good thing???

[Chas]

So what? We should stick with a 2 year old browser? A browser than doesn't handle Java properly?

A browser than doesn't do HTML 4.0 properly?

A suite of internet apps that doesn't handle multiple e-mail accounts?

A suite of internet apps where we CANNOT fix bugs that come up because:

• The browser is closed-source
• The browser is basically abandon-ware with the parent company moving to a newer browser based off the open-source browser (Mozilla) that we want to move to?

And the Netscape/Mozilla project is going to lose funding?

BULLDINKY!

As Mozilla matures, Netscape his all it's future browser releases locked in right there. So it's HIGHLY unlikely that funding is just going to "go away".


Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!

Re:So they wont be hypocrites..

[Kiwi]

From http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html:

[...]it lacks essential freedoms such as publication of modified versions[...]

Here the FSF is describing Sun's "community source license" and why it is not open-source compatible. While they have not put up an explicit statement about Dan's license up there, since Dan's license lacks the same "essential freedom" (see my last post in this thread for citations), it is safe to conclude that the FSF would consider Dan's license "unfree".

For the record, I feel that:

• Dan is a brillant programmer who has not had to make any changes to Qmail in the last three years--since Qmail has not had one security problem of note ever. The only reason Dan has to make changes to DjbDNS is because of the way the BIND developers makes changes to how they interpret the vaguely-worded DNS RFCs.
• Dan does give away his software, and he does allow people to freely use it and freely separately distribute patches for it.
• While I do not completely agree with Dan w.r.t. the license he chose, I feel Dan has valid concerns about Linux fragmenting the way Unix fragmented. His license stops Qmail or DjbDNS from fragmenting.

- Sam (Who could very well stop development of his DNS server if Dan made a GPL version of DjbDNS)

Re:So they wont be hypocrites..

[Kiwi]

Keep in mind that Sun has two licenses: The Sun Community Source License (which is not a free software license) and the the Sun Public License.

And, yes, I agree that Dan is free to do as he wishes with his code. The current license, for better or for worse, however, will stop it from being adopted by any of the major distributions.

- Sam (Since Dan ain't gonna change his license, back to coding my alternative to BIND and DjbDNS)

Re:So they wont be hypocrites..

[zaf]

The license does not prohibit binary re-distribution. From the license:

-----
May we distribute binaries?
You may distribute a precompiled package if

* installing your package produces exactly the same files, in exactly the same locations, that a user would obtain by installing one of my packages listed above;
* your package behaves correctly, i.e., the same way as normal installations of my package on all other systems; and
* your package's creator warrants that he has made a good-faith attempt to ensure that your package behaves correctly.
All installations must work the same way; any variation is a bug. If there's something about a system (compiler, libraries, kernel, hardware, whatever) that changes the behavior of my package, then that platform is not supported, and you are not permitted to distribute binaries for it.

You may distribute an operating system that includes a precompiled package under the same rules.

-----

E-Smith Does This

[zaf]

The E-Smith Distribution, which is based on RedHat, includes Qmail.

It does this by including one RPM that includes the full, working, approved binary, plus another RPM that applies E-Smith's customizations to it.

This BS about the license not ALLOWING RedHat to include it in a distribution is false, and there is working evidence to the contrary.

Re:Rumors of Mozilla's Death Being Exagerrated

[GypC]

Netscape also runs wild on animated GIFs that have 0 pause between frames... It will use as much of the CPU as it can just to animate that stupid little GIF as fast as possible :-P

Re:Timothy said:

[fishbowl]

http://www.wellsfargo.com/per/browsertest.jhtml

Fool that into believing your Konqueror is Netscape or IE, and I'm all ears!

I need Netscape but I wish I didn't

[fishbowl]

I need Netscape in order to do Online Banking.
Even though Konqueror would WORK, Wells Fargo
refuses to accept any SSL connections not coming
from Netscape or IE.

Java and Javascript support are pretty good in
Konqueror, but there are still quite a few things that won't work in it that will work in
Netscape. I don't care about those though. If I could do online banking with Wells Fargo without Netscape, I'd probably never use it.

Re:I need Netscape but I wish I didn't

[SpinyNorman]

Can't you configure the identification (IE/Netscape/etc) that Mozilla sends? I'd be a bit surprised if you can't, since most other non-IE/Netscape browser let you do it for the exact same reason - to get around stupid web sites.

Re:I need Netscape but I wish I didn't

[arthurs_sidekick]

You *do* know you can configure what user-agent string Konqueror sends on a per-domain basis, right?

Re:I need Netscape but I wish I didn't

[Canonymous Howard]

In Konqueror:

1. Select Settings | Configure Konqueror
2. Click the User Agent icon on the left
3. Set the fields on the right as follows:
When connecting to: wellsfargo.com (or whatever)
Send useragent string: Mozilla 4.0 compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows 98
4. click the "add" button
5. Enjoy

I had to play this game with Datek Online. The guys who designed Konqueror were really on the ball.

Re:So they wont be hypocrites..

[Syberghost]

Of course, qmail and djbdns have no holes. Guaranteed.

You realize that good security practice dictates that we can now never accept anything you ever say on the subject of security again, right?

Re:Rumors of Mozilla's Death Being Exagerrated

[MikeFM]

I've used Netscape under every WM you can imagine and have done a lot of tests on it. Pretty much if you have a lot of memory you'll seldom crash but if you have very little memory you'll crash and often pull down everything unless you have set limits to how much RAM Netscape can hog.

Netscape has major problems with certain plugin's, Java, and especially forms. If you open up a memory monitoring tool of some kind and use nothing but Netscape you can watch it's memory usage climb endlessly. I think it's network layer also has memory leaks because sometimes when you try to open a page it zooms way off the charts.

Is this a big deal?

[Jethro]

I mean, for one, yeah, Mozilla _is_ really good.

Also, Netscape 6 and Mozilla have a virtually identical user interface, so it's not like people who can't tell the difference will, well, be able to ell the difference.

Plus you can always download Netscape anyway. Someone's bound to make RPMs of it for the tarball-challenged.

Does Red Hat bundle KDE? maybe they should leave Mozilla out and say they're bundling Konq. That'd be a story.


--

Re:Is this a big deal?

[Jethro]

Heh, that's true. I wonder why Konq hasn't got a lot more mainstream (well, slashdot-mainstream [oxymoron?])following. I did try and use it a few times, and I think my problems with it were marginal (fonts were too small, etc). Also it pissed me off that it was being a file manager (;


--

Re:Is this a big deal?

[ywwg]

the throbber is totally replaceable, you can make your own. it's just an animated gif.

Re:Is this a big deal?

[dublin]

Mozilla is *not* really good. It's not even marginally acceptable to serious browser users:

Here's a list of what was still broken when I tried it again a couple of weeks ago:

1) Still can't handle reasonably populated mail files. I have many files/mailboxes that have a couple of thousand messages in them. Mozilla shows they have only a few dozen. I've had previous versions corrupt the mailfiles, too, something I can never forgive. (And yes, I know it's not done yet, but I don't expect it to corrupt my mailfiles after so many years in development...)

2) It's still completely incapable of handling serious bookmark files. (A quick wc -l on my bookmarks file returns 2516. I've yet to have a version of Mozilla that won't scrog the bookmark file within a few hours, and most of them I've tried can't even load the whole thing. Mozilla also seems to have real problems in parsing many levels of bookmark folders, too. Basically, it's bookmark capabilities are useless to me.

3) On top of all that, it still doesn't support roaming profiles, so I'm forced to going back to managing bookmark files separately on every computer I own or use, or dealling with half-assed methods like unison or other file sync programs.

Note that all of these complaints apply equally to Netscape 6 as well as Mozilla. Neither is really up to supporting anything other than a lightweight user of the tool. Netscape 4.x, for all its warts, at least has the cojones to do the job. I've never found any other tool that can... (No, IE doesn't count, because it doesn't integrate mail that can use a standard non-binary, non-proprietary mailbox format. Not to mention it's bookmark capabilites aren't even as good as Mozilla's...)

So far as I can tell, there is NO ALTERNATIVE AT ALL to Netscape 4.x, nor is there likely to be one anytime in the near future. (Oh, and anything I use must run as well or better on Win32 also, since unfortunately, that's where I need to spend 90% of my desktop time...)

