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The Mozilla Foundation
gemal writes "We're very pleased to announce the creation of the Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit organization that will serve as the new home for mozilla.org. The Mozilla Foundation will continue mozilla.org's work of coordinating the development of the Mozilla codebase. With an independent non-profit as the legal home for Mozilla, we will also promote the distribution and adoption of Mozilla applications and technologies. In addition, we will raise funds to ensure Mozilla's long-term survival." Update: 07/15 21:47 GMT by T : Yablo writes "MozillaZine is running a blurb about how since earlier today, when the Mozilla Foundation was created, AOL has laid off all the Gecko developers. Ex-mozilla.org has a list of the casualties."
We're pleased to be dumping Mozilla, er, forming the Mozilla Foundation. This money pit, er, worthy cause is something we'd love to see the back of, er support.
And how about it being the new home of the Open Directory Project too? Just a thought..
Never email donotemail@WeAreSpammers.com
Does this mean that Netscape (rather, AOL-Time-Warner) is withdrawing its support? Will they still be providing facilities, network connectivity, etc. or will the Mozilla Foundation have to raise all that on its own? Will Netscape be providing any money to the Mozilla Foundation?
This is nothing but a Good Thing(TM). Congrats to the Mozilla team on their (apparent) independance. In other news, check out the redesigned web page.
Isn't it ironic that the top cells don't render the way they meant in Mozilla 1.4? They shouldn't be using tables for layout!
Is this a project fork or just a move?
The press release didnt really clarify that anyone know?
Mozilla is here to stay. Some more code fixes and speedier loading times would help the browser as well now, but I'll use it with or without those. MSIE isn't secure enough and crashes far too often. Besides, what's better than tabbed browsing? Hoo-ha!
I guess Mozilla's ready to actively try to knock IE down.
The World's Worst Webcomic!
Long live the king. Since Microsoft officially killed IE, we can expect mozilla to be the new king. Hope it becomes as hassle free for casual use as IE used to be for the n00b.
All together now:
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firebird/
Now that there'll be an official, legal, centralized authority, does this mean that the plugins/modules will finally work with each other?
AOL can now write off on its taxes the development money it spends on mozilla as donations to a nonprofit?
From http://www.mozilla.org/press/mozilla-foundation.ht ml:
"To help launch the new organization, America Online has pledged $2 million in cash to the Mozilla Foundation over the next two years. AOL will also contribute additional resources through equipment, domain names and trademarks, and related intellectual property, as well as providing some transitional assistance for key personnel as they move into the new organization."
You know, Microsoft's street address also says a lot about their mentality.
1. Why should I give money to Mozilla when I don't give money to and other open-source software I use? Why do they need it? What will they use it for?
2. Would said contribution be tax-deductible (not all non-profit donations are)?
Unfortunately for them, they're competing for my donated dollar against the EFF, the ACLU and (this year) whoever tries to unseat George Bush Jr. They need to make a lot better case for themselves if they're going to warrent a piece of that pie...
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
The Mozilla Foundation will also promote the distribution and adoption of our flagship applications based on that code. AOL, IBM, Sun Microsystems, Red Hat, and other companies will continue to support Mozilla through the Foundation.
The World's Worst Webcomic!
I think Mozilla needs some PR people. I was watching C-SPAN the other day and the issue was spam. Lots of callers were complaining about pop-up windows as well. I really wanted to tell them about Mozilla, but it was a taped show :(
Anyway, there is a lot of frustration out there and the Mozilla people really need to get the word out that they have a competitive product. Place some ads in the weekly magazines, some big newspapers, and get a buzz going. Open up a Paypal account that we can donate to so Mozilla can get an ad in the New York Times.
The site describes Firebird as "The Best Browser, Bar None", with a similar claim for Mozilla. Not only is this confusing to a newcomer, it's also a bad idea; Moz 1.4 is WAAAY more reliable than Firebird (great as the latter is), and I wouldn't recommend it to newcomers.
When Firebird reaches Moz's level of stability, THEN it might be wise to push it to new users. But Mozilla gives a better impression.
..is the "BSD is dying" guy racing to find the Search and Replace function in his text editor.
While I have never been impressed with Mozilla, the Firebird version absolutely rocks.
I hope this is good news, that Mozilla will survive.
I'm running a 1.8 laptop and it's not sluggish.
but why did they have to change the URL? I LIKED the short address they used to have.
OH NOES!!! IT APPEARS YUO DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO PAY FOR DIS HERE PIZZA! WAHT EVER ARE YOU GOING TO DO!?!?
I'd say AOL wants to be rid of Mozilla. I wonder where this leaves Netscape? Is Netscape 7.1 the last browser release from this former browser company?
Changed their browser name from Phoenix, otherwise we'd have more trademark infringment cases in the works.
its sluggish because the event loop in mozilla which handles PREvents isnt that hot. with applets and javascript it tends to send invalid events to objects which dont exist and corrupt the stack. well known problem, no fix. :1 436
:
4 36 #c19
the event handling code probably needs a good overhaul. see my bug for more info
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=21
particularly this comment by a sun engineer
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211
the code in my bug can demonstrate it -- just download and run the class/html file and click ok to corrupt your event Q/stack. may crash the browser or may just hang it.
