Slashdot Mirror
Mitch Kapor Warns Against Firefox Gloating
An anonymous reader writes "Mitch Kapor, Lotus co-founder and president and chair of the Open Source Applications Foundation, says open-source advocates should be relatively cautious and avoid making claims and predictions despite the huge success of Firefox. He also briefly touches on Chandler in a ZDNet interview. Chandler is OSAF's personal information manager which will offer e-mail, calendaring, address and task management. The goal for Chandler, Kapor says, is to make it as successful and popular as Firefox."
What, they want to take the joy out of life? What about all past gloating; surely there is enough of that - enough to more than make up for any future gloating deficit.
Humor from a Genetically Molested Mind
This from the guy who helped bring us Lotus Notes? Perhaps YOU should be more cautious about ignoring the requests of your user base.
/me hits F9 to refresh
Oh the irony:
He says not to gloat about firefox's success, then he uses it is a standard he wants to meet.
I like Windows XP Home Edition.
... plus even more!"
It is the most powerful operating-system for Pee Cees. It looks not as gay as Mac OS X by Steve B10 Jobs and has 1,0000,0000 times more softwares that the Linus-operating-system.
Plus, it comes with every Pee Cee for free. People who have grown acusstomt to paying RatHat 699 $$$ or more can hardly beleive this when I consult them with my proffesional Internet- and Network-Service-Center-Bureau.
Wehn I have a new customer, I take him to the back-room to show him the "alternative" to XP Home, which is Suse Linux 9.0.
I have set-up an old Pentium 133Hz and a small monochrome monitor to show teh customer what Linux looks and feels like.
I have it set-up so it runs a fullscreen-Flash-splash-screen on the KDE3.3beta-desktop. It takes 13 min until the mouse cursor responds.
The customer will them make a sound like: "BAH!"
Then I tell them: "See, this is how it is if we let the communists make software."
Then we have a good laugh, wich is psycologicallish valuable for the customer-relatively.
I always tell them:
"Windows XP Home Edition is all you can do to embiggen the producationality of your human resourcers and empower to leverage the outcome-bottomlime of your stickholder
My customers usually are like: "OMG!"
You should really try it one day; it has a very nice light-reddish color theme to hit your tastes.
Thank you!
I want his opinion on Thunderbird-Sunbird integration.
The unofficial
Jeez, and you thought the endless dupes was bad! Now we are getting ads for vaporware products masquerading as news items by simply throwing in some open source flamebait in the title and description.
I think the main thing Firefox has to worry about is bloating itself up too big like Opera did. I remember when Opera was nice and streamlined, now it's too bloated for its own good.
What's not to like?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Tbird will always beat him!
It's healthy to have goals.
The unofficial
I think you really want to link to project Lightning. That's the one that brings Sunbird and Thunderbird together.
He owned the spreadsheet market and saw it lost to Microsoft through no fault of his own. (He'd left Lotus by then)
However, he was never able to experience the same success. No matter how much hype and support his subsequent projects had, they never panned out in the long run.
FireFox could very much be the same thing. It's a long way from 2% market share to 98%.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
Right, but everyone already knows Thunderbird is a killer email client. Sunbird is much more obscure by contrast.
The unofficial
Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall. Proverbs 16:18 KJV
How does the Slashdot Effect happen given that no slashdotters ever RTFA?
Oddly enough, my M$ keyboard and mouse work great with Firefox.
Every time you post an article on Slashdot, I kill a server. Think of the servers!
2) I'll give you that one. Live with it. Turn off the bookmarks toolbar, rename the folder, and just pretend it's a normal subfolder of root. If you don't have enough bookmarks to require some sort of organization, I call this a moot point.
3) True. Also unfortunate. I've learned to cope - I know of a grand total of 2 websites I need to use IE on. And one of them is just for a bit of extra functionality, the brunt of it works fine in Firefox.
4) Odd... Can you cange the buttons to launch a program instead of a website? If so just have them launch Firefox with the website as an argument.
The goal for Chandler, Kapor says, is to make it as successful and popular as Firefox
So this story could make one think.
Great, somebody modded me a troll. Honestly, another thing to whine about! (And I don't need help finding things to whine about)
1) what do you mean? I can open a new window in Firefox at any time by pressing CTRL-N. is that not what you're referring to?
2) if you're on IE now, that's not a reason not to switch, since they're the same. understandable, though, if you use Opera or something else that isn't so clumsy with it's bookmarks.
3) not any more oddly than Opera or Safari, in my experience. i'd say it's the best of any non-IE browser. i only come across one site every few months that can't be browsed with firefox, and never anything essential... some look a bit off, but the web was never about presentation, just information. if you like presentation, ask people to design websites in flash (*shudder*) and use the flash plugin on firefox...