Re:Is this a big deal?

[jazman_777]

I mean, for one, yeah, Mozilla _is_ really good.

Also, Netscape 6 and Mozilla have a virtually identical user interface, so it's not like people who can't tell the difference will, well, be able to ell the difference.

I do think it would be very cool to have in the upper-right corner (you know, that thing that says 'I am working') an animated dinosaur taking a bite out of something, such as an IE logo. Then users could tell the difference.
--

Re:Is this a big deal?

[ekrout]

Does Red Hat bundle KDE? maybe they should leave Mozilla out and say they're bundling Konq. That'd be a story.

No, a faster and much lighter browser would make sense -- something Red Hat doesn't have.

Re:JWZ

[doom]

You know, you could argue that jwz's resignation was the kind of high-profile publicity stunt that the project needed to get on track.

(And personally, I think it's pretty funny he gets called a "quitter" by people who've never started anything...)

Re:So they wont be hypocrites..

[sammy baby]

I wasn't aware (read: didn't care) that RedHat was involved in any hullabaloo regarding qmail & djbdns. However:

Qmail and djbdns are each distributed under licenses which basically prohibit you from distributing modified binaries. You can redistribute the source, you can write patches for (and redistribute) it, you can distribute binaries. You may not redistribute patched binaries or directly modified source. The full text is here

This makes GPL die-hards pretty upset. If I'm reading this correctly, some folks petitioned RedHat to include both qmail and djbdns in their distribution, and RedHat balked because of license issues. The thing is, they already were distributing Netscape, so the license argument sounded kind of lame.

So don't put it in /var

[Sloppy]

I will never install qmail or any other DJB program on my system, for one simple reason: putting binaries in /var is insane!

You don't have to put it in /var. Edit your conf-qmail before you compile, and you can have qmail go anywhere you want it to.

The qmail license (and the "problems" it causes) is interesting and bizarre, because none of it actually effects the people who install and use qmail. So there's a problem, and yet, there isn't.

---

Re:Point me to an alternative

[Todd Knarr]

Mozilla 0.9:

• Handles Javascript correctly: check. May not handle non-Javascript or non-DOM extensions, but then it shouldn't.
• Handles Java: check for JVM 1.3.
• Shockwave/Flash plugins run: check.
• RealPlayer plugin runs: dunno, I don't use Real. I've heard people say it runs right now, though.
• Launch speed: about 10 seconds on a K6-3 400.
• Debug messages: don't see them in any of my windows. They do log to the session error file or to the browser error log depending on how I set the launcher up, which is usually what I want.

Re:failure of open source?

[ppanon]

The browser-making arm of Netscape is owned by AOL. AOL keeps Netscape going because they are the dominant market share player and they understand that game. The last thing they want is to not have a fallback position if Microsoft ever decides to pull the rug out from under them with IE. Since Microsoft owns MSN, a major competitor of AOL, and given MS's past behaviour of leveraging a monopoly in one market sector into a monopoly in another sector, it's an ace in the whole which AOL will not lightly set aside. AOL didn't buy Netscape because they expected to make money from the portal. AOL bought Netscape to keep Microsoft honest by using FUD with teeth. They bought Netscape to avoid handing the Internet to MS on a silver platter. So far that strategy has worked.

If Microsoft loses an appeal at the Supreme Court level and gets broken up in such a way that they can no longer use IE to turn MSN into the dominant ISP, then I think you'll see AOL cutting Netscape loose and telling them to fend for themselves. Until then, it's a relatively cheap insurance policy,

Re:So they wont be hypocrites..

[rangek]

A lot of people are yelling that there aren't holes in qmail and/or djbdns. Okay, there probably aren't, but that cash reward is small consolation for RedHat and its customers in the unlikely case the shit does hit the fan.

But what about bugs? Incompatabilities? Features that RedHat customers want that these programs might not have natively? Can't do anything about that can they? I suppose they could ship the source and patches and build them during install to get around the "distributing modified binaries" clause, but what a pain.

Imagine if RedHat could only ship the Linus kernel binary, or you had to build the modified kernel during every installation (makes installation of large clusters quite a pain). The great thing about the license of the kernel is that RedHat can modify the kernel, give those changes back to the community at large as source, and to their customers as easy to use binaries.

I am not affilated with RedHat in anyway.

Re:A sad demise

[sharkey]

LOL. Even better!

--

Re:A sad demise

[sharkey]

I see a white mouse
And I want to paint it black.
No neutrals anymore,
I want it to turn black.

Apologies to the Stones.

--

Re:So they wont be hypocrites..

[mattbee]

Read the licenses of djbdns and qmail, and you'll see why we can't ship them: If a hole is discovered, we're not allowed to distribute a fixed version in binary form.

And the chances of qmail or djbdns having holes in is...? Anybody...? Approximately zero, I'd say. For people that don't know, the author guarantees cash rewards to anybody finding exploitable code in his software. The code is very very easy to audit, since most of the programs he writes are as small as they possibly can be (and split up into separate, mutually distrusting binaries), and use none of the standard I/O or string handling functions because djb doesn't trust them. Okay, so I'm biased, I love both programs, but this is someone who knows how to write secure code.

I think the reason most distros find djb's license so restrictive (not that I necessarily disagree) is his stance on distros not being allowed to shift files around to suit their view of the filesystem hierarchy-- e.g. no binary packages of qmail are allowed unless they put their binaries into /var/qmail/bin without exception. This of course irks most distros who have their own idea of where the mailer binaries go, and means they go towards similarly functional (though less secure) mailers with less restrictive licenses.

More frustration == more contributions?

[TraCer00t]

Ok, I'll be the first to admit that I use Netscape vs. Mozilla in Linux. Now, I hate the old Netscape as much as the next person (probably more) but maybe this will have a positive side effect.

Let's not forget most of the contributors to Mozilla are Netscape employees. You can call it Open Source all you like, but that's not the way it's supposed to work. I think having all those installations on the next release of RedHat will force everyone to have a second (or first) look, and hopefully, the bright (and lazy or bandwith throttled) among us might not bother downloading Netscape. And they'll get angry. And you know what? They just might fix it.

Laziness has been working against us - there's no incentive... perhaps this time laziness might actually help us. Hopefully, more users will mean a bigger contributor base.

Not just Wells Fargo..

[nyet]

Bank of America and Merril Lynch Online both
refuse SSL connections from Mozilla

Re:This makes sense

[Arandir]

It would have only been 100Megs but for all the linuxconf dependencies...

Re:Mozilla?

[doozy]

I disagree. I also run Windows as my primary OS; IE is by far the slowest browser I've used. For raw speed, nothing right now beats Opera. Although supposedly it sticks to the standards to most, a lot of pages dont look perfect in it. Mozilla is definitely getting MUCH better. I'm actually using it right now: much faster than IE6.0 in just about everything. These are my experiences; your mileage may vary. As an aside, does Slashdot use http/1.1 compression? One of my favorite game news sites now uses it, and everything loads perceptibly faster...

-1 (Misinformative)

[Chuck Chunder]

What part of Opera's licence prohibits distribution and bundling? The licence seems to specifically allow the software to be "freely copied, stored and distributed by any person or organization, providing that the person or organization meets the terms and conditions of this document in full."

I don't see anything in those terms and conditions that would prevent RedHat distributing it.

Re:Of course

[WNight]

Adding things like Chatzilla didn't delay Mozilla much, if at all. The developers working on Chatzilla, for the most part, are ones who joined the project for that purpose.

It does take some work from the core developers to write the interfaces, but then, imho, that's important. I want Mozilla to support many pluggins, I'll just be picky about which ones I install.

I don't specifically want a browser that's an email client, but I want one that you can closely integrate with one, which Mozilla is better at for their practice at integrating their own client, and Chatzilla, etc, etc.

Re:So they wont be hypocrites..

[DeathBunny]

djbdns and qmail are Free Software in the GNU sense of the word.

Near as I could tell from looking at Bernstein's web site you are not allowed to distribute modified binaries or source!

According to the FSF, one of the four freedoms provided by "Free" software is "The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public". A license that requires you to distribute your improvements as patches can barely be consideded to provide that freedom. Certainly that's enough reason for me to avoid it.