XUL(it's xml for user interface language) slows it down to much. Am i wrong ?
Well, unfortunately the companies mentioned didn't have a particular stake in web browsers before now. AOL lost theirs the instant that the jumped into bed with Microsoft, IBM never really had one of their own, Sun had "HotJava", which was what .. HTML 3.0 compliant? RedHat wrote a lot of cool stuff for Gnome 1.1, but never anything that was to compete. This group is cool, but will they actually understand what they're doing enough to do it better than it's been done so far?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Any ideas on how/if Mozdev will be affected by this? (short/long term?)
On Mac, IE will be replaced by Safari. That's the default browser that everyone will use, since it comes bundled with the operating system, and is enabled by default. In addition, because it's made by Apple, serious Mac-tards won't touch anything else.
IE will dominate on Windows for as long as there is a Windows. It's built into the operating system, and comes enabled by default. Not even knowledgeable people want to download entirely new browsers.
The only place where Moz will be "king" is on the also-ran Linux and BSD platforms.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
--
archonon.deviantart.com
http://archonon.sytes.net/
The best scenario for AOL is to kill off Netscape and fund Mozilla. AOL in return could add the Firebird to their clients for free. No one ever used Netscape, AOL needs an internet browser (and not MS IE), and the community supports Mozilla. Seems perfect to me.
One thing that the Mozilla Foundation could do to raise money is set up a "Cobrand Support Center" where people can contract them to create and support branded versions of Mozilla.
If the price were not too high, I imagine a lot of technology companies could impress their users with a branded web browser that's better than Internet Explorer.
"As a complimentary service to our customers, we offer them the SuperTechnologyCompany Web Browser which has features that prevent spam and popups..."
Engineering and the Ultimate
Browser-Aid:
A benefit for Mozilla featuring Niel Young and U2.
-t
http://unmoldable.com W:"No one of consequence" I:"I must know" W:"Get used to disappointment"
I liked that they said their money was going for salaries. This is refreshingly honest. Most press releases from organizations steer away from the fact that everybody needs a little $$ to survive.
This is better than trying to make us believe that first they save the whales, then go for profitability..
Harpo Tunnel Syndrome--my wrist feels funny.
Huge improvement in look over the old one. Nice to see Mozilla presenting a reasonably professional face.
On a more serious note, I wonder if the foundation will be able to raise enough money for an endowment one day. That would be the ideal funding position to be in. Anyone know if this is a goal of the foundation?
From http://www.mozillafoundation.org/press/mozilla-fo
(emphasis added). Since the Mozilla Foundation is applying for 501(c)(3) status, contributions are not yet tax deductible. Which raises the interesting question, i.e., should 501(c)(3) status be granted? In particular, should contributions by AOL to the Mozilla Foundation be tax deductible when AOL will use any work performed by the "public benefit corporation" in its Netscape product? Is this a way for a for profit corporation to fund research in a tax-deductible way?
Perhaps a counter-argument is that given the license used for Mozilla (I forget which it is; it may be important), *anyone* could use the work... but could anyone use it in for-profit software?
I haven't thought this throught, but it might be an interesting issue.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
Hmm, I find Moz painfully slow ( e.g. almost a minute to save anything during which time all of Moz is locked up), but I thought it was due to the ancient 200Mhz PPro hardware I'm using. I just assumed that it would run alright on a snappier machine. I guess I should have not been so optimistic for an app that has a 400+MB footprint. BYW, does anyone know if some of this is due to its use of GTK?
Let the "Mozilla is dead" postings start in 3..2..
I guess Mozilla's ready to actively try to knock IE down.
/preemtive anti-flame strike. Personally, I'll stick to Opera (ID'ing as Opera too) as my primary browser, just personal preferance.
The technical aspects aside, I don't think the companies are in this for winning a war on Microsoft. But they do want there to be alternatives so IE can't exercise (read: abuse) monopoly power, particularly since the browser is the primary control of the Internet experience influencing all kinds of other services (searches, default bookmarks, passport integration etc.)
They're interested in supporting Mozilla to ensure it stays a viable alternative, but I hardly think they'll use more money than they have to in order to compete against a "free" product. "free" in the meaning of "at no apparent cost to Joe Sixpack"
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Why should I give money to Mozilla when I don't give money to and other open-source software I use? Why do they need it? What will they use it for?
There is absolutely no reason for you to donate. Nobody is forcing you to do so. On the other hand, if everybody applies the same philosophy, most OSS projects will depend solely on the goodwill and the mutable live conditions of their developers Or on companies looking for a cheaper/better software development process).
This is very different from donnating to Mandrake, a for profit company in continuous state of finnancial turmoil. As thousands upon thousands of other OSS software, Mozilla is not sold, does not carry spyware or anything allowing for a money flow.
The point is, some people will feel grateful enough to donate money or resources to some projects. Some will feel grateful but won't have nothing to donate. Some will feel grateful but won't donate, period. And some won't feel anything but will use the software anyway. None of these are unwelcome, the software is open and free to use, no strings attached.
As for, They need to make a lot better case for themselves if they're going to warrent a piece of that pie, I believe you can download a new case every night, here...
Thank Gawd! I use the browser for all my own stuff. Now if only I could get the Corp. I work for to drop Exploder.....
