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Life After Netscape For Mozilla Developers
An anonymous reader submits "MozillaZine has an article up on life after Netscape for Mozilla developers formerly employed there. Several developers are now employed by the non-profit Mozilla Foundation in full or part-time positions, others have been hired by IBM and Daniel Glazman was contracted by Lindows to write web publishing application Nvu. Another group of developers have joined together to form Mozilla Consulting to work on customized Mozilla enhancements. The amount of interest by non-Netscape companies in Mozilla is surely a positive sign for the future of the project."
1. Netscape paid Mozilla developers
2. AOL/Netscape pulls out of Mozilla program
3. Mozilla developers get rehired by different companies
Seriously, there's very little "life after Netscape" in the article aside from "X works for Y now".
While it is good that these people have jobs and can continue to work on Mozilla I think it is a little early to claim that industrial support is well under way. It is certainly very positive that some companies are willing to put their money where their mouth is but I think a lot will depend on the return of this current investment. If nvu doesn't materialize or if other key mozilla components do not deliver on their promises (e.g. calendar is so far mostly vapor ware in terms of interoperability), I think mozilla adoption by industry will not become much better.
Certainly there are some great opportunities: - There is an enormous trend in the public sector (especially outside the US) to adopt open source. Mozilla is part of this trend for non MS platforms. - Internet explorer does not seem to have evolved in the past few years and is unlikely to do so in the coming few years: market share can be gained. - Apple seems to be moving away from MS products, this will stimulate adoption of alternative browsers by both users and developers. Alternative heere does not necessarily mean Mozilla but other than IE.
Mozilla with XUL is indeed a nice distributed platform, a much richer way of writing "thin" clients than *HTML. You can actually write distributed apps that feel so much like a native local app that most users wouldn't even notice--except for performance, of course. A lot of porkiness and memory leakiness still needs to be removed, and some usability loose ends need to be tied up before everything is peachy. Right now (even with the latest builds I believe) keeping multiple copies of Mozilla up for days eventually eats an incredible amount of memory. Closing them brings the system down with furious swapping activity.
I know we are all anxious to see the project have a long-term future, especially with the recent changes, but that is jumping the gun just a bit. There is a big difference in companies having interest in Mozilla employees than having interest in Mozilla. Just because IBM hired Daniel Glazman doesn't mean they have any interest in Mozilla, they just know he is qualified in specific development areas that they want to focus on.
SCO.com uses Linux
If the site isn't conforming to the specifications that Mozilla claims to support, then yes it is fine. But more often than not Mozilla failing to work is due to some crappy server side client dection script that doesn't know what to do with Mozilla and so it just sends the equivilant of, "go away, we don't want your kind around here." My normal response is "fine, then I will take my business where I am apreciated". I got both of my banks (credit card and checking accounts) to support Mozilla by kindly asking a few times to have it added. Since many, many web developers use Mozilla because of its great standards compliance and it's lack of crashing it's often not hard if you ask the right people in the right way =)
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I have a bit of a problem with this line of thinking. If a person forms a company to provide software that others want to buy, what's the problem? If I make something you want, and it is worth it to you, then why would you not expect to pay?
Now, if someone wants to compete with them by creating an open source version of the product, then more power to them, but remember, most companies actually serve a purpose (excluding a bunch of bubble companies!) I'm simply amazed at the number of people on Slashdot who think that any profit motive is 'evil'.
Hell, there are no rules here. We're trying to accomplish something. - Thomas Edison
Given that people with common intests form communities, it isn't unreasonable for this community to be interested in what happens to the people of that community.
That I've never met them in person, doesn't stop me from being concerned about them.
As an IT professional, as many of us are, I get roped into supporting PC's and networks (sigh) for family members.
Make it easy on yourself, do what I do....
I give free Max OS X and free Linux/FreeBSD support. Everything elses is at my billable rate.
No need to support toy operating systems - especially when you consider that Microsoft had 50 billion is cash - they should support their crap, not you.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Although it might not be the most important issue in the world, the fact is to guarantee that in the future we're able to have choice in the marketplace then we need to invest in alternatives, whether that's by donating to the Mozilla foundation, buying an Opera licence, etc.
$50,000,000 may sound a lot, but that's pocket change to Microsoft and Microsoft make their money by people paying for Windows (often as part of the cost of a PC) and other software like Office. Your argument makes no sense, at least with free software you've got the option to donate, with commercial software people are wasting billions with no other option - therefore should Microsoft be stopped from selling software so we can give the money to the poor instead?
But it is SO tantalizingly close in Mozilla, that it is painful to see it so far away. Checking the progress of SVG in Mozilla, it seems to be stagnating. It really needs some General Patton to force-march it toward a release.