This belies the point that holes are NEVER discovered in Bernstein's software

A completely foolish statement. Even if it is true that there has never been a qmail or djbdns exploit, that does not prove there never will be one. Even OpenBSD has had exploits, and those guys are DAMN careful!

It is impossible to guarentee that a non-trivial piece of software does not have vulnerabilities. Not allowing distributors, or hell just concerned sys-admins from distributing sources or binaries that with any kind of improvements is just plain fucking rediculous. IMHO Bernstein is just being a jackass. His "Free software" is about as free as Microsoft's "Shared Source" bullshit.

Why don't you just come out and admit that marketing ploys are your only reasons for including or not including something in the dist.

What marketing ploy would that be? Thier attempt to actually follow thier stated values? Thier attempt to support the Free Software that spawned them?

You are a hypocrite.

In this case, they are not. You, however, are a fool.

Everyone's doing it

[lovegoat]

I think its pretty clear to every operating system company that once Mozilla is good enough quality it would take over. Netscape is a boring method for AOL/Netscape to try and force other agendas.

Other browsers just aren't there yet. Konquerer is good, but its still just a little too lightweight. (My impressions). Opera has always been okay, but not quite strong enough. Lynx is great!

Really, the only hope is a good Mozilla. And the latest release shows that it is VERY close to being industrial strength.

We Need Netscape

[Alpha Prime]

My understanding is that Mozilla will not support secure email (Verisign Certs). If that's the case, then our shop cannot use Mozilla.

Re:We Need Netscape

[roca]

LDAP address autocomplete has landed in Mozilla just recently. More LDAP support is coming fast.

Re:Mozilla?

[GregWebb]

I work with IE day in, day out. Woah, that thing has a buggy rendering engine.

It'll regularly ignore or miss out instructions, while throwing a complex table at it is a pretty good way to make it go nuts. One page I can think of will regularly produce an entirely useless and unrequested blank space, for example.

It regularly fails to send requests to the servers so I have to hammer on the link or hold the refresh key down to actually make it load the page. Its interface isn't anywhere near as powerful as Netscape's, either. Daft design, too -if I right-click to get a menu for a back command (for example) then I lose the options because it assumes it's got a link - but knows it hasn't because it doesn't give me the link options!

In many ways it's better than the alternatives, sure, but it's far from fantastic and I would happily dance on its grave. It's a lazy implementation in many ways and they could really do with some proper competition.

Re:Mozilla?

[GregWebb]

Re: tables, I mostly work with intranet sites so I can't link to the page. Seriously, though, try some more complex tables in IE and watch it fall over. If you really want some fun, mix spans, percent sizing, nested tables and images. Handcode to make sure the editor isn't working round known problems. Some of the results are just truly horrible.

Re: right clicks, click on the normal background. You get Back, Forward, Save Background As, Set As Wallpaper and so on.

Now, try the same but hit an image. A normal part of the page (especially when the page _is_ an image) but the menu changes. I now get (ghosted) Open Link, Open Link in New Window, Save Target As, Print Target and so on. An inappropriate and largely useless set.

I wish we could replace IE... Looking forward to trying Mozilla, hoping it proves more stable than NS6.

qmail isn't as secure as it pretends to be

[pthisis]

And the chances of qmail or djbdns having holes in is...? Anybody...? Approximately zero, I'd say. For people that don't know, the author guarantees cash rewards to anybody finding exploitable code in his software.

There are known DOSes in qmail that have been there for (literally) years with no attempt made to address them. DJB's response is always that DOSes aren't real holes and that it's impossible to be DOS-proof; there's an inkling of merit to that, but a DOS which allows an attacker with a substantially smaller pipe to swamp a server with overwhelming resources _should_ be fixed.

Use exim instead of qmail. Not only does it have no known security holes, but you can actually fix them if you find them.

http://packetstorm.securify.com/9901-exploits/qmai l-DoS-anonymous.txt

has a message from DJB on the subject from January. Excerpt: "Denial-of-service attacks have always been excluded from the qmail security guarantee"

Re:qmail isn't as secure as it pretends to be

[Russ Nelson]

There are known DOSes in qmail that have been there for (literally) years with no attempt made to address them.

This is a lie. Dan has said that those DOS attacks are preventable by using ulimit. Why should qmail reproduce a system facility?

Exim has had security holes. No thank you.

a DOS which allows an attacker with a substantially smaller pipe to swamp a server with overwhelming resources _should_ be fixed.

You are being ridiculous. You want to deny service to somebody with an SMTP server? Just start opening connections, and leave them idle. Eventually you'll either crash the machine or you'll run into a connection limit. For this "discovery" you expect Dan to pay you $500???
-russ

Re:Browser alternatives

[Iguanaphobic]

Complain about non-standard, closed source, etc...

"I'm sorry Mister Jones, but because 80% of the population is totally braindead, we are unable to show our regular movie on this flight. You'll have to settle for 'Elmo In New York'."
Or
"No, no, no... 80% of our readers don't know what grammar is, so you'll just have to relearn English."

Just because something is popular, doesn't make it correct.

Re:The sooner N4 dies with a spike through its hea

[voop]

...the better for all of us. It deserves to be decently buried at midnight in an unmarked grave, but that's about all.

Well, currently I need a N4 around. For some odd reason, my banks homebanking system consistantly makes Mozilla hang. At least with N4, I have a chance of using it before it crashes.

It's rather odd, though. The system is Java-based, yet with the java-plugin in mozilla, the behavior is roughly as follows: the java-applet loads, then starts, then mozilla stops rendering anything but the java-applet, then the java-applet hangs.

So while Mozilla has numerous good things, then from a strict users point of view, it's just not ready to replace N4,

Ohh, did I mention...I'm on Linux...

daemontools

[Russ Nelson]

So you don't like daemontools? Write your own then. Nobody else has. Daemontools fills a badly needed hole in the Unix toolset -- control of a daemon. Or are you going to tell me that:

kill -HUP `ps aux (or -ef) | grep processname | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}'

is reasonable?

Re:daemontools

[Enigma2175]

Actually, there is a Solaris type "pkill" in RedHat 7.x (will grep for a process name) if you are concerned about the difficulty of killing a process name. I like and use daemontools, but the ability to restart a process is not one of the reasons, as there are many ways to get that job done.


Enigma

"Weird" file locations

[Russ Nelson]

Ahhh, but the thing that you're missing is 1) there is no widely-accepted standard for file locations across all Unix platforms, 2) if you're actually paying attention, you'll see that Dan has changed his mind between qmail and djbdns (in other words, he's experimenting to see what's best), and 3) what seems weird to you seems normal to someone trying to help qmail users. I don't have to ask where you've installed qmail. I KNOW where you've installed qmail. I can give you exact shell script commands telling you what file to modify.

And in particular, it doesn't matter whether you've installed qmail yourself in /usr/local, or whether you've installed it via an RPM in /usr. The license doesn't permit binaries to install it in weird places.

Yes, I realize that the "system stuff goes in /usr, locally-installed stuff goes in /usr/local" idea makes a kind of sense. But there are other ideas that make more sense, such as "Package foo gets installed in location bar", where "bar" is constant no matter what flavor Unix you're running.

The alternative is to impose extra support costs on the qmail support community, for what benefit? So that YOU don't have to think qmail is installed in a weird place? That's worth nothing to me -- certainly not the cost of having to wonder where in the hell you installed qmail on your version of Unix.
-russ

Re:So they wont be hypocrites..

[Russ Nelson]

If a hole is discovered, you will immediately go to Dan Bernstein and he will pay you $500. Now, having done that, do you think he'll let that security hole sit around for one microsecond more than necessary? The $500 security guarantee is not there to compensate you for your costs. It's to guarantee that Dan takes security seriously.
-russ
p.s. Erik Troan said the same thing four years ago. There has not been a security hole in qmail in that whole time. So, in hindsight, Redhat could have been shipping qmail that whole time, and never had to worry about fixing a qmail hole. How many sendmail holes have there been in that time?

Re:So they wont be hypocrites..

[Russ Nelson]

Every time I look at qmail, I see too many cool/needed modifications that will ONLY be distributed in a pain-in-the-ass patch format.