Come the revolution, the Bourgeois, Capitalistic, "A PARKING STICKER HOLDERS", will be first against the wall!
So, where can I donate PayPal money to this foundation?
the old site still remains!
:-)
Indeed - give us some time, and we'll fix that
The conditions of the download clearly states
The text on here is in US law, I believe. It's more hassle than it's worth to change it, even if it looks a bit odd.
Gerv
(gerv@mozilla.org)
And I'm running it on a 500MHz laptop and it's zippy.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
I use both and prefer Mozilla (better features). Safari is ooh-pretty, but Mozilla gives me better control over things, particularly via the PrefBar that one can download at XulPlanet. I love the new "Kill Flash" button.
sulli
RTFJ.
I don't understand all these complaints about Mozilla being "slow". I use it on a 500 MHz Linux machine with no problems whatsoever. I also use it on 1.7 GHz and 2.0 GHz Linux machines. On a new 2.0 GHz Windows XP box, Mozilla is far more responsive than IE.
--- witty signature
I've brought this up before, but where's the professional looking attractive banner ad graphics for Mozilla? I'd slap one of those up on my website (I've got pages that attract more than just slash-geeks) and get the word out that way...
I'm not so artistically minded, so I don't want to create it, but I'll certainly display it!
You need GNU tools to build Mozilla, so it should be called GNU/Mozilla. I've already changed my GNU/Linux GNU/Mozilla User-Agent string to reflect this.
As for the IP donations - that is pretty much worthless anyway since it is a free, open-source project.
Not at all. The IP donations include the mozilla.org trademark and domain name, which are very far from worthless. They also include the MPL license.
Gerv
Honestly, I'm not sure if that's what it means or not. Certainly that's what it looks like -- "Thanks for all the hard work, guys, but we've sold our souls to Bill, so here's some cash, and good luck" -- but there is IMO a real possibility that AOL will keep funding the project for some time to come. It was a seven-year deal they signed with M$; and seven years may be a long time in Internet years, but it's not forever. (Seven years ago, IIRC, was when the browser war between Netscape and IE was really heating up. We may be long past that time, but clearly people still remember it, and lessons learned.) AOL knows perfectly well that it's in their best interest to continue having an IE alternative, especially since M$ announced just days after they signed the deal that they were folding IE completely into the OS. I'll be very surprised if AOL cuts the Mozilla Foundation loose completely.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
In a world where the mighty browsers sleep...this tranquil city is about to experience an awakening.
! !!!!!"
[show pic of giant Mozilla eye]
"Oh no, Mozilla has gotten loose, it will run amok in the city!" [Mozilla roars and tramples over a Time-Warner-AOL building]
The Government had one chance to stop it, but it was too late.
[Control-center with lots of flashing lights and buttons]
"Damn it, get Gates on the phone. Tell him we need a supply of BSODS to help freeze this monster. And we'll need detonators -- a thousand Internet Exploders should do the trick"
This well-kept secret has been revealed to the masses.
[CNN interview soundbytes]
Stallman: "It cannot survive without the GPL!!!"
ESR: "I said this from the beginning...with many eyes, all bugs can see better. No wait, that's not how it goes."
Tux's agent: "My client refuses to do an interview unless there's some serious herring involved."
They stopped innovating. They denied it existed. They were foolish. The revolution is now!
[Mozilla stomps on Microsoft sign]
"Mozilla...IEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!
(Cue Kashmir riff...no puffy this time...please)
From the parent:
> what happens in a few years when the Foundation has A) run out of money, and B) hasn't gotten any significant donations?
From the site:
> AOL, IBM, Sun Microsystems, Red Hat, and other companies will continue to support Mozilla through the Foundation.
I wouldn't worry. Me thinks these companies et al will stop supporting Mozilla when Internet Explorer has a user base of <5%. These are big competitors of Microsoft. Either way, if the money dries up, I would be surprised if people still didn't continue to develop Mozilla (even if it's at a slower pace).
There will always be alternatives.
I hope that this is the first sleep toward the complet independency from Netscape (read AOL). The Mozilla project did such a great job for all those years, and AOL just kept it down. Well, AOL. So long for all the (mis)help, but Mozilla has to move on.
For every $1 a employee gets paid, a company has to shell out at least $2. Where does this money go?
Employee benefits take a huge chunk out of your paycheck - health insurance and the like aren't free - the company has to pay for them. Also, every dollar you pay in taxes is matched by the company - not in some "matching program", but simply in Social Security, unemployment benefits, and other federal taxes.
Then, after all that is said and done, the company gets around to renting/buying office space, buying support hardware, software, and books, shipping developers to conventions, hiring support staff...
... if I already use Mozilla. In which way is it better? I also use Mozilla for Usenet. It still is limited in its filtering capacity, but I still find it OK.
And why did Mozilla get rid of the dino/dragon splash screen?
I have a life. I really do. I've just chosen to ignore it.
> for an app that has a 400+MB footprint.
The only time I've seen Mozilla have such a footprint is when I've been running memory stress-tests.
Are you sure you're not just adding up the memory of all the threads (which _share_ all that memory)? There are typically 8-10 threads, and 40-50MB sounds about right for memory usage during heavy browsing.