4) I see you do use IE. that makes 2 a moot point. it's not a reason to switch, but like i said, it's not a reason not to.
you may take "pride and joy" in the hobby, but as long as there are passionate developers out there who consider open source development very much his/her hobby, i don't see the open source as a whole "gloating" no matter the success.
Even when I speak to people who do development all day long they still talk about users and developers as if they're two different people. Even when they're talking about themselves they do it. I'm guilty of it myself: I use Mozilla, but I work on Boomerang. Fact is, no matter how much I value my freedom to modify Mozilla, I've probably done it once in the whole time I've been using it. (My Mozilla doesn't have "Close All Other Tabs" right below "Close Tab" cause I accidentially clicked it one too many times.) Why is this? It's because it's just too much hard work to go-and-get-the-source-code that it's easier to just put up with bugs and poor ui decisions, and just hope it gets fixed in the next release. This is especially funny for Mozilla and FireFox cause a large part of them is written in Javascript, meaning you already have the source code. Unfortunately, the effort required to get from noticing an annoyance to finding the right file:line to make a change is still too much. Can anyone think of any way to ease this translation? It'd be really cool if I could hold down alt and middle click on a menu to get a javascript editor focused on the bit of code responsible for the thing I want to fix. Then we can add to that editor a button that says 'email patch'. How many millions of developers-as-users would contribute to projects like Mozilla if this was the case?
How we know is more important than what we know.
I use a Logitech Cordless MX Duo set w/keyboard and mouse, and I bounded the iTouch button (I'll soon set it as the "My Home" one) to open FireFox and it works perfectly everytime. However if you're talking about one of the standard keyboards with the small rubber buttons near the top, it should be easy to change by finding the keyboard software that came with your vanilla computer. I agree that we shouldn't gloat about FireFox's success too much for various reason, though I do admit that FireFox is obviously better than its competing products. Don't say I'm insane or stupid just because I'm not saying we should gloat all we want about FireFox.
Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Bugs are good for building character in the user.
Why not CTRL+T?
Ok, I've got to ask why you would want to delete that directory. It's the top level. ROOT. You have to have a top level. This is like saying "I don't like having a monitor. I want to read right off the Hard Drive.
This will be toppled soon...
- New release based on trunk, will have many improvement to gecko rendering engine.
- Reporter tool will allow you to report broken/blocked websites to the evangelism team with ease. Were hoping to land it soon.
There are a dozen hacks to get it working. It's more a Logitech issue. Your friend google will fix it for you.
1). What du you mean? alt+N opens a new window, or do you mean something else?)
2) dont understand what you mean... but if its in MSIE,too why does it hinder you from switching?
3) maybe, but i never noticed it. some pages are badly looking, but that could be by design (either lacking html or estethics skillz)
4) ask logitech. They surely can fix this bug in their utility. this has nothing to do with firebirg.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
I'm not going to try and persuade you (there are plenty here that will give it a shot, I'm sure) but I'm wondering what you mean by #1... I hit CTRL+N and it opens a new browser window. CTRL+T is a new tab...
Do you mean that you want to set that action to that specific keyboard shortcut?
...like basic PR. Try picking a name for your software that doesn't suck ass.
Cool: Firefox, Thunderbird, Mozilla
Gay: Chandler, Bob, Opera
Yeah the best way to promote a product is to reduce the clout of the product that makes yours worthwhile.
Good luck.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
LOL, That is quite funny!
Most of Technocrat's stories are great, though.
The unofficial
Kapor's put a lot of time, money, and probably other resources into open source. They are many who just talk a good game, and then there are others like Kapor who put millions into open source.
But hey, don't let that get in the way of a perfectly good lynching.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
Don't be proud about your success, but we dream of being as successful as you are.
I guess you meant "as successful and unpopular" as IE
and only on the Notes integration plugin. preferably.
The truth about Led Zep should never be told on
Putting down Firefox fans for gloating, all the while gloating over one's own OSS product that competes with Thunderbird and other email clients like Novell Evolution and Microsoft Outlook.
;)
You also have to explain to suits why your OSS product will work better for them than the Outlook bundled with MS-Office for free. Don't try to tell them that the security is better, because they have developers exploiting those security flaws to automate email processes and also spy on what their users are doing to make sure they are productive.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
The Chandler PIM is named after one of the all-time great detective novelists - Raymond Chandler. Check out the OSAF site .