I do not believe this to be a necessity. People write patches because that is what they are used to doing. Instead, people should look at qmail as an email toolset, with a bunch of documented API's, just as Unix has documented API's and people write programs to use them.

Forbidding the change of file and directory locations has no conceivable security function,

You're quite right. The purpose is to keep qmail standard across all platforms. Nobody else tries to do it. I believe that it is a worthy goal. Often when people give answers on the qmail mailing list, they do so with shell commands. This is only possible because the helper knows where the helpee has installed qmail.
-russ

FTP and Finger anyone?

[ajs]

Back in late '87, folks would talk about network security in the way you talk about gopher extermination on the east coast. "They" have to do network security, but "we" run UNIX. UNIX is secure, there's never been a major break-in on a UNIX system from the network that wasn't due to misconfiguration or social engineering.

Of course, there had been, but folks kept it quiet. Why air dirty laundry. Most people who worked on the code knew there were holes, but they weren't top priority.

Enter Robert "Wormer" Morris. He decided to blow the lid on this show, and made one little mistake. The rest is history....

One day, Mr. Bernstien will make a mistake. Everyone does. When that day comes, I dearly hope that I'm not using an OS that would take it for granted that such a mistake will never happen.

Don't get me wrong. I like the man's coding ethic, I just think he should let someone else package, license and distribute his software for him, so that it promotes, not prevents others from using his software (in the same way that RMS should let someone else do his public appearences ;-)

Re:Huh?

[timothy]

bertok wrote: "".9 very nice"? What have you been using until now that was [gasp] worse than Mozilla 0.9? It's the worst browser I've ever used."

A: heh -- Mozilla M12, M13, M14, M15, M16, M17, M18, .8, .8.1+ ... (I think that's the right sequence, or was there a .7 instead of M18? Forget right now ;)

.9 is really much nicer than all that preceded to my experience. I don't find IE any better, but I suppose I don't use it very often, perhaps there are features I ought to beg for in Mozilla;)

.9 does not crash every minute or so, I happen to prefer the aesthetics of its design to IE's (esp. the new Modern theme! :) ) and I'm not finding the visual glitches that I used to find in previous versions. The speed is fine, at least on this mid-grade but fairly nice laptop (PIII 650, 128MB RAM), and there's still plenty of optimizing to do, so (one hopes) this is anything but a minimum config.

Konqui has some advantages, too, but this is not bad, not bad at all. NS 4.7X offers no advantage over Mozilla I can see, and crashes a lot more (in my experience thus far).

timothy

Re:So they wont be hypocrites..

[MadAhab]

The consequence of getting rooted is more than $1000 of my time. And until he pays up to someone, I have no reason to believe that it's a meaningful guarantee. I value a good response to security issues more than the claim of absolute security. Not too often, of course ;-)

You realize that good security practice dictates that we can now never accept anything you ever say on the subject of security again, right?

Anyone who states that anything can be trusted absolutely does not understand security. Guaranteed.

Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.

Re:So they wont be hypocrites..

[MadAhab]

Never? Never is a long time. Security practice states that "never" is sooner than you think. Security practice states never to trust anyone absolutely. And if a bug is EVER found, you are 100% wrong. So unless Bernstein is willing to GA-RAWN-TEE with his real finances that this event will NEVER, EVER, EVER occur, then Red Hat is only being prudent by declining that risk. Their history with BIND only strengthens the point that binary updates have to be planned for.

Every time I look at qmail, I see too many cool/needed modifications that will ONLY be distributed in a pain-in-the-ass patch format. Bernstein doesn't seem to care about his users' needs, only about his software's security reputation. It's his right, but it's reason enough for me not to run qmail; YMMV. It doesn't make the resulting binary any more secure, just more time-consuming to administer. If the qmail patch list were carefully integrated by him as options, I'd feel better. Forbidding the change of file and directory locations has no conceivable security function, and only strengthens the notion that he is a talented coder who is also an eccentric and a pain in the ass to deal with. Again, it's his right, but it doesn't make me feel safe relying on such an arbitrary person.

No marketing ploys, just practical decisions.

Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.

Re:It's about time

[throx]

Somebody told me I shouldn't log in as root all the time, so I just changed my .bashrc to have a 'su -' at the end instead, and then set root's password to nothing.

Is that bad?

Re:Is there added value?

[roca]

Mozilla has LDAP address auto-complete checked in and working now, although the UI isn't all there yet. More LDAP stuff is on the wap.

Re:LDAP Support?

[roca]

LDAP address autocomplete has landed. More is on the way.

Re:This is a good thing???

[roca]

> Soon you'll have different browsers in the Linux
> world to those found in the corporate mainstream.

It's really the same browser. Same code base, so everyone has a common interest in improving it. Same support for standards, so presenting a united front to Web developers (this includes Konqueror and Opera too as a matter of fact).

The only significant difference from Netscape's point of view is that they lose revenue from the buttons and bookmarks they ship with their branded browser.

Re:Mozilla

[jazman_777]

The last time I used Mozilla was around a year ago. I have a generic 350MHz box with 32 megs of RAM. It was too slow to be useable, though only just. Have things become better? I'd like to give it another shot, but I also want to know what to expect.

Old mozilla: think snail swimming in molasses in winter.

New mozilla: think slug swimming in molasses in summer.

Actually, the latest is _much_ faster.
--

Re:Thanks for talking out of your ass

[QuantumG]

re: B, that's bullshit. Fixing bugs is infinitely parallelizable and putting developers on the email client takes away from the bug fixing effort, it also adds more code to fix.

Re:bundle this, bundle that.

[MustardMan]

Heh. I have a button on my gnome taskbar to do the same thing. My only major netscape lockups are the java applets at pr0n sites, tho

Re:bundle this, bundle that.

[SirSlud]

> worthless KDE libs only for Konq

Well, if the libs are worthless, doesn't that make Konq worthless?

My feeling on all this is that IE took years to get good. Netscape 4.7 -> Moz/Nscape6 is the rebirth, and it will be a few years before we can judge them against the ubermature IE.

The relevance of the post is that the biggest Linux distro is abandoning the biggest *nix Browser. While that doesn't mean that you like either, it doesn't diminish the relevance of the post. While Mozilla may suck, at least this indicates a major push and/or reason to guide it towards unsuckiness in future versions .. the biggest distro is relying on this. Neccessity is the mother of invention and all that ...

Re:Thanks for talking out of your ass

[dimator]

A) If you don't like the email client, don't use it. It's not taking up your memory or CPU if you just fire up the browser. Does a little envelope icon in the bottom left bother you that much?

B) If you're going to argue that working on the non-Browser sides of the project prevents everyone from working on the browser, that's also incorrect. There are teams. Each team works on their side of the project. If everyone was dumped onto the browser team, NO work would get done, because there is an optimal size.

C) If anything, the other side projects at least have uncovered many bugs, performance knocks, etc, in the UI system that have been fixed.

I happen to think that the mail client is pretty damn good, and on-par with other free clients. The standard support is there, the IMAP is there, the HTML-input is there, the multiple-accounts, the filters, etc. But I'm not exactly impartial. ;)


--

Thanks for talking out of your ass

[dimator]

then worry about the 200 applications they want to build into it. But instead they let the engineers run the show which will ultimatly be their downfall.

I interned at Netscape last summer. I worked on the Mail/News client. Let me assure you that there are most definitely phases to the project, and its not just a bunch of engineers sticking in whatever they want. Whatever new idea I had, it was shot down, because we were focusing on bugs at the time. All feature work was put on the back burner. Instead, I, and everyone else, worked on critical bugs.

And let me also assure you that the other projects in Mozilla (IRC, etc) were not created when an engineer said "Screw my bugs, I'm going to work on this." They were created when someone had some free time, or an outside contributor delivered some code.

Did NS6 ship bug free? No, but don't blame that on random engineering if you don't know what you're talking about.

--

Question

[selectspec]

Maybe I am ignorant, but for Redhat, why would anyone bother with Netscape 6.*? I mean who cares? You get the latest Mozilla and whatever plugins you need and all done. This is not news to RedHat users.

How about Galeon?

[antdude]

A friend told me about this Web browser. Galeon looks nice too. It is based on Mozilla and faster. I played with it on my Pentium 2 300 Mhz (128 MB; RH Linux v7.1). It does seem faster than Mozilla without all the bells and whistles. And also saves CPU, RAM, and other resources unlike Mozilla and Netscape.

