Mozilla Foundation Meets The GNOME Foundation

An anonymous reader writes "The board of directors of the GNOME foundation recently met with a few representatives of the Mozilla foundation - discussing how they could collaborate a little closer in future. A number of interesting things were discussed, including XAML/Avalon and the future of Firefox in GNOME/Linux. Check out the minutes of the meeting on the Gnome mailing list."

Comments

Mozilla meets Gnome.

[Anonymous Coward]

Does Tokyo get stomped?

Do not annoy the Stallman

[Rick the Red]

the future of Firefox in GNOME/Linux

Isn't that "GNU/Linux"? Has GNOME taken over GNU?

Re:Do not annoy the Stallman

[ajs]

Stallman is a jelous developer, and you shall have no others before him!

Re:Do not annoy the Stallman

[Simon Lyngshede]

Soon it will be FireGNOMEGNU/Linux.

It'd be nice

[GigsVT]

Better to standardize on Firefox rather than have the desktop environment people keep churning out half-assed browsers like Konq and Nautilus.

Re:It'd be nice

[BuddieFox]

Konqueror, Nautilus, Epiphany, Galeon, Firefox, Mozilla et etc.. I have to agree that its getting kind of ridiculous.
Ok, choice is nice and all, but this duplication of functionality and work is probably extremely unproductive as a whole for the progress of open source software. It should be enough with 2-3 choices for browsers instead of 20: one or two lightweight ones á Firefox, and one or two "fully featured" like Mozilla.

Re:It'd be nice

[Moridineas]

Half-assed browsers like Konq?! It may be hard for you to believe, but some of us actually find Konq better to use than Mozilla.

That's certaintly true for APPLE, as Safari is based on kparts as well. Because of that alone, it wouldn't seriously surprise me if KParts browsers have a higher marketshare than mozilla.

Re:It'd be nice

[Bricklets]

I use Firefox when I'm working in Windows and Linux, but I use Safari when working on a Mac. Safari uses KHTML (developed for "Konq"). Different strokes for different folks. Just because you don't like a particular browser does not mean others feel the same.

And by standardization, that does not mean the elimination of all other browsers. It just means basing multiple browers on the same standard (i.e. user interface, rendering of pages, etc.)

Re:It'd be nice

[Malc]

Firefox is based directly on the Mozilla browser, and it's almost as fully-featured as Mozilla Seamonkey. Unless you're referring to all the other non-browser bumpf that's ignorantly part of the same process space as the Mozilla Seamonkey browser... but Firefox is closing that gap too when it's bundled in a like-feature suite including products such as Thunderbird, Sunbird, etc.

I wish they would stop wasting their time with Seamonkey and put their efforts in to closing the gap more quickly.

Anyway, I know what you're saying, but there's got to be a reason why KDE developers chose to write their own from scratch rather than integrate Gecko.

Re:It'd be nice

[Abjifyicious]

Yes Safari is based on the same HTML rendering engine as Konquerer, but the user interface is completely different. On the surface, Safari is far more similar to Firefox than Konquerer.

Re:It'd be nice

[jdifool]

The socialists, the communists, the social-democrats, the conservatives, the libertarians, the absenteists.. I have to agree that its getting kind of ridiculous.
Ok, choice is nice and all, but this duplication of thinking and criticism is probably extremely unproductive as a whole for the progress of democracy. It should be enough with 2-3 choices for political parties instead of 20: one or two lightweight ones as the libertarians, and one or two "fully featured" like the democrats and the republicans.

oh wait...

Re:It'd be nice

[arkhan_jg]

Actually, I use konqueror these days as my primary browser, rather than firefox.

For a start, being able to have a tab with an sftp session next to a samba session next to a webdavs session next to a https session is very useful when web developing, or even just integrating stuff between different servers.

Secondly, konqueror launches a damn sight faster.

Finally, it integrates a lot nicer into my kde desktop than firefox or it's other gtk-varients.

Now, if you could use the gecko engine as a kpart, that would rock quite nicely. That said, with safari feeding back their improvements into khtml, konqueror is moving ahead by leaps and bounds, and it's a rare page i have rendering problems with these days.

All power to the mozilla team - I deployed thunderbird onto the staff windows machines at work as the standard imap client - and I think integration of firebird further into the linux desktop is a very good thing for both parties.

Ultimately though, a bit of healthy competition is a good thing - otherwise, we'd all just be using IE!

It's genius

[teamhasnoi]

They're going to incorporate the browser into the OS. It's a sure sign that linux is ready for the desktop, because obviously you can't have an OS that isn't tightly integrated with the internet.

Vision like this could only come the linux community.

Re:Be careful how close you get to Mozilla

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. No sooner have I downloaded and installed Mozilla browser that I have noticed by 17-year-old son looking at pornography and the images of filthy women on the Internet. Plus he started talking somce Communist manifesto stuff and once said he was going to install Lunix on our home machine.

I am not a violent man, but from good father's perspective I had to whip out my belt and show him that's the road to hell. That changed his perspective entirely, so right now he's quite happy using Internet Explorer 6 on Windows ME and paying for all the applications he uses except some cheap crap, that's so bad they have to give it away for other people to pick up.