Not just the $2 million budget, they also get write off the trademark and other service they will provide to the non profit organization.
Maybe. IANAA (I Am Not A Accountant) but trademark is an intangible asset, so unless it has been valued through some sort of asset sale (such as a corporation purchase), it most likely would not be a tax write off. The only case I can think of related to this was the purchase of Netscape, but Mozilla was not really the trademark that was valuable at that time. It might have some book value but probably not much. So basically, I doubt they will get any sort of tax write off from a trademark. Possible, but unlikely.
You are correct though that there will be some interesting tax avoidance opportunties for AOL (and other companies) now that it is a non-profit.
Does anyone else think that the Firebird logo looks an awful lot like the Quake logo?
What? You mean all my donations have been misappropriated?
These guys can't even figure out what they product is! I go to the link and I can get Mozilla 1.4 "Best of 2003", or I could get Firebird, "Best Browser, Bar none!"...uh, so which is it? What's the difference? What are you working on? What will my $ go for? Anyone got a new whim project that is going to be better that they want to start before finishing the others? Screw that, I'll send my $30 to the Opera folks, at least they know what they are building.
If they boxed it up and sold it in stores I'd pay 30-50 bucks for it. Heck I they sell a lot of pop-up blocking software for the same amount. Forget this freebie nonsense. Let's start supporting developers with our money.
Companies using Mozilla and paying zero will also not be as prevalent as companies using IE and paying zero so it is basically a wash.
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
That is definitely the best website. Everything on it is the best. Or bester.
Let's face it: plugin support in Mozilla is experimental, while Mozilla cannot properly display the "IE-oriented" content. You may repeat the mantra about web standards again and again, but AOL customers do not care about standards. They care that the content they use to see is still there and it's still work on their computers. Period.
Less is more !
I hate to say this, but I really preferred the old design better. It looks like this one was designed by committee, because there's just a complete lack of cohesion and theme -- not to mention gratuitous use of emphatic (<b>, for example) elements without much care for consistency. There seem to be two different color schemes vying for supremacy, that burnt yellow along with the gray and blue; and, of course, the markup doesn't bother validating (the CSS does, though.) None of the other pages on the new site (or any of the other Moz-family domains) changed either, so it's just as if someone mocked up a single page and then posted it to meet a deadline.
That all said -- I'm glad it got a facelift. I just really wish that the presentation was a bit better, because it doesn't seem like anyone spent any time really working on it.
got standards? --- http://www.w3.org/
Would I be taking the bait of I labelled this as an obvious troll?
Mozilla needs to start advertising - in popup ads. What better way to get your message across? "Hate pop-up ads like this one? Do you know there is a browser out there that allows you to block pop-up ads? It is called Mozilla, and we have a lot of other great features too. Mozilla is absolutely free! Try it out today. [url to mozilla.org]"
Yeah, it is a little like spammers sending you an email on how to stop spam, but I like the idea.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Watch the geeks continue to frequent it for about 23 seconds after the first pop up advertizing appears at mozilla.org.
;-)
I can assure the 2 people out there who a) read this deep into this thread, and b) actually think there's some non-zero chance of this happening, that mozilla.org will not have pop-up advertising.
Anyway, who would see it? Everyone uses Mozilla's popup blocker.
Gerv
(gerv@mozilla.org)
I did a quick search and replace. You can't ask for too much, here
Starving, illiterate children in the world and people are going to give money to AOL-backed, Netscape-backed Mozilla which competes directly with Microsoft? The only thing brilliant about this is that Bill Gates is slapping his forehead wondering how he didn't think of making a charitable organization of Longhorn.
Firebird rules. Thunderbird rules. But they're software. I'll be giving my non-profit dollars to the local food bank, as usual.
And since non-profits are exempt from the Do Not Call list, does that mean I'll be getting phone spam from AOL?
Chr0m0Dr0m!C
And that "Mozilla Foundation" site. What are they thinking? "By developers, for developers" - that's what they're thinking.
Want to see branding? Even in death, Napster does it better. Far, far better.
the default firebird theme should be changed. honestly, even the one before v0.5 was better than the default one now....
other than that, i seem to be having problems installing extensions to v0.6 (on my linux partition), particularly the prefbar one.....
my blog
Well it's nice to see Mozilla free of AOL.
AOL has ruined every good piece of software they've picked up. Look at ICQ. A once slim messenger program turned into pure bloat. Look at WinAMP, WinAMP 3 is bloat bloat bloat. Then look at Netscape 7, AOL features drag that down like lead weights. It'll be a good thing in the long run that AOL is stepping back from Mozilla.
See the Pictures of the Flood of '08
Someone has some nice tastes in cars at Mozilla.
That's be Ben Goodger.
Gerv
(gerv@mozilla.org)
On my 700 MHz Celeron - 64MB RAM - Win98SE
;)
Mozilla 1.4's just as snappy as Internet Exploder 5.5.
-uso.
And I use Galeon on Linux
Dreams, dreams, don't doubt dreams, dreaming children's dreaming dreams. Sailor Moon SS
Netscape4.x. Yes some people do still use it, for instance in businesses where they can't/won't upgrade for whatever reason or old macintoshes. There are all sorts of odd browsers knocking about that cannot understand css.