I look forward to receiving replies.

Re:So they wont be hypocrites..

[Kishar]

You forget, of course, that Red Hat's *primary* distribution method is in binary packages (.rpms) with source being secondary (.srpms). If the license in question prohibits binary re-distribution, then Red Hat obviously can't make it part of the distro. Part of Powertools, perhaps, but not the (.rpm-based) distro. This makes all your points - good, bad, or indifferent - all the same: moot.
--

Room for more stuff....

[blogan]

If they take out Netscape, that means they'll have enough room to put Afterstep back in.

Re:Netscape

[LordNimon]

The OS/2 version of Mozilla 0.9 can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/releases/mozilla 0.9/mozilla-i386-pcos2-vacpp-0.9.zip. In other words, you're a moron.

BTW, feel free to ask the Mozilla team what they think about the OS/2 programmers they work with.
--
Lord Nimon

Try sylpheed

[Ukab the Great]

It's the best graphical linux mail client that exists. Much stabler than Evolution and far less feature bloat. You don't have to pay 100's of dollars for it ('cause it's free). Though if you insist on doing so, I'd gladly accept that amount as a finder's fee ;)

Re:So they wont be hypocrites..

[blakestah]

djbdns and qmail are both under the DJB license, a license of their creator. You arent as free to do what you want with them as GNU applications.

You get the source. You can re-distribute it. You can modify it for your needs. You can distribute binaries if and only if the binary installation works and maintains the intended directory structure of the source build.

You can modify and distribute patches SEPARATELY from the original.

If you read the GNU free software page, all freedoms are assured to the user of the software. Just not to the distributors, since they cannot distribute a modified binary.

Of course, qmail and djbdns have no holes. Guaranteed. So there is no need to distribute a modified binary. Anyone who claims otherwise has not dealt with sendmail and BIND over the years. These djb programs are a blessing, and the user is assured of all essential GNU freedoms. That ought to be enough. Heck, on my redhat boxes I consider them the least buggy pieces of software on the machine, and I will gladly build them from source whenever I need a dns or mta.

Re:So they wont be hypocrites..

[blakestah]

Near as I could tell from looking at Bernstein's web site you are not allowed to distribute modified binaries or source!

You are, of course, allowed to distribute modified sources as patches separate from the original source.

Even if it is true that there has never been a qmail or djbdns exploit, that does not prove there never will be one. Even OpenBSD has had exploits, and those guys are DAMN careful!

DJB redefines damn careful. Look. Is it better to have distributed sendmail and BIND for the last 20 years, or DJB's software ?? In one case you have remote root exploit after remote root exploit, and you can distribute modified binaries. In the other case, you have secure software that is open source, but does not allow distribution of modifications.

Which case do you think is easier to admin ???

It is impossible to guarentee that a non-trivial piece of software does not have vulnerabilities. Not allowing distributors, or hell just concerned sys-admins from distributing sources or binaries that with any kind of improvements is just plain fucking rediculous. IMHO Bernstein is just being a jackass. His "Free software" is about as free as Microsoft's "Shared Source" bullshit.

DJB's software provides all the GNU essential freedoms to the user. The only issue is that modifications can only be distributed as source patches.

As I recall, QT 1.0 was issued with more restrictions than that, and was WIDELY distributed by SuSE, Mandrake, et al. With QT there was the additional restriction that anything linking to the software had to be open source or buy a license from Trolltech. In fact, QT STILL has that restriction.

What is more free then - the GPL'd QT or DJB's programs ? On what high moral ground should someone stand to distribute crappy exploitable but GPL programs compared to DJB licensed programs ? Who is really doing a service to the Free Software community ?

Re:So they wont be hypocrites..

[blakestah]

Of course, qmail and djbdns have no holes. Guaranteed.

You realize that good security practice dictates that we can now never accept anything you ever say on the subject of security again, right?

My security advice will forever be limited to being no better than the security of djb's software.

Now that is a real limitation :)

Re:So they wont be hypocrites..

[blakestah]

I like Linux a lot and use it at home and at work. (Mandrake at home and RedHat at work). In both cases I like Linux because it helps me get my work done, not because I like fucking around with it (which I do, but i can't let that get in the way of my work). So I rely on distributors to make my life easier. Anything that makes life harder for them makes life harder.

This shows a basic misunderstanding of the djb software.

Qmail build and configure: trivial.
Sendmail build: a reaosnable feat.
Sendmail configure: well - let's put it this way. Eric Allman invented his own language because the sendmail.conf syntax is so convoluted.

Djbdns build and configure: trivial
BIND build: pretty easy
BIND configure: Totally non-trivial. A royal pain.

The mean time between required sendmail or BIND upgrades for security issues in the last 20 years: I dunno, but I am guessing no more than a few months.

The mean time between security upgrades for qmail or djbdns: infinite. It has never happened.

I like free software as much as or more than the next guy. But I cannot tolerate monolithic buggy binaries that have the remote root compromise of the month. It is just plain silly. Djb's software provides more than enough basic freedoms for 99% of all users. As he states, netscape was not open source, and was shipped by nearly everyone. QT 1.0 has a more restrictive license than djbdns.

But the thing I appreciate most about qmail and djbdns is not the license or the security. The programs just keep running. They have never needed checking, ever. They have never failed, never required a HUP, nothing. It is unbelievable to me that they work so well.

Re:So they wont be hypocrites..

[blakestah]

If you don't trust RedHat to make modifications then a) why are you using their distribution at all?, and b) what's to stop you fetching the "official" version from the author anyhow?

If all they do is add dependencies to their binary build, it is not worth so much. BIND has had a HORRIBLE security record in the past ten years. Sendmail was HORRIBLE in their security record from 1985-95.

Now, why would I want to use such a package instead of djb's packages ?? I wouldn't. I would take a secure package that provides me, the user, the source, over a GPL package that is a buggy piece of crap anyday.

The real question is, why would RedHat choose to distribute GPL packages with horrible security records, and suppress packages that provide source code that have not a single remote root compromise between them ??

The source to djb packages is open. Reverse engineering of cpoyrighted materials is totally legal. The fact that RedHat chooses to distribute buggy insecure server packages instead of DOING something about it says a lot.

And me, I will still use djbdns and qmail. I use them because I, as a user, have all the freedoms I desire. I use them because I don't have to worry about getting broken into. And that is the single biggest issue for admin'ing boxes. No one likes to reinstall and track down a cracker. And with djb programs, the likelihood that you will ever have to do so is reduced considerably.

And that is worth A LOT.

Re:So they wont be hypocrites..

[blakestah]

You are a hypocrite. djbdns and qmail are Free Software in the GNU sense of the word. You say

Read the licenses of djbdns and qmail, and you'll see why we can't ship them: If a hole is discovered, we're not allowed to distribute a fixed version in binary form.

This belies the point that holes are NEVER discovered in Bernstein's software. Besides that, you can provide the source. You can modify it for personal use. You can freely re-distribute the source. You can distribute source patches SEPARATELY from the djb source.

GNU freedoms are

The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).

Clearly djb's programs meet this.

The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

Clearly this one is met as well.

The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).

This one is true also.

The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits. (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

Of course, you have to distribute patches separately, and cannot distribute modified binaries.

Look, you guys at RedHat have shipped more BIND installations that have resulted in remote root compromises than anyone else. I have personally had to re-install two machines for this reason. (and no, I didn't do the original install). Bernstein writes good free software. You can safely distribute a binary and NEVER worry about finding holes in it. Of course, any improvements in the source would have to be approved by Bernstein before being broadly distributed.

But some of us consider that a good thing.

Why don't you just come out and admit that marketing ploys are your only reasons for including or not including something in the dist.

Re:So they wont be hypocrites..

[blakestah]

In particular the "DJB license" does not provide "freedom 3": "The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits", therefore DJB's license is not a free software license by the FSF's standards. For the same reason it doesn't conform to the OSI definition either.