I also own 100 shares of Microsoft stock in my portfolio, and so does my wife, so no Lunix talks are permitted in my house, since we are all planning for happy retirement.

I find it odd indeed... (slightly OT)

[henriksh]

It is really odd that Gnome opted for Epiphany as a default browser in 2.x, when Galeon is a better and more featureful choice. I've read that the reasons were that Galeon did not follow some UI guidelines (this could surely be worked out?), and that Epiphany is simpler to use.

I just find it hard to believe than anyone would pick Epiphany over Galeon, even considering simplicity, since Galeon mostly works like Mozilla. Galeon seems simpler to use to me - Epiphany doesn't look or feel like any other browser I've used.

Re:I find it odd indeed... (slightly OT)

[13Echo]

This topic about Epiphany really opens a new can of worms. Now, I'm going to go off about Gnome in general. Epiphany, itself, really is a good example of one of Gnome's major problems.

I'm finding that many Gnome developers are going with making things so ridiculously simple at times that it is almost getting stupid. I use Epiphany, but I prefer Galeon as well. Comparing Epiphany to more feature-rich browsers like Galeon/Konqueror/Firefox makes Epiphany seem almost like IE to some degree. I suppose that is the point. I can browse with Epiphany and still get a reasonably good experience, where if I am forced to use a Windows machine (and IE) I am greeted with a slow browser with no features, tons of pop-ups, lack of tabbed browsing, lack of middle click, etc. Sure, you can add these extensions, but that's not the point.

The Gnome project seems to be interested in keeping things as simple as possible without taking too many features away. There are some things about Galeon/Firefox that I never used. There are some things about Epiphany that I would love to have. Any choice is better than IE for most browsing. I guess that is the point.

What is really odd about Gnome's usability though, is that it is really inconsistent between apps. Even more annoying is that there are such major changes between different versions of Gnome, that really negate the "ease of use" concept that they seem to promote. For example, what in the hell is up with the new spatial Nautilus? Sure, it's fast. Sure, it works well in some respects. Sure, I'm getting used to it. Sure, I can enable "classic mode" and browse that way. But it seem to be *unfinished*. That's the big deal. Someone above mentioned that Gnome feels half-finished in many respects, and I tend to agree (in spite of it being my desktop of choice). Perhaps if they would stick to keeping major UI standards for major versions (between 2.x and 3.x, for instance), maybe someone could finish implementing a product or feature and make things consistent for once. Though I kinda like the new Nautilus spatial file manager, there are a lot of things that are missing that really make it difficult to use for certain things.

So, back to Epiphany... While I feel that it feels a lot like Galeon or Firefox in most respects, some design decisions are just weird! For example, the way that it manages tab organization, or the slim feature-set that give you the ability to customize it. I like the browser, but I feel that Marco is going way too far in some respects. I really appreciate his work; Don't get me wrong. It's just something that I'm seeing from many Gnome-centric projects as well.

It's just weird. You have an app like Evolution, which is kick-ass as far as mail apps are concerned, but other things seem to be broken or incomplete; Epiphany, Totem, (the new and improved) Nautilus in spatial mode, G-Streamer, etc. To the guy that posted that really long response of above; I feel your pain. I love Gnome, but I can't help but think that the head developers are a little lost at times. There really isn't a very good sense of group direction and planning... At least compared to KDE, in my opinion.

Re:I find it odd indeed... (slightly OT)

[akeru]

"better" is a very subjective term, especially as far as Galeon and Epiphany are concerned. The reasons GNOME went with Epi over Galeon are essentially the same as why Marco (lead developer) left Galeon and started Epiphany: the (other) Galeon developers wanted to duplicate a lot of things that were already present in GNOME. The short list of duplication in Galeon/GNOME is MIME, Proxy and Mouse settings. The outcome of this is that there are (at present) 4 choices for a GNOME webbrowser, none of which are ideal.

Re:I find it odd indeed... (slightly OT)

[Jameth]

"I feel your pain. I love Gnome, but I can't help but think that the head developers are a little lost at times. There really isn't a very good sense of group direction and planning... At least compared to KDE, in my opinion."

What's really amazing is that KDE is the one with nothing even resembling central leadership, and GNOME is the one which is generally run by a group of core developers and decision makers. How did that happen?

By the way, you're completely right.

Re:GNONE-ME

[ajs]

Comparing Nautilus with Konqueror is pure nonsense, comparing GNOME with KDE is even bigger nonsense. If we get a team of developers on a Table and discuss all the crap we find between KDE and GNOME then I can tell from own experience that the answer is clearly that GNOME will fail horrible here.

What can you say... most of that isn't even coherent enough to be deemed english.

But KDE had exactly all these things 2 years ago already. There is a development difference of 4 years between both Desktop solutions.

And there's a development difference of 2-4 years in the other direction on other issues. What's surprising about one (very good) desktop system having different priorities than another (very good) desktop system?

Re:Is OSS going the Microsoft route?