For all the whining about tables here they are still the best way to get a page to look the same in all browsers. Yes CSS is technically a much better way to do it, but web designers don't earn money from being technically correct, they earn money from making pages that work.
Its quite possible with your customer/visitor base that you will never come across a non-modern browser that can handle all the bells and whistles, great, I'm jealous.
But you can be guaranteed that when mr X shows his friends his new company website you are asking him 5k for and it doesn't even work on his friends "old" pc you ain't gonna make that money. This is the situation in my experience.
I'm using Firebird and Tbird and they're absurdly slow on various installations.
I thought this was already how they operated. I'm guessing this is just a formality?
Un-news
RTFM. You're probably trying to make the display: block instead of display: table-row. See the CSS2 spec on tables. Of course, you'll have to retain the old hack for IE, which doesn't know about CSS2 table display values.
Given that the W3C assembled SVG as a standard vector graphics language years ago (building on VML, and including MS reps on the committee), don't bet on it. Native SVG support is being worked on in Mozilla.
And when I see BSD builds as part of the default biulds, I'll start sending your non-profit money.
Instead of money, if you donate a build machine (and a small amount of administering time) it could be. That's just about all that's needed - but without it, it's probably not going to happen.
Gerv
(gerv@mozilla.org)
Of course people still use NS4; that's why Netscape is still releasing patches to it. Also fortunately for developers, NS4's pitiful standards compliance allows it to be cut off from modern coding - "bells and whistles," as you put it - that makes the page unreadable.
The web is not about making a page look the same in all browsers. We're not talking print here. Most modern graphical browsers can be relied upon to render similarly, but that still leaves text browsers, screen readers, mobile devices, and - yes - obsolete browsers of various sorts. The point of xhtml/css standards design is to organize information to be accessible on all these platforms - and look nice on most of them, too.
All of which is not to say that NS4 should be ignored completely. Nothing is that black and white. It's critical for web content providers to look at their server logs and figure out what most of their visitors are using. If there's a large ns4 share, then take that into account. But if it's 2% of a high-traffic site, @include the stylesheet and explain to ns4 users on an unstyled page that they are in fact using an outdated browser.
Finally, xhtml/css is far from bells and whistles. Every single modern browser understands xhtml1 and css1 and most do a damn fine job of css2. NS4 still exists, and if it exists in force in your user base, pander to its failures - but for the majority of the web, it is a thing of the past and the only notice that should be taken of it in design is to make sure that it doesn't get served designs that will be unusable.
Love,
Karma: T-rexcellent.
For a measure of how valuable the trademark and domain name is, consider how much more difficult it would be for mozilla.org to continue if:
- www.mozilla.org started pointing at www.netscape.com/download, or somewhere else
- the new XXXXX organisation (whatever it ended up being called) was not allowed to use the word "Mozilla" at any time.
The domain name and trademarks are extremely important and valuable (if not in a $ sense) for the continuity of the project. And it's very kind of AOL to give them to us. They didn't have to, after all.
Gerv
(gerv@mozilla.org)
I thought this was already how they operated. I'm guessing this is just a formality?
Very much not. Up to this point, mozilla.org was not a legal entity.
Gerv
(gerv@mozilla.org)
[...]I would be surprised if people still didn't continue to develop Mozilla (even if it's at a slower pace).
;)
Seriously though, it turned out a great piece, and I love Thunderbird. Yeah!
Even slower? Molasses on a cold day comes to mind
Yes.
Or as south park put it: 1. First we steal all the underwear 2. Uhhdunoo 3. BIG PROFIT! Seriously. I do think in the longer run this will be a good thing for Mozilla. Both Sun and IBM have significant reasons to continue to support the project and neither are...what you could call ... microsoft fans.
AOL, IBM, Sun Microsystems, Red Hat,
Note that these competitors of Microsoft don't have:
- US$4e10 cash reserves
- revenue cows like Windows & Office to bring in money without lifting a finger
AOL has been scrambling to compete with MSN, surviving on razor-thin margins (Time Warner is the bigger, stronger part of the company).Sun can't afford to develop competitive successors to its UltraSPARC hardware in a timely fashion. Meanwhile, Lintel servers are eating into the UNIX server business, making the market much smaller than it was once (the flip side is that Lintel make Wintel look expensive, even if Wintel is cheaper than Solaris/SPARC). These days, the one reason to go with Sun over Linux on clusters is for HA 64-way high throughput machines connected to SANs. Despite the margins on that class of machine, not everyone needs one, and there are ferocious competitors like IBM, HP and SGI with which to contend.
Red Hat is only now barely getting profitable, mainly selling Linux services. They certainly don't have oodles of money to throw around.
IBM is really the only financially strong player in the whole deck.
Despite my pessimistic tone, I'm a Mozilla (and now Firebird) user and wish the project success. I will continue to be a Mozilla advocate because I want to see open standards on my computer instead of yet another road to getting ruled.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
This should be VERY good for mozilla, because it's not AOL's project anymore, its a community thing, so various companies will start putting money and possibly man hours into it. Not that it's a non-profit, the man hours, money, servers, bandwidth etc that any companies (or people) put into it can be a tax writeoff, it's basically a charity now.
...I'm sure the poor/starving/dying people are glad that your web browser will be around for years to come.