See that long UID - that's what you get for lurking too long
It's really annoying that there's no drag-and-drop uploading for ofoto now that I'm using Firefox (which I love) and I now have to upload the pics in IE (and get 15 popups for my trouble)
"Ok, I've got to ask why you would want to delete that directory. It's the top level. ROOT. You have to have a top level. This is like saying "I don't like having a monitor. I want to read right off the Hard Drive."
not accusing but he/she may be a Windows user. the concept and assumtions of / (root,chrooting,etc) may not be second nature.
It's never really bothered me though.
The truth about Led Zep should never be told on
For moderators who don't like the TV show, Friends:
Besides the poorly-written, long-running, overly-syndicated, abomination of a TV show that features a self-serving, insecure, superficial, lazy male lead character who's biggest claim to fame is a simple on-liner of, "Could I be any more [fill in the blank]?"
Nothing. There is nothing else not to like.
And for the moderators who do like the TV show, Friends:
Could "Chandler" be anymore of a rip-off of Outlook?
WTPOUAWYHTTOTWPA
What's the point of using acronyms when you have to type out the whole phrase anyways?
No, I meant what I said. They were both tongue in cheek.
The unofficial
It's called Evolution
It's a fairly good email client. I still prefer Evolution though.
What we need is a Windows port, that way more people are going to get a chance to try it.
1. As previous posters pointed out, CTRL-N works. It's even listed in the menu with the rest.
2. The "Bookmarks Toolbar" folder can be removed by manually editing bookmarks.html in your profile directory.
Someone really should gin up a menu item in the bookmark manager to designate an arbitrary folder as the toolbar, and allow removal of the default.
That said, I have recently started using the bookmark bar after years of dispassionately ignoring it - and you know what? it's actually very useful for keeping commonly used links (i.e. webmail, ticketing system and admin pages at work) and RSS feeds. Give it a shot, you might even like it.
3. IE-specific sites are broken, not firefox. complain to the people that spit out the poor markup.
4. two options- either change your keyboard to launch firefox with the URIs as arguments (firefox.exe -remote "openURL http://foo") or complain at logitech to fix their software to pass the URIs to the OS' default handler. The blame here lies solely with them.
Opera was a good name in my opinion. Windows has been successful, and has a horrible, and completely irrelevant (other than the fact they call boxes windows) name... same with all other Microsoft products. Windows Calculator is an immensly successful product... err... uhh... never mind.
- 1. OSS Developer writes code in spare time to scratch an itch, other developers join in the fun.
- 2. A Company decides to open source an existing commercial product, open source developers join to build on the existing code.
While paying developers to work on an EXISTING open source project does work, paying developers to CREATE an open source does not. What happens? Millions of dollars in foundation money and feature creep at an unimaginable scale.I hope Chandler overcomes these odds, but the future doesn't look bright unless their is a major turnaround. Firefox 0.1 was 10x more usable than Chandler 0.5.
Why? To attract attention on him? The article was interresting in itself, it didnt deserve that kind of tricks.
He barely talk about cautiousness in ONE sentence in ONE paragraph in a 2 PAGES article!
Nobody knows what's going to happen. It's certainly not inevitable that Firefox's market share will continue to increase. I think open-source advocates would do well to be relatively cautious and avoid making claims and predictions.
He isnt even talking about gloating!!!
...and I think there will be sufficient interest in Chandler among people who don't to make the project successful.
Many people in the organization I work for use a program called Goldmine to help them maintain contact with sizable networks of people. Goldmine is one of a suprisingly small number of programs that provide person-centric organization of information. In one view, you can see a person's contact information plus all the phone calls, appointments and email communication with that person. Once you've used a system like this, a plain-old PIM (in which email, contact info, and appointments are all stored separately) just won't cut it.
Unfortunately, Goldmine is Windows-only. We've replaced almost all of our other Windows apps with ones that run in Linux, but at the moment there is no viable Goldmine replacement. Consequently, we're watching Chandler with eagerness.
Speaking as in individual who abhors "Friends" and its spinoff, I have heard the name "Chandler" one too many times. (shivers)
"Something unknown is doing we don't know what." - Sir Arthur Eddington
Chandler Bing _was_ in Data Processing. As the matter of fact, according to some job placement pro, it was his true calling in life. ;-)
Or so my wife says who is the one watching Friends
is seen as the openbsd of browsers, and should be developed that way. There are enough features for it to survive for a while, if the developers just start concentrating on security.
Security is the main advantage of firefox over IE (to most people anyway), so the devs should focus on security a lot more.
Even windows users have a C:\ prefixing all their directories.
Mitch Kapor warns against gloating?? MITCH KAPOR??? Mitch Kapor telling someone not to gloat is like a crack fiend telling.. Wait, who the hell is Mitch Kapor, and what's this Lotus you speak of?