[dAzED1]

no one said integrating a web browswer into the desktop was evil.

one company controlling the browser, the desktop, the OS, the applications, the server apps, and...whatever else...that is what is innappropriate. Not having a choice - that is what is wrong.

Don't want your browswer to be integrated? Use KDE, or the gnome fork that won't be integrated. Take the source and do it yourself, if you'd like. Not that you're making a serious question...

Progress, but someone needs to lead

[Ars-Fartsica]

One inherent advantage Microsoft has over collaborative projects is that they don't need to persuade their own developers - they just point the boat and say "go here if you want to get paid". In the open source world, the consensus approach of feeding/starving projects based on their relative merits, and the unwillingness to leave anyone out in the cold definitely hampers major moves.

Such is the case here. The need to more closely integrate the web rendering model and the desktop model is clear, and Microsoft is probably on to something compelling with Avalon/XAML. ActiveX was a disastrous first brush with integration but its clear they see a need and there is a need. Safe local applications integrated with the network do make sense.

On the open source side someone will have to lead to get this done - and not be afraid to leave some groups out. Epiphany should be an early victim - a "default" app no one uses.

Re:Be careful how close you get to Mozilla

[The-Dalai-LLama]

I hate to feed the trolls but criminy...

can only be useful in the context of searching for and downloading hardcore or violent pornography

The emphasis is in the original post and it's an utterly ridiculous claim. Trust me, these fantastic features are every bit as useful and functional for downloading and cataloging even low-key, family-friendly porn that has nothing to do with whips, chains, or farm animals in leather pants.

Besides which, your cheap attempt to inject a little extra hype carries a distinct tone of shrill hysteria, which detracts from any attempt at a more reasoned argument. Your attempt to use one narrow aspect of the whole broad, rich spectrum of glorious pornography is misleading enough that it probably has its own latin name.

I guess it also goes without saying that the uses for tabbed browsing are limited only by the imagination and intelligence of the person who browses.

Consequently, your options may be severely limited. Let me help you get started.

• The glorious power of tabbed browsing:
• Allows you to open up every category of the Chadwick's Catalog at once
• You can do a Google search for "Moral Purity" and open each result in its own tab
• Each article on the American Family Association's Website can be opened in its own tab. You can read the current article while the others load.
• You don't have to use Firefox's handy extensions on pictures of porn. Because Satan and his Mozillian Minions made them available through the GPL for free, you can use them to collect and trade pictures of Jesus or even pictures of beautiful cathedrals, without ever worrying that your licensing fee will be used to fund sex-correction surgery for a 16-year old Taiwanese lady-boy.
• If you have Bible questions, you can open a tab for each answer, drastically reducing the amount of time it takes to hide those words in your heart.
• Tabbed browsing is so useful that you can go to the Anti-Porn Guy's website and open each of his informative links in its own window to find others who will help you with your crusade against tabbed browsing.

To sum up: tabbed browsing is your friend. Whether you are cruising www.hotasiansluts.com or www.jesus.com, tabbed browsing can make your internet experience faster, easier, and better.

The Dalai Llama
...tab for the children...

P.S. - I gather that your tirade against tabbed browsing is a recurring theme. Feel free to bookmark this post and refer to it as needed.

good idea that....

[zogger]

...mozilla wants to collaborate closer with GNOME and that they asked for it first, according to the release of the minutes of the meeting. Cool Beans. Something that I like, more focused direction on unification for a polished product. *Choice* is good,but it's subjective without some sort of rational goal, choice by itself is mostly used as a buzzword, there must be a *goal* in making the choice and having multiple choices, not just that there *are* multiple choices extant.

And my choice and I bet millions of others would be a "linux thing" that worked cohesively together, and that just won't happen very quickly with thousands of directions taken, many of them just parallel trails with each other.

I most certainly would *chose* an operating system/distribution that worked all well together. A choice of a chaotic mish mash of thousands of incompatable apps and a so-so functionality is not much of a choice if you want quality over quantity.

Re:Is OSS going the Microsoft route?

[iabervon]

Um... KDE is the wrong suggestion. The browser (konqueror) has always been integrated into KDE.

YES! We need to sort out the damn GUI bindings.

[mpcooke3]

1. IBM's SWT requires C++ interfaces and it needs gnome in addition to current GTK bindings. SWT is the fastest best API supporting most common platforms it runs 10 times faster than mozilla because it uses native widgets.

2. XUL needs to be mapped to SWT bindings so it has faster native cross platform support. This would be the quickest way to get mozilla to run and look like a native app on most platforms.

With these two changes people can develop cross platform apps with native GUI's either directly in C, Java or using XUL for layout.

3. Once that is done you can clone XAML/Avalon.

If I have any spare time this weekend I will put togethor the neccessary patches ;)

Matt.

Re:Oh christ.

[evilviper]

The last thing I want is my favorite browser family tied to freaking GTK or Gnome.

Ironically, it already is... Mozilla has always required GTK, and (very few) GNOME libraries.

The fact that you don't realize this suggests that you've probably never compiled Mozilla, and just download the binaries. In which case, you won't be affected in the slightest, anyhow.