You are quite free to distribute patches to the djb source, so long as they are distributed separately. The FSF freedoms do not include re-distributing under the same terms as those you received. That is part of OSI and DFSG. With DJB software, you have the source, you can use it, you can modify it, you can re-distribute the original as source or binary (provided the binary does not change the directory structure and works "as intended" from the original tarball). You can also distribute patches. This qualifies as improving the software and distributing your improvements. These are the FSF essential freedoms. It doesn't make a specific point about distributing modified binaries, except in the long text after stating the basic freedoms. Note that QT 1.0 came under a more restrictive license than this...

Now then, I do not feel as a user that I am so inclined to avoid software when I am given a copy that I own. A copy that I can hack, modify, and a copy that I can distribute, as I received it, to others.

If distributions as so concerned about holes that they will not distribute djb software because they cannot distribute a modified binary - then they ought to take a good long hard look in the mirror and repeat the words "sendmail, BIND, wu-ftp, oh my" over and over again until they get it.

Crappy remote root compromisable software that is GPL'd is not worth the bits used to ship it. That has included at times wu-ftp, sendmail, and BIND multiple times each. That RedHat is free to distribute a modified binary is little solace to me as I re-install a machine. Heck, they do not even do a security review, or if they do, they are not very good at it. The cost of a single remote root compromise is well over $1000 to the admin. The cost of using qmail and djbdns is free. The cost of sleeping better at night - priceless.

The sooner N4 dies with a spike through its head..

[TomatoMan]

...the better for all of us. It deserves to be decently buried at midnight in an unmarked grave, but that's about all.

Of course, *nix users are probably the last people that need to be told this, but every little bit helps.

N4 is the single biggest ball-and-chain around the ankles of people otherwise dying to write quality, standards-compliant code. Now we just have to get the mac users to give it up, most Win people are using IE5, which is good enough for the most part.

TomatoMan

Re:Is there added value?

[teg]

Netscape 4.x has LDAP support, but Netscape 6 hasn't .

Re:So they wont be hypocrites..

[teg]

You mention Qt - and we fought the ideals we (well, they - I wasn't working there then) believed in and put resources into a free desktop: GNOME.

While QT may be free now, it (and thus KDE built on top of it) certainly wasn't free then - and we took the consequence of that, opening markets for people who cared less for principles and open source and more about giving a group of users the KDE they wanted.

Re:So they wont be hypocrites..

[teg]

Read the licenses of djbdns and qmail, and you'll see why we can't ship them: If a hole is discovered, we're not allowed to distribute a fixed version in binary form.

As for Netscape, there really wasn't an alternative when we added it - there now is. qmail and djbdns, OTOH, would have a hard time making it in anyway as there are other alternatives with better licenses. Qmail isn't a "must have", when we already have sendmail, postfix and exim

Re:So they wont be hypocrites..

[Stephen Samuel]

I'd love to see someone develop a truely open-source replacement to Qmail. It would make life soo much easier. One nice thing about Qmail is that it is built modularly, so it would be possible to replace it bit by bit. No need for monolithic replacement like for Sendmail.

Great -- qmail has no holes. Unfortunately, it is A PIG to setup , install, test etc. It may not have security holes, but it does have it's strangnesses. If you fix that strangeness, you cannot distribute the fixed binaries. You have to distribute the broken binaries, or you distribute the sources and the patches to the sources (separately) and pretty much force people to build the fixed version themselves.

That's what the Redhat RPM of Qmail does... (it has to... The UID of the qmail user is compiled into the binary.... That's one of the things that's wrong with Qmail -- but it's not a security hole, so he doesn't have to fix it, or pay out his bounty for it.)

OH, you don't have a compiler? Too bad. You can always use the broken version, just reseve UID's 404 ~410 for qmail. OH. You already have users at those UIDs? Just move them.

A bison Armoured Personel Carrier doesn't have any holes either (well, OK, one -- but it's not easy to exploit) but you don't see many people driving them around. The truth is that some people care about more than just security.

That having been said, I believe the the concept behind the basic design of Qmail is wonderful -- and much more in keeping with the phylosophy behind Unix than the monolithic Sendmail. Write small programs that connect to each other in a modular way and don't necessarily trust each other... If you want different functionality, you simply replace one of the modules (or add an option). Qmail does this. It does it nicely. That has probably done more to keep it alive than it's security.

I'm just finishing an install of Qmail on a machine. My biggest complaint is that building it is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. You get the DJB original sources. You merge in the 'standard' patches (which he will never merge into his sources [or hasn't in the last 3 years]). Then you add in the other pieces that you want and pray that they work together the way that they have for other people.

It's a nasty nit-picking job. It's a good bit easier if you can get away with the virgin DJB sources, but the truth is that many people can't. Unfortunately, nobody has the right to distribute an improved version other than DJB himself and he's simply not willing.

For me, it feels like having an MS binary with the source code encased in a plexiglass case. The most you can really use the source code for is to prod it to figure out why the binaries aren't working the way you want them to (then figure out a workaround that doesn't involve changing the source code).
--

Qmail bugs are not security holes

[Stephen Samuel]

I think we need to differentiate here. Qmail does not have any known security holes (at least -- none that can't be pawned off on the OS). This is different than saying that it doesn't have bugs.

The most obvious bug of qmail is that it's dependant on running as a specific UID. (and that UID is based on various user NAMES when you compiled the binary). If you get a version that works and ship off a copy of the binary to a friend, it's going to BREAK unless the qmail users have the same UIDs as they did on my machine.

Can you understand how that is going to get in the way of RedHat distributing a binary Qmail RPM? If my system has users who's UIDs conflict with qmail, I'd have 3 choices (I can't count).

1. Install qmail with the same UID as the 'live' users and hope that those users can be trusted to not fvck with qmail
2. change the UIDs of any user conflicting with qmail uids, and deal with the bitching that That causes -- especially if we have a heavily networked filesystem.
3. Install the C compiler and compile a "fixed" qmail .
4. Use Sendmail (or exim or .... )

Redhat chose #4.
--

Re:So they wont be hypocrites..

[DeepDarkSky]

This is an unbelievable thread of flames about licenses and Dan Bernstein's license. To me, it's pretty simple. I have no problems getting qmail, installing it and make it work (ok, I have technical difficulties of my own, but nothing in his license prevents me from using his software). I have downloaded a couple of patches that works on the source level to his software to support some DNS foolishness that are not attributable to his software. I am personally a fan of his software.

In the sense that I can obtain, compile, install and use his program from source code I download from his site, I consider that "free" in every sense I need. So I'm not allowed, under his license, to redistribute a binary form of his software with different install locations or binary patches to other people. Fine, I'm willing to accept that. It doesn't prevent anybody else from getting and using the software.

In FreeBSD, I found that qmail is in their ports collection. Ports works at the source level, able to get the source from the original author's site, extract and compile the program, and install it in whatever place appropriate. Perhaps RedHat can adapt a different method of using RPMs to distribute the software using the source, compile and install after extracting the software.

I can also appreciate that, in some ways, disallowing binary patches will ensure that the program will not be patched in such ways that Dan cannot possibly be responsible for.

MS Windows & Linux Solution.

[deragon]

Since we are on the topic, I wonder what new browswer/email client I could use that would exist and work on both MS Windows and Linux.

Currently, I use Netscape 4.7. It is shitty, but on my Linux partition, I have simlinks to my vfat partition for the bookmarks and my email.

This allows me to access both my bookmarks and emails on the two OS, without any hassle of importing/exporting. I dual boot. For me, this is a very important feature and which forces me to stick with what I have. I am convinced that there are better alternative on each OS, but I REALLY need to have access to my email and bookmarks on both OS.

Is Mozilla going to work the same way under MS-Windows and Linux? Are the configuration files, bookmarks and email mailboxes be the same?

Anybody else with the same dilemna?

A sad demise

[DrSkwid]

so farewell then Netscape 4.7,
You were an annoying program,
Almost as annoying as vendor specific tags,
I'll still have to test with you,
But I'll paint my mouse black as a mark of respect.
.oO0Oo.

Re:A sad demise

[Spock the Vulcan]

I see a white mouse
And I want to paint it black.
No neutrals anymore,
I want it to turn black.

I see an iMac
And I want to paint it black
No colors anymore
I want them to turn black.