I'm not having a go at people who donate to OSS, but if you make a point of setting aside some of your income for charitable donations, surely you could find a more worthwhile cause?
that mozilla.org will not have pop-up advertising.
;-)
Anyway, who would see it? Everyone uses Mozilla's popup blocker.
Oh, I hope mozilla now turns this on by default.
But how about this, a pop-up that tells you how to block them forever! You could get commercial sites that don't normally have pop-ups to donate such ad space to mozilla.org for a tax deduction.
BTW Is there any plan to extend the cookie blocking support to other usually nasty but on rare occasion useful things like Flash? I'd like to be able to block those on a per website basis.. I disable Flash on my home machines, but at work I sometimes need it when my boss wants to show me some demo or something, and restarting mozilla to enable them turned out to be very disruptive to my work flow.
It seems AOL still owns the Netscape rights, as I read the press release. What is stopping AOL from making Netscape really a wrapper for IE now? Don't assume anything about the Microsoft/AOL deal, but it looked like they wanted to switch to IE to get rights to use Windows Media at a low fee or even free for the agreed period.
Anyone got some inside info?
If your theory is correct it is nothing more than sound business and the best way AOL can help mozilla. Honestly now, if there is something underhanded about AOL's move here then one should suppose there would be something morally benevolent about burning a briefcase full of AOL cash at Netscape headquarters.
Not to put it down or anything, but Mozilla too suffers from much bloat. Though that isn't AOL's fault this time... :p
Hopefully with Firebird and Thunderbird, though, a lot of that bloat will get shaved off, and at the same time make Mozilla much nicer for end users.
Christopher S. 'coldacid' Charabaruk -- coldacid.net
Its not mozilla's fault that you can't hide the row, its yours. Take a look at the DOM inspector first. You are probably not taking into account the auto assumeed tbody tag.
Yes but "Regular" people watch the Superbowl, too. It's the shotgun approach to marketing.
VOTE!
I have to say, I find it rather surprising that Mozilla should need 2 million dollars to write a brower, and even more surprising that they're asking for people to donate even more. The mozilla project has had more full time developers than we've ever had working on KDE, yet konqueror is not far behind (oh, and we did write a desktop too...).
If the mozilla foundantion would like to sponser the forthcoming KDE conference (eg. to discuss how we could make use of any reusable parts of their code base) I'm sure they'd be most welcome.
Rich.
So, let me get this straight. You're saying that in addition to being a web browser, a mail client, and an application platform, Mozilla should also enable you to make phone calls to the past?!? Sheesh.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
that reads to me like as long as you distribute any changes you make to the mozilla code, you're in the clear. you don't need to distribute the code of the Larger Work. and there's nothing in there prohibiting profiting from the Larger Work or Mozilla.
It looks to me like, if you stuck Mozilla on a CD you could sell it to people for $1000 and not kickback anything to the Mozilla project or AOL. of course, if you could sell that, I'm looking to move a certain bridge in Brooklyn.
-tom
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
Original poster says: I think Mozilla should advertise it's anti-spam abilities.
Follow-up poster says: Sign yourself up for some Mozilla spam!
hmm. methinks they're talking at each other instead of to each other
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
, we will also promote the distribution and adoption of Mozilla applications and technologies. In addition, we will raise funds to ensure Mozilla's long-term survival
We will organize as a tax exempt charity to provide a nice tax writeof for AOL-TW, while continuing to further their corporate objectives against Microsoft.
To be fair, they do mention that they are seeking 501(c)(3) status at the bottom of the release.
Anybody else sense a trend? Open Source "charitable" orgs as a corporate tax shelter? Once again, you have to hand it to RMS--he was at the cutting edge on this. The FSF was perhaps the first Open Source nonprofit. Something like Mozilla.org will allow corporations to obtain the tax writeof without having to buy into the political stand of the Free Software movement.
It's a win-win for corporations. They can place the unprofitable portions of their business into the nonprofit. They can influence the nonprofits with their money. They can effectively employee people for less than minimum wage.
It will be interesting to see how long it takes legislators to wake up to this, and call for charitable org reform. I wager that at least one generation (20 years) will pass and get fat off these exemptions before anything happens.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
What an enthusiastic way of saying "we all just got fired."
Or to put it in context, maybe they all got tshirts saying:
What grand news... :-(
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Two words: Active Scripting
I didn't even know this could be used on a website until someone enabled it in order to watch interactive baseball stats. He got a virus shortly thereafter, of course, and couldn't use his computer for almost a day; but that doesn't stop other people from complaining that their browsers don't have this 'feature'.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
MOD PARENT UP: Good post
It's a win-win for corporations. They can place the unprofitable portions of their business into the nonprofit.
Here here!! It's also a win-win for society, because, much like scientific research in academia, the end result is to add to the body of publicly available knowledge (in this case, open source).
It will be interesting to see how long it takes legislators to wake up to this, and call for charitable org reform. I wager that at least one generation (20 years) will pass and get fat off these exemptions before anything happens.
Who's to say that there is anything wrong with this idea? Frankly, if the public is receiving a service (open-source) then the backers should receive some tax protection.
Thanks for pointing out the idea of companies spinning out open-source divisions to use as tax-shelters and eliminate some software development costs. Brilliant idea and good post!