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Maybe that should be respelled as, "ghey". Or maybe be re-written as "uncool". As a het (or maybe "breeder") I dunno why "gay" is associated with "undesireable". Surely it's a teenage thing that develops during puberty and eventually they'll grow up and understand.
I suppose I should add a, "not that there's anything wrong with that" reference here.
Ok i'm going to gloat... I have had this install of windows going for about 4-5 months. I have used Firefox for nearly everything web page related. I did load up IE once or twice to check a few things out. I haven't ran a spyware removal app since I installed windows... today my computer was running slow (something about the large 350mb tv shows i'm downloading i think) ... so i decided to run adaware.. it found 18 "files" all data mining and IE related. That was all the spyware my machine had gotten in 4-5 months use by using firefox.. i think that speaks for itself
Kyle
http://www.unlogikal.net/
I have a question about Lotus. Why is there no Linux version? Do you know our company (~80 boxes) is entirely windows, due only to lotus notes (6.5.3) and ERP system being Windows only. Lotus is even part of IBM now, which spends over $1 billion on Linux annually.
Domino runs on Linux, great. But we use Notes quite heavily, lots of custom databases, pda apps, custom apps etc, so iNotes is out of the question. We really are paying alotta microsoft tax only because of the ERP system which is 'promising' linux binaries, and lotus, which claims no plans yet. Its mostly java-based anyway, just compile it for Linux for each version minor number, its not too much work.
I can volunteer time.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Actually, I dispute that. Most people that claim it's more secure say that it's because of the amount of vulnerabilities being found in Internet Explorer compared to Firefox. How many people are looking for unknown vulnerabilities in IE? How many are looking at Mozilla/Firefox? This is determined by the media. When there's a MS vulnerability, it's all over the news and the finder gets a ton of glory and hopeful job offers. I see MS patches making it into mainstream news such as the Associated Press. As Firefox gets a spotlight because of a good amount of security professionals (Which happen to be coders with a personal agenda) recommending people switch, I've seen an increase in the amount of vulnerabilities reported. Don't believe me? Look at the stats and compare IE with Firefox. Yes, IEs numbers are higher, but think in proportion to how many skilled people are looking for vulnerabilities in each product. If you look at the different versions of Mozilla over the timeline they give, you can see that not many vulnerabilities were found early last year or before that compared to when Firefox really started to get attention. Imagine how many vulnerabilities would be found if they got the amount of media attention that IE vulns get. Until both products get the same amount of hacker attention, it's premature to say which is more secure.
As a security professional, I believe that as long as you keep your software patched up (computers, routers, switches, etc.), your only fear is a zero day. Hopefully you have other layers of security such as a border firewall, IPSec Transport mode with packet filtering at every host, multiple antivirus vendors software (with at least one of them configured to block password protected archives, known dangerous file types and dangerous content), ongoing training, locked down servers with all the fat trimmed, middle tier servers, etc. These things are not vendor specific. You can run Windows, Linux, OSX, BSD, Solaris and still be able to do these things. Assuming you have all that set up, one zero day most likely wouldn't be enough. If someone really wants in and you've done all these things, do you really think you're going to get "pwned" because you chose a specific vendor or software package? No. You're going to get pwned because someone will be social engineered or some aspect of physical security will be bypassed. It's a hell of a lot easier to get into a company by phishing than it is to hunt down a couple silver bullet zero days as you get through each layer of security. My point is that if someone wants to get in, they can do it. It only takes a few holes at most and enough patience to find them to get to a target. It's up to the admin to ensure that it's as difficult as possible to find them and to ensure that the damage is minimized. Auditing (logging), backups, intrusion detection, policies, procedures, security assessments, a good data structure with granular permissions, etc can help minimize impact.
My professional opinion is that it just doesn't matter what you use as long as it's well administered, but if you want to force me to pick one side and guess which code has less vulnerabilities, I'm going to pick MS. Security through obscurity isn't a magic elixir, but it's definitely another layer of protection. And with all the attention MS gets, they've had an opportunity to patch up a lot of their vulnerabilities. At this point, new vulns are probably easier to find on other vendors that aren't as popular.
-Lucas
I'm one of a number of people - obviously not most but enough - who have been reporting problems with seg faults on the Firefox bugzilla for months. So far the only response - after none at all for months and the reports piling up - has been a suggestion from one of the main developers that we go and learn how to debug their code ourselves, along with unconcealed contempt that we haven't already developed the skills to do that. This was from someone closely involved with the NY Times add buy, at that. They've got droids who would rather win through advertising than by quality-control on their coding. What other organizations does this remind you of?
Mind you, I'm running it anyway. But crashing several times a week in a 1.0 release of anything (this on Linux), especially when built on the venerable Mozilla base, and when they consider it Times-add ready