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Mozilla Project Turns 5
GreyWolf3000 writes "As this notice in tinderbox shows, Mozilla turns five years old today. A great testament to the ability of open software models debunking the myth that while the community can hack a kernel or compiler together, we can't build a large scale project designed for everyday folks to use. The trunk is feature frozen for the upcoming alpha release for 1.4. Can't wait to see what's in store next!" Read on for another odometer reading -- Mozilla's 200,000th bug report, perhaps just as auspicious a landmark.
zzxc writes "The 200,000th bug has been filed in Mozilla's bugzilla, MozillaZine reports. It was filed at 5:11pm EDT. (21:11GMT) The bug, which is already 'verified invalid,' is 'MailNews crashes after extremely long 'joke of the day' html spam mail.' This comes on the 5 year anniversery of the release of Netscape's source code, also reported by MozillaZine. Bug 100000 was opened on 9/16/01 after three years of development, while bug 200000 comes in less than 19 months from the previous milestone."
That's only 109 bugs a day! Just goes to show you open source software IS less buggy than commercial!
The kitchen sink that is now also included in Mozilla. Story here.
0.6 is meant to be released RSN, they're going to announce the new name shortly, in fact.
Just have some patience, and hopefully it'll be worth it!
This project has proven several things about large scale open source projects:
- Open source doesnt necessarily mean "instant development". It took over a year before anything useful came of the project.
- Just because you release something as open source, doesnt mean that thousands will flock and provide free development. Though thousands did flock, as soon as they saw that the code wasnt nearly usable, they gave up immediately. But, now that there is a small core of developers working on it, it is a useful product.
- Now that it has made some progress, it is more difficult for a closed-source company to compete with it. It exists, and will be difficult to eliminate... There is no company to go out of business to cause Mozilla to disappear.
"...debunking the myth that while the community can hack a kernel or compiler together, we can't build a large scale project designed for everyday folks to use..."
Not wanting to rain on their parade, as I agree that Mozilla is a great project, but isn't the only reason they have succeeded building a "large scale project" because of the significant backing of one company (Netscape/AOL)? While the community certainly had a very significant contribution, I think we might be giving it a little more credit than it is due.
Read reviews of shopping cart software
Ohmigod, where the hell has my life gone?!?!?!?!?!? I'm still even using the same freaking monitor!
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Lets see who have I converted...
;-). I did turn a few people online to Phoenix and Mozilla with some luck though. I guess it's easier to convert those you personally know... so go celebrate 5 years and convert some more people over!
My Dad. Hated popups. Instead of giving him a popup blocker for IE I just installed Mozilla for him and switched his Outlook to Mozilla Mail/News. It did a fine job of importing his contact list. He got nimda through an email which infected his machine when he was using Outlook, so I explained to him that with MozMail he'd be ok. After several months use he loves it. No more bad popups for him while browsing, and email has been just fine.
That's my only personal success story, maybe if I got out more often
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The fact is, I needed a browser and email client that is *more* than spartan to replace what I was using, and for mail that was an OS/2 program. With all that Mozilla Mail has, the OS/2 program still has a feature or two I'd like to see added to Mozilla.
But the bigger thing is that for Microsoft to be displaced to any degree, the software that does it *has* to be blessed with good features. I has to be more than spartan. And like IE, which really isn't free, Mozilla not only gives the impression of free, but *is* free. And 'free' is also required for sucess.
Most configurable ? Have you ever seen the about:config page in Mozilla ? ;)
Guvf vf abg n EBG zrffntr
5 years and they haven't even reached 1.4? In 5 years Microsoft went from 3.0 to 95. Pick up the pace, people.
He must have invented mozilla to celebrate.
Mozilla's successes have almost all been side effects. An open bug database is one of the most revolutionary development practices that I have ever seen. Because of Bugzilla, Mozilla has far more useful features than it otherwise would have. If users hadn't been able to get through to developers I doubt that Mozilla would have popup and image blocking.
Mozilla's release schedule with nightly builds has also been a huge sucess. Mozilla has more people testing very recent versions than any other peice of software I know. Mozilla is now the most stable browser I have ever used, and I don't doubt that the nightly builds (and some talented developers) are the reason.
Hopefully now that Mozilla is very popular it will attract enough outside developers so that Netscape's original dream of no cost development to win the browser war. There are still some hurdles for developers though. Mozilla is a complicated project with a significant learning curve. It relies on some specific technologies such as XUL and XCOM which don't yet have large numbers of developers.
There is no kitchen sink in Mozilla and there will not be in the foreseeable future. Read the bug.
I'm scared of numbers that can't be written as a fraction. It's an irrational fear.
The following message should be appearing in the Mozilla newsgroups any time now:
0 00
S lashdotter category.