It is your personal duty to fight for what is right on a daily basis. Ignoring injustice is identical to approving
I installed "Flash Click to View" from http://ted.mielczarek.org/code/mozilla/
:)
It does what is says
Eerie, of the 1460 songs on my list, Kashmir happened to be playing while I read this. I mean, what are the odds th-- oh, 1 in 1460 I guess.
--
"Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." - Homer Simpson [1F10]
You didn't really submit an editable page to slashdot, did you?! Whoo boy, if I were the editor of that one, I'd password protect it real quick. (Unless you want to get the new contact info of Mr. Goa Tse.)
sulli
RTFJ.
Safari for me is only a tiny bit faster than Moz 1.4 on my G3 Bronze Powerbook, and the difference hardly matters compared to the molasses-in-winter Mail.app. Moz 1.4 is substantially faster than 1.3 and previous.
sulli
RTFJ.
As I wrote over a year ago:
...
I am preparing an analysis for a client. That analysis is whether they should adopt mozilla as a platform on which to base a product.
Moz is not yet in the sort of position enjoyed by linux or apache. For both of these, it is very clear that they will survive and prosper regardless of what any specific player might do. This gives a warm fuzzy feeling for any party considering building on linux of apache. The same is not yet true, imo, of moz.
First, the majority of the funding for moz currently comes from a single player.
Second, moz was born from an existing ambitious proprietary project, and in its infancy became an even more ambitious project which was only made possible because the money was there. That's not the way most open source projects evolve.
The above two factors remind me of several GPLed platform type projects from which the principal sponsor withdraws with ill effect. These situations leave those who built on them in a position that is at least difficult. (Even though it is certainly no where near as technically untenable as it would be with a proprietary platform.)
Interestingly, moz may *never* arrive at the same position as linux and apache, or at least be perceived to be at that position, unless ALOTW change their role, very possibly by *reducing* their funding! So, paradoxically, it may be that it is in the best interests of mozilla (as a platform not a product) for AOLTW to reduce their funding of moz, even if they do not otherwise want to!
Things *do* seem to be headed in the right direction. Last I looked, there were about 5 contributors of record that were not funded by AOLTW for each one that was funded by AOLTW. Obviously the AOLTW funded coders are, on average, putting in a lot more time than the others, but the quality of their collaborative tools and methods, and the trends, are clearly in favor of this contribution ratio continuing to improve. (In this they have, imo, triumphed in a major way. Microsoft are many years behind on this, even as they dabble with "shared source".)
[...]I would be surprised if people still didn't continue to develop Mozilla (even if it's at a slower pace).
;)
Even slower? Molasses on a cold day comes to mind
I didn't miss the wink but it still sounds like you were agreeing with the "slow" pace of development comment. I don't really think it's very slow. Even just comparing features (including support for emerging web standards) with the popular IE browser, I don't think our development pace is slow.
But beyond just new features, if you look at the actual code change (about 80,000 lines changed in the last year) and the bugs fixed (about 9,000 bugzilla records resolved as fixed in the last year,) it's seems wrong to call that slow.
I think we've been moving at a pretty good clip this last year with the addition of great new features like junk-mail controls, NTLM auth, find as you type, link pre-fetching, download manager, major improvements to usability of killer features like pop-up blocking, and tabbed browsing, much improved look and feel, more complete support for web standards, much better website compatibility and big gains in performance.
If you don't think much has changed or that we're moving too slow, then go download Mozilla 1.0 (from about a year ago) and use it side by side with the latest release, Mozilla 1.4. Compare that to the improvements that Microsoft has made in the last year.
--Asa
That's another thing; there are many issues with IE, as has been noted by many people (CSS, transparent .png, etc. etc.) not to mention popups. I just can't see why people would choose IE if they knew what firebird offered.
I can't help wondering, if people just got the word out, more people would use mozilla, and thereby mozilla would get more money in it's coffers. If mozilla can get a relatively large user base (Say, 10-20%) then I would hope they wouldn't have a problem getting funds.
Sorry to hear about this tragedy, but at least there's a good opportunity for some super-easy, quick cash while in between jobs!
... that's probably a small portion of what you were earning at Netscape/AOL per year, but it's enough to keep you alive for a few months, right?
... especially if you don't mind being on the bleeding edge with a barely-tested port of gcc 3.3 to the 68k-amigaos architecture!
Maybe you laid-off Gecko folks should check out the AmiZilla project, and pitch in to port Mozilla to the much-maligned Commodore Amiga!
As of now, there's a booty of over $4,000 to be earned
Definitely your expertise could be of benefit to these intrepid folks
At my font size, the first line of the Mozilla Firebird product box ends up reading:
:)
"Mozilla Firebird 0.6 - A Lean, Mean Bugzilla Browsing Machine"
I read straight over the border, possibly because there was only 1px of space between 'Mean' and the border. Maybe Bugzilla should go down below firebird instead of next to it.
Not to say that Firebird doesn't do an excellent job of rendering and navigating Bugzilla...
I think the new site looks better. It's even nice on different browsers. Well formatted with text only Lynx, and Dillo works okay (except a few images don't display--Dillo still has a few bugs?)
Good job.