Re:A sad demise

[wroot]

Geez, you didn't have to wait for Redhat's decision or anything.

rpm -e netscape-common netscape-navigator

(dpkg -P netscape
if you believe in being free)

Re:Who needs Mozilla?!?

[vex24]

Add to that the fact that KMail doesn't support IMAP, and you're in a real quandry. What's this P-O-P nonsense? Isn't that a bit outdated?

Mozilla 0.9 and Java Support

[DennisZeMenace]

Okay, i took a little time to setup Java support with Mozilla 0.9 and came up with this page.

I downloaded j2re 1.3 for Linux, and installed the RPM. Setting up the symbolic link in /usr/mozilla/plugins/ to the netscape 6 java plugin was all it took (note it HAS to be a symbolic link). So it's working very well! For example, the Yahoo baseball Java game channel works fine.

Overall, Mozilla 0.9 seems to be as functional as Netscape 4.7. Very impressive!

Re: Red Hat: Who Needs Netscape

[Explo]

And IE 5.5 is the most stable browser I've ever used.

Then you haven't ever used Lynx.

Re:Opera

[shren]

Even if they signed an agreement with Opera, to distribute a fast closed-source ad ridden browser with Red Hat - I doubt their corporate customers would dig having to support it. Seeing as Red Hat can't provide security fixes or patches to it to repair or improve it, it doesn't align with their open source philosophy.

A little bird told me that Opera's primary customers are companies that won't use *any* free software. This includes a great many Fortune 500 companies. Thier rationale is that if something goes wrong with free software, they can't say "Fix this now or expect a phone call from legal" to a free software company.

Re:bundle this, bundle that.

[null_session]

Mozilla is miserable (crashes, doesn't work, etc)

This was once true, but have you use it lately? Since Mozilla .8 came out I have seen it crash once, and I use it for more than 10 hours/day, every day. I recently switched to .9 and am nothing but impressed.

I see your point but I think it's outdated.

The things I'm interested in out of this article are that 1) RH said that this was a question of philosophy - good move for those that argue OSS as a business model. and 2) the writer completely skipped the fact that Netscape 6 == Mozilla .6. I think that this says a lot about when commercial companies consider something worthy of non beta release vs. OSS programmers consider it to be worthy of non beta release.

failure of open source?

[Bad_CRC]

How does this reflect on Netscape's decision to open the netscape source? How would it affect other companies? The result in this particular situation is that netscape, with all it's advertising, all it's preset home portal home page, etc. Is out a little business and a few customers.

Good or bad?

________

Re:failure of open source?

[the_2nd_coming]

Dude, Netscape opend up their source because they belived that OSS development would fix it and make it much better. this has proven true with the mozilla project. and Netscape will reep the benifits by making mozilla their browzer engine.

They are to use Mozilla ???

[Salsaman]

But but...how can they ? Mozilla is dead, I read it on suck.com

Re:So they wont be hypocrites..

[Drone-X]

The only problem is that djbdns and qmail (and Real Player) are not Open Source or Free Software. Consider it the only software poluting the Free Software spirit of the Red Hat distro (assuming the original poster is correct, I don't use RH).

Both programs were written (started) by D.J. Bernstein. You might also be interested in his djbdns security guarantee. It seems to be good software but it's just not Free.

Who needs Netscape? Who needs MOZILLA????

[The Big Bopper]

Who needs Mozilla? Red Hat 7.1 ships with a very very nice browser called Konqueror. It's blazingly fast and so far more stable for me than either Mozilla or Netscape.

Progeny Debian does this

[Lord Ender]

They aren't the first to ship mozilla as the main browser. Progeny Debian comes with Mozilla is the default web browser. Netscpe 4 is also there, as is konq, but Mozilla is the default. And it works well. Really well. If you haven't tried Progeny, check it out.

Re:Is there added value?

[Misch]

Navigator has: (To my knowledge) Direct support for LDAP. That's what I miss in Mozilla. I need LDAP support to keep my group's e-mail distribution running smoothly. Other than that though, I don't know what else.

Re:Opera

[PatJensen]

Unfortunately, that is not what Red Hat is looking for. If you would have read the attached article, it stated they were looking for is their model fits in with Red Hat's goals.

"Mozilla has the exact same look and feel of the current Netscape browser, but officials said that the reason to go strictly with Mozilla is that its open-source development model has a better fit with Red Hat's philosophy."

Even if they signed an agreement with Opera, to distribute a fast closed-source ad ridden browser with Red Hat - I doubt their corporate customers would dig having to support it. Seeing as Red Hat can't provide security fixes or patches to it to repair or improve it, it doesn't align with their open source philosophy.

They can make a Red Hat `branded' version of Mozilla using its components once it goes 1.0 and I would not be surprised to see them do it. Either way, Mozilla is looking really nice 0.9 and I am typing this post using it right now.

-Pat

Re:Browser alternatives

[tshak]

Opera I haven't tried but it does have the problem of not being free in any sense of the word.

Opera is FREE as in FREE BEER with a banner. It is a very reasonable $40 for no banner. It really is the fastest browser on earth, and I have only found one minor bug when rendering pages (in the CSS1 implementation).

I'm all for open source, but I have absolutely NO PROBLEM PAYING FOR GOOD SOFTWARE! I also LOVE the fact that both Opera, and Eudora Pro (others as well I'm sure) give you the option to have full functionality for FREE with a banner if you don't want to pay. I believe they're both worth their price tag, but if I need a couple months before I have the money for them, I can still use them. (NOTE: I've found that Opera on Win32 is more mature than Opera on Linux - my positive comments are a reflection of my win32 experience.)

Re:Is there added value?

[Alien54]

I haven't used either Navigator or Mozilla for quite some time. What does Navigator have that Mozilla doesn't for someone like me who doesn't need another mail client or web design software?

All that added integration with Internet Shopping, courtesy of AOL, etc.

Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip

Why not...

[jmu1]

Have Opera, Mozilla and Konq. bundled? Then the browsers would have no room for complaints! All are great, Mozilla has come a long way. I have been following all three browsers for a long time now, and I'll have to say that what is out there now is awesome. But I must say, I do like the sound of Mozilla being the default browser in RH.
cheers!

Re:Why not...

[Cyph]

Well, they can bundle Mozilla and Konqueror, but they cannot legally put Opera in the distro, because of it's license. Although that does seem like a nice idea.

This makes sense

[dlittled]

Seeing as how RedHat is very well-known for their stripped-down, non-bloated installs, it seems like the natural thing for them to do.

Re:Browser alternatives

[RedWizzard]

Oh, I agree. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with Opera being closed source, ad-ware, or anything. I really admire them for being able to compete so well. I'm just saying all the browsers have their pros and cons.

Re:So they wont be hypocrites..

[RedWizzard]

It doesn't make a specific point about distributing modified binaries, except in the long text after stating the basic freedoms.

I'm glad you read the page but what's your point? They state the four types of freedom and then they describe in detail what they mean. Part of that description is "The freedom to redistribute copies must include binary or executable forms of the program, as well as source code. (It is ok if there is no way to produce a binary or executable form, but people must have the freedom to redistribute such forms should they find a way to make them.)" Clearly DJB's terms don't qualify. That's my point: you said that "the user is assured of all essential GNU freedoms". That's not true, and to say otherwise is to misrepresent the FSF's position.

That RedHat is free to distribute a modified binary is little solace to me as I re-install a machine.

If you don't trust RedHat to make modifications then a) why are you using their distribution at all?, and b) what's to stop you fetching the "official" version from the author anyhow?

Re:So they wont be hypocrites..

[RedWizzard]

If you read the GNU free software page, all freedoms are assured to the user of the software. Just not to the distributors, since they cannot distribute a modified binary.

If you'd read the page you're referring to you'd have realised that one of the freedoms the FSF demands is the freedom to redistribute. The FSF doesn't distinguish between users and distributors. In particular the "DJB license" does not provide "freedom 3": "The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits", therefore DJB's license is not a free software license by the FSF's standards. For the same reason it doesn't conform to the OSI definition either.

Of course, qmail and djbdns have no holes. Guaranteed. So there is no need to distribute a modified binary. ...the user is assured of all essential GNU freedoms.

What if I want to add features? Port to another architecture? There are plenty of worthwhile modifications that aren't security fixes. But if I make one of them I'm not allowed share it without DJB's permission. That doesn't match "the user is assured of all essential GNU freedoms". Not at all.