:-)
A few minutes ago, at 13:11 PST on 2003-03-31, the 200,000th bug was filed in http://bugzilla.mozilla.org:
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=200
Rather fittingly, it was filed by Chris Hofmann, head honcho of Netscape's embedding team and staunch Mozilla supporter, and is titled "joke of the day spam mail crash". (Note: please don't mess with the bug.)
Consulting my records, I see that the closest guess to the actual date and time was made by:
1st: 2003-04-01 00:00:01 bradangelcyk@hotmail.com (10 hrs, 50 mins)
a mere 10 hours and 50 minutes out. Congratulations to him; he wins a Mozilla 1.0 CD if he sends me his address.
Runners-up:
2nd: 2003-04-02 10:15:36 coch@myrealbox.com (45 hrs, 05 mins)
3rd: 2003-04-02 16:12:44 crisscott@netzero.net (51 hrs, 02 mins)
coch@myrealbox.com wins the I-have-a-Bugzilla-account-and-so-am-not-a-random-
Not every entry had an equal chance of winning the prize. Nine people submitted dates which were before the contest started (clue: this year is 2003, chaps, not 2002), and several people thought we were going to file 20,000 bugs in a matter of about a week. One person thought that he'd get away from the crowd by guessing a date in the 13th month of 2003 (what does he know that we don't?), and the furthest out two guesses had us still struggling towards the mark this time next year.
Thanks to all who took part
Gerv
Preferences > Privacy & Security > Popup Windows
[place
Yep, they moved it. It's now under Privacy & Security/Popup Windows.
The way it works has been changed slightly, too; now you can choose to either allow or suppress popups, and provide a list of exceptions. Whenever it suppresses a popup, it displays a little icon in the bottom right that you can click to allow it. I find this to be a little annoying, because I've really found that the only popups I ever got with the "unrequested" option were ones I wanted anyway, and now I have to allow them all...
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
One thing I hate.. but I can't all it a bug is that when I open a link in a new window or tab and it fails to connect, the browser shows a stupid dialog box and the URL of that page is about:blank.
This way I can't refresh because I lost the URL.
Sometimes I open several tabs and I need to know which links correspond to the failed windows so that I can reopen.
I think IE tries to connect twice before failing.
Fear is the mind-killer.
http://www.apple.com/safari
Where's the non-Mac version?
Opera is proprietary software, which I'll never use since I value my freedom.
That's your choice, but I don't understand how somebody making proprietary software infringes on your freedom.
Even the "free" (as in beer) version comes with a huge frickin' banner ad built into it, which is a true sign of scumware.
The banner is only "huge" if you're running at 640x480... And it's not scumware, either; the browser reports no information about your computer to Opera. You can also customize what types of banners are shown; in fact, I have a friend who paid for Opera and actually keeps the banner on because he frequently sees banners for products he's interested in.
It also isn't the fastest browser anymore, and has never been the most capable.
I can't say about Safari, since I can't use it, but Opera 7 is still the fastest browser I've used, and 6 is only marginally slower. "Capable" is a relative term, but I've yet to see another browser that has features such as integrated mouse gestures (gotta have a plugin for Mozilla), a quick-preference menu (pressing F12 brings up a list of the most handy preferences), and an easy way to fake the browser ID string (possible in Mozilla only if you're willing to manually edit config files).
It also has better user-defined CSS support than other browsers I've seen. It even comes with a number of pre-defined CSS layouts that do interesting things such as emulate text-only browsers, outline structural elements on a page, remove tables, hide only non-linking images, and so forth. Also, in the event that it crashes, it can re-open all the tabs you had open previously (I believe one of the Mozilla offshoots can do this, but I haven't seen any other browser).
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
I agree. Much better than having the difference between version 6 and version 7 being significantly less than the difference between version 4 and version 6.
Seriously, it's like a race to see who can have the highest version number sometimes. That doesn't impress me. This is almost as bad as the MHz myth. Internet Explorer is still at version 6, and people like it.
Follow me
" A great testament to the ability of open software models debunking the myth that while the community can hack a kernel or compiler together, we can't build a large scale project designed for everyday folks to use."
It took nearly 5 years to get to version 1. At that rate, a few monkeys accessorized with keyboards could have accomplished that.
Don't get me wrong, Mozilla's a wonderful tool for the interent. I'm glad to see IE getting a run for its money. I just don't feel that any myths were shattered here.
1.) It took aaaaaaaaages.
2.) For the most part, the hard work was done and the tough decisions were made. Mozilla wasn't exactly paving the way for the internet as we see it today.
3.) It was necessary. Linux needed a AAA browser. If a good browser for Linux wasn't in demand, how far would it have gone?
