Slashdot Mirror
Moving towards Mozilla 1.0
fluedke writes "The latest Mozilla CVS identifies itself as "Mozilla 1.0". It looks like this source will become the official 1.0 within the next days. Read the news posting here." And if you're one of the missing hackers, speak up.
...and please people, before you report a bug, search through the list of duplicates and most reported.
The open source community will likely cause the mozilla.org people more work by all reporting 500 versions of the same problem - especially with all the publicity 1.0 will be getting.
And, if you report a bug, please follow through. There are umpteen bugs in bugzilla that are sitting there with a bug reporter that's MIA.
As someone who has banned people from the software devlopment list from my own open-source project, I think it may help you to understand why open-source developers sometimes do this.
People often times fail to understand that an open source project is different from a commercial project. In any releation where one person is paying another person, there is an implied releationship where the person paying the money does not have to respect the person whom they are paying. The person with the money can be pretty irrespectable and still act in a socially acceptable manner. The recipient, after all, is getting paid.
People who are used to using commercial software approach open source software in the same manner. They join a NNTP server or a mailing list for the project in question. They start ordering around the open source software devlopers, tell them what features the program must have. They don't say "please"; they certaintly don't give the open source devloper an ounce of respect. They act as if they were paying the free software developer. But they aren't.
This kind of person gets rather flustered when they realize that the releationship between an open source devloper and a user is different than the one between a customer and a company. The open source developer is, in the hierarchy of computer geeks, higher up on the ladder than an end user who can't code is. The sooner the end user understands this, the sooner they can treat the developer in a way which will not result in them getting flamed and banned.
People write software and give it away for a number of reasons, of course; but one main motivation is to obtain respect. The more open source projects one has worked on and finished, the higher the person is in the strange pecking order of the world of free software. Make enough code, and you too can be a demigod like Larry Wall, RMS, Linus Torvalds, or Dan Bernstein. Even if you are not a demigod, saying "I am a developer for this project" where the project is well known will cause you to commanded more respect.
It's simple. Respect the developer, and they will respect you. Don't respect them, and they will not respect you. Once you understand this, you are on your way to having your bug reports being acted on. Pretty soon, you will be patching; if the patch is good, you will gain more respect from the developers. Eventually, an open-source project will call you and you will respond to the call.
Good luck in your journey.
- Sam
The secret to enjoying Slashdot is to realize that it should not be taken too seriously.
Trying looking beyond simple web browsing. If MS controls the means of accessing the Internet that 99% of users use, then they control the Internet. Repeat after me, then they control the Internet. Now, let's look at how:
1) Any future technological advancements (or 3rd party plugins) for the web are subject to Microsoft's approval. If it's not in their financial interest, it doesn't get included in the browser.
2) msn.com is the default page for IE. Most users don't change their default page. Microsoft can then charge lots of money for people to place their ads on msn.com. Secondly, Microsoft can use msn.com to promote their own products by either placing ads for them, writing "news articles" that promote them, or simply because they control the search engine results.
3) Microsoft's Media Player could be integrated into the browser and IE could more simply and easily play WMA files. If most people use WMA to encode their media files and it becomes the "standard", Microsoft can charge money for encoding music in that format.
4) Microsoft can gradually change HTML (or add a completely new proprietary web format) in their favor so that other browsers (and other operating systems) don't work properly.
And on and on and on...
Why do you think Microsoft wanted to "choke off Netscape's air supply"? Controlling the way people access the Internet gives them almost complete control of the Internet and allows them to further stifle competition as well as become very wealthy.