Re:Browser alternatives

[RedWizzard]

IE (via WINE) - Microsoft's browser Konqueror - KDE's browser Nautilus - Gnome's browser Opera - Standalone browser

4 out of 4 of these are better than Mozilla right now.

Bullshit. IE via WINE is horrible, and Nautilus embeds Mozilla in the most basic form (e.g. not right click context menu), so can hardly be considered better. Konqueror is very good although it's behind Mozilla in some respects (notably Javascript support), but way ahead in others (especially resource usage). Opera I haven't tried but it does have the problem of not being free in any sense of the word.

Are you SURE you've tried 0.9?

[abe ferlman]

I've been using 0.9 since it was announced a few days ago, and I have to tell you it's MUCH faster than the previous versions, and doesn't make me miss IE at all. I'm slowly making the conversion from using windows for all my desktop tasks to using only free software, and not having a browser that could run effectively on my redhat 6.2 box with only 64 megs of ram has, until now, been a real pain. But 0.9 runs very nicely with my setup, and I'm not sure what you think would make it better. I think they've figured the big picture rather nicely, and their plans are beginning to come together. You may not be a troll, but you're wrong. Bryguy when neverwinter nights comes out, my conversion will be complete :)

Re:So they wont be hypocrites..

[Elbows]

I don't think the original poster (teg) was arguing that they weren't free... just that they are impractical for a distribution. RedHat needs to be able to distribute all the software in the distributions as RPMS, _and_ they need to be able to fix security holes promptly, and distribute those fixes as RPMS as well.
So, if there was a hole in djbdns, and the original author doesn't fix it (or doesn't fix it fast enough), RedHat is out of luck because they can't distribute their own fix as an RPM. There's also the issue of not being able to relocate files when you package it, which is also annoying to a distro maker trying to organize things consistently.

Now, the chance of a security hole in djbdns may be really small. I'm not familiar with the software myself. But, I can see why RedHat wants to have the ability to respond flexibly to holes if they do occur.

Re:Mozilla?

[ackthpt]

Internet Explorer on Windows is the best & fastest browser there is, period.

Nice to know, in case I decide to run Windows under Linux...

--

Chat Clients

[MarkCarson]

Netscape, being an AOL product includes AOL Instant Messanger (AIM) but does not have an IRC client. Conversely, the Mozilla release does not have AIM but does have an IRC client (Chatzilla).

The other item is that Mozilla is updated and debugged more frequently than Netscape 6.x

Jamie Zawinski, is -I'm sure- Thrilled about this

[hillct]

I'm sure Jamie Zawinskiis thrilled about this. It seemed that he took it as a personal failure that Mozilla.org didn't take off in it's first year of operation. In the last 6 months it seems to have been holding it's own and here's one of the proofs of that theory. Keep up the good work guys.

--CTH

--

Re:So they wont be hypocrites..

[DaSyonic]

Oh, Sorry, no real story, but heres how it goes

djbdns and qmail are both under the DJB license, a license of their creator. You arent as free to do what you want with them as GNU applications. As such, RedHat has stated it will never distribute them unless the license changes. However, They distribute Netscape, Which is worse than djbdns/qmail. You can see more on D. J. Bernstein's site

Re:fp

[diamondc]

umm.. it was no big deal compiling konqueror for solaris. the only tricky part was configuring qt, since there's weird build options in the beginning. but once qt is installed, installing kdelibs and base are a cinch.

Re:mozilla 0.9 still has really annoying bugs

[H310iSe]

I set up Mozilla 0.9 a couple days ago and I don't think it's the bugs that are the biggest problem. Mozilla chokes on poorly written HTML. Now I know it's been said before that this is good, that people need to start writing better. While this is true, still, I'd say we're talking 90% (and I'm being generous here) of the web is written without a clue. Ergo Mozilla can't render a *ton* of pages correctly. I have to browse with I.E. and Mozilla open, and cut and paste URLs into I.E. whenever Mozilla chokes.

Now I agree that to work towards how things should be is better than to accept the status quo and try to work around it, but until Mozilla can handle the real world of the web I can't see it being a useful primary browser.

Love the interface though.

(disclaimer: until I started writing XML I wrote HTML without a clue too. I think the way HTML is "taught" is utter crap and responsible for most of the problems out there. But I wander off-topic...)

Re:Netscape

[tb3]

The Netscape browser will end up on the desktops of the 30 million or so hapless AOL users, when the next version of AOL ships. AOL's contract with Microsoft for IE is up soon (if not already) and they own Netscape, so it's no extra cost to them.
-----------------

Where can I get it?

[BillyGoatThree]

You have a "very nice" .9? Where'd you get it, 'cuz mine sucks. Images are totally hosed and it's crashed 3 times in 36 hours. .8 was a LOT better.
--

Killazilla? That's enough!

[famazza]

Who needs netscape? Netscape has no moral anymore, Navigator was a very good browser until its third version! Now... I'll let KillaZilla speak form me.

I began to use linux running from Winz instability, trying to find a solid ground to step, found this at linux. I thinks it's wonderful.

Whatever... the point is that nothing in my linux box is so instable as NS, I even have killazilla as a shortcut in my destop! That's ridiculous! As I saw once in a discussion list "WE WANT QUALITY!!!"

So, I think that Mozilla is a GREAT option, I know that Netscape 6 and Mozilla is "almost the same", but for me, Netscape is dead. I won't trust Netscape anymore, unless they make a wonderful-ultra-stable-new-Navigator.

Let them use Mozilla and leave NS. For me, it's for the best!


Don't worry, I'm in a bad mood [to|every]day

Re:Who needs Mozilla?!?

[dhamsaic]

mozilla used to be really slow for me, but not any more. i rm -rf'd the old install and went with ximian's red carpet version. loads much faster now. very nice.

as for email, you may want to look into fetchmail and mutt. i used to think they were pretty old and archaic, until i really gave them a chance and began using them. mutt is the best email client i've ever used, because i can use any editor i want to compose the email, move around it with the keyboard, etc. fetchmail works exceptionally well to grab the email, which is good. you can also set up mutt to work with imap. more information on that is on mutt's website.

Re:Mozilla?

[dhamsaic]

i use linux and mozilla, and i don't suffer a bit. they've come quite a far way, even in the time i've been using them (linux since '96, mozilla for a little over a year really). i have java support, flash, etc. the java runs better here than it did under netscape on windows. mozilla renders pages *really* fast. it starts up quick now, which is definitely a plus. i think you need to take a better look before you say that we "suffer" - i don't.

Does this really change anything?

[moniker_21]

I would have to think that most people who have the gumption and desire to run Linux are already predisposed to try new things and are willing to experiment with different products to find the best one for their needs. Sure a newbie to Linux will perhaps use Mozilla simply because it came bundled, but soon they will become embiggened with the spirit of open source and competition and inevitably install Netscape anyways. I mean, how many people after becoming reasonably proficient in Linux finish a fresh installation and say, "Well that's it, I don't have to install or configure anything else because RedHat knows exactly what I need!" I just feel that Linux users being of superior mind and intellect will experiment with different browsers and choose the best one for them. If that turns out to be Mozilla, then so be it. Netscape just has too much name recognition for people not to want it on their machines, even if just to compare it to the default install of Mozilla.

Embigenned is a perfectly cromulent word.

Of course

[Jack Wagner]

Netscape 6.0 is an abomination. It's a crime against humanity. Why should they feel obligated to bundle that monstrosity just because it's says Netscape on it? For my money, .90 is not there yet either which leaves linux with either Konquerer or Opra I guess. Konquerer is not all there so that leaves Opra. I don't know but it seems like a pretty sad state of affairs for the Linux camp. With the major importance of a browser you would think that the Mozilla folks would have tried to build a world class one first, then worry about the 200 applications they want to build into it. But instead they let the engineers run the show which will ultimatly be their downfall.

There is a lesson to be learned there for the OS community. It's not always about scratching an itch when you are trying to compete with commercial applications. You need some strategic planners who are more big picture oriented and can overcome the engineering nonsense. But if you try to suggest anything like that to the *community* you are labeled a troll. Oh well, I guess they can fail on their own and of their own accord.