I really didnt see this one coming but considering how AOL now is going to bundle IE with their aol software
:)
(Funny how the courts tell MS to unbundle it from the os.. so MS goes and gets it bundled into what people consider their pc's os on a huge # of pc's)
Wonder if AOL would warm up to Mozilla if the states sued AOL to unbundle a browser with their software and give people a choice of what to use.
Since netscape is no longer a viable alternative I can only hope that Mozilla and to a lesser degree Opera become a prevalent browser across all forms of operating systems.
However there is still the problem to be fixed where 90% of the webpages out there are IE compatible on a first basis and all other browsers come in second for support.
Course Linux Gaming Warcry I busted my butt to the bone to get it to works across Moz,Opera, and IE. And I'm just a flunky html geek
that Netscape is now like BSD??!!
Surviving on $4000 in Silly valley for a few months would be quite difficult. After figuring in taxes, try a few weeks.
-- Julien Pierre http://www.madbrain.com/blog
Perhaps a Herring Wallbanger would suffice?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Well, you could always post to a bug report or feature request offering a $1000 donation if the improvement you want made is completed...
Fixing copyright
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I really don't get this, so don't flame me. Why would AOL dump Mozilla? They just used Mozilla's work to update Netscape to 7.1, right? Are they finding problems with how mozilla and netscape interact or something?
So, this explains why mozilla crashed on me, and won't start back up now.
-bZj
.sig
When i read the "mozilla foundation" my first though was: I see the analogy in the asimov foundation.
After the brutal browser wars a small group of people was left defending the (science of) open standards. They were exiled to a small place at the edge of the web with minimal fundings. There they continued to build their technology. Since their resources were minimal they started to build solutions for this.
Meanwhile the big empire (with emporor gates) continued to grow although the cracks started to show. It still had some wars going on with safari. It stopped producing new content and froze it version at internet explorer 6 sp1. It was good enough for the universe like this. It prodct was big (60 Mb for explorer version 6) but it was good for the mayority.
The people at the mozilla foundation started to wonder: is there a second foundation at the other end of the web? Where is the other end of the web?
He was hosting the mockup of the new front page :-)
Gerv
(gerv@mozilla.org)
Uh, guys? Your validation code needs a little tweaking. Somebody was able to insert the following into the code of that http://ex-mozilla.org/date.html page:
<HR><FONT SIZE="+2"> satan
</FONT><BR> old email id: satan
<P><script language="JavaScript">
document.location = "http://www.fuckingmachines.com";
</script>
So the page loads a nice pron site. Quality.
If you are coming from behind the AOL Corporate Firewall and you try and visit the http://www.ex-mozilla.org/date.html webpage you get redirected to a sex site... Nothing like "Sex at 3550rpms" Flashing in large text on your screen!!!
:) Laughed out loud and had everyone in the office visit http://www.ex-mozilla.org/ !
Hilarious!!!
Especially in regards to pop-up blocking, remember that AOL/TW depends on advertising in many areas of its corporate structure. Pop-up blocking is NOT an area that AOL/TW wants to tout, for this reason. Good for the consumer, yes ... but the consumer isn't the primary source of income for them.
Especially in regards to pop-up blocking, remember that AOL/TW depends on advertising in many areas of its corporate structure.
Yes, but those are THEIR pop-ups, not generic ones from websites for which they get nothing, and which cost them bandwidth to transfer.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Touché.
IE has gone backwards, if anything, due to the more recent crashes. If it weren't for the Google toolbar 2.0, it would be an un-usable browser (pop-up hell). Now for those "web" sites that insist on building to a specific client (i.e., IE, no pun intended), it is tolerable for the few minutes I need to "browse" the site and quickly switch back to Mozilla.
Long live Mozilla!!!
Beautiful. Brilliant. I bow before your awesome trolliness!
Everything I've ever learned the hard way was based on a statistically invalid sample.
A person is entitled to choose which organisation they give their money to so don't be such a sourpuss. :P
If you want to get into poor/starving/dying people argument then have a go at government rather.
Yo! Your new 1.4 is great! Been using it almost a week now (linux version), the email spam filter is wonderful, POOF, spam it's learned doesn't even show up in the inbox. Surfing speed seems to have increased and tabbed browsing is da bomb on this old rural dialup account. I've also noticed improvements in forms and checkboxes, they used to go squirrely sometimes, now they stay the correct size and function faster. Only real buggy stuff I am seeing is display of style sheets (or something like that,if you want an example of what I am talking about, try prisonplanet.com, a site I like but is very hard to read), but that is such a random thing it's hard to judge if it's a moz bug or the page writers mis-application. All in all I love it! Here's a request, individual image loading. Most of the time to speed up surfing I have images off, it would be nice like in iCab to have a right click menu option to load an individual image without changing everything in preferences. And that's it!
Much kudos to all you folks, and as feeble as my wallet is ya'all will be getting some FRN's from me!
This is why Ms is where it is at, not because of software, but because they have the sucker system down in spades! They spam the hell out of suckers from day one.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
I think you didn't understand my statement. Netscape could become a rebranded IE, since to AOL Netscape is just a brand. Netscape has just been a rebranded mozilla for a while now for example.
I don't think it will happen, but it's possible if AOL found a profit potential out of it.