I guess what I'm saying is that it's a logical evolution, not necessarily a challenge for the community. Get the community to put together an ambitious game, then we'll shatter a few myths.
At my previous job at a Fortune-100 company, the proprietary bug database we used kept track of the Bug ID with an unsigned 16-bit number.
Yep, to the surprise and dismay of many, we overflowed at bug# 65537
Computer Science is Applied Philosopy...
I couldn't agree more. As a software engineer with ~15 years experience... and a BA in Philosophy.
Indeed, I worked my way through school as a programmer and chose philosophy on purpose because I found that's where the logic courses were.
(I also took a lot of physics and math which no doubt helps, but the degree is philosophy) I feel the study of various logical abstractions helped widen my perspective. Not to mention you are trained to diagram any set of concept/relationships, which is also quite useful. My diagrams have consistent grammer, and I'm sure this is because I was trained how to create a legend that maps directly to real concepts (e.g. an arrow means something, and is only used for truly identical relationships. Of course, the arrow might mean different things in different diagrams, but within a given diagram: consistency). I'm not sure all Philosophy programs are so rigerous about logic... but it is the one thing, the only thing, that philosophers have any agreement over.
-pyrrho
I think the fact that apple chose khtml over gecko speaks more to apples goals than it does the the comparitive quality of the two engines. Though I agree that mozilla's development focus should be more toward quality than 'quantity', I happily use mozilla, and it *works well* for me.
- Gef
I run a small computer consulting business and every machine that goes out the door has Mozilla and OpenOffice.org.
:)
Every costomer I visit gets an introduction to Mozilla and OpenOffice.org.
Every support call I get about an "email" virus gets the "it's not an email virus is't an outlook virus" lecture. try Mozilla.
About 1/3 of the people I talk to blow me off for one reason or another. Ya know familar with IE+LookOut. Don't like change. Hit a website/use software that needs IE+LookOut.
But the next 1/3 (approx) at least use Mozilla or OOo on a semi regular basis with MSoffice and IE+Lookout.
The last 1/3 uses either Mozilla or OOo as their primary tools.
I have found that Home/small office users are the most convertable, for easy reasons. If it is a larger office they have funny, industry specific software that needs IE+LookOut or have dropped big $$$ for several copies of MSoffice and don't want to abandon the "investment".
So for all you evangelists out there your best bet for conversion are SOHO/Home users. Get em before they are brought into the fold.
OK so not exactly earth shattering statistics, but at least helpful, I hope. If anyone has further info pls post back.
Doin' my part to restore balance to the force.
However, if you can consistantly reproduce this, report it to Bugzilla, where it has a far better chance of getting fixed than on Slashdot.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
That's exactly what's happened to Netscape servers (former "Fast Track", Later "iPlanet"). Their code is closed and their usages is limited by AOL and Sun. If Netscape would open the source code of servers as well, today it would be much broader used web-server platform with lots of money due to potential demand for support.
Those days Netscape web application server has been beating IIS and other, while Netscape Mail, Calendar and Directory (LDAP) servers have been beating MS Exchange of those days. Besides, they have been multi-platfom originally (I used them on Solaris). Being opensourced they would beat today WebSphere and many other today's behemoths.
Less is more !
-people care about the application;
-the application is held to a high standard;
-there will soon be 200,000 things anout which we do not have to worry.
Konqueror is a much better example of open source at work, and it matured much faster than Mozilla.
Really? Konqueror supports more of the standards and the existing web than Mozilla does and they did it in a shorter period of time? Got measures?
How old is Konqueror. I see posts about KHTML from dev newsgroups going back to at least 1998.
--Asa
"I love how Netscape, since they own the rights to the Mozilla code, uses it directly for their browser"
Netscape doesn't "own the rights to the Mozilla code". They are the copyright holder to some of it. But so are scores of people not employed by Netscape. Mozilla is available under the terms of the MPL, the GPL or the LGPL and that means that anyone can use and modify the code and the kind of ownership you're suggesting just doesn't exist or doesn't matter.
--Asa
The truth is out now.. Mozilla was originally an April Fool's Joke? But on who? M$?
Hehe..
why does vimacs come to mind?
Selling software wont make you money, selling a service will.
The long time in between releases of Internet explorer has me a bit concerned for Mozilla. It just seems odd that they haven't even come out with 6.5 yet, let alone 7.0. I have heard rumors and the like, but I don't but a lot of faith in those. What I fear is Redmond is sitting back, and watching every move the Mozilla community makes. Then the popular stuff, they are putting into their browser. I would be shocked if that haven't added tabs to the development code yet. On my XP machine I.E. is my primary browser, and I do like how it runs on Windows since it really does run most websites best. I agree many are poorly coded, but there isn't much I can do about that. On my Powerbook though I use Camino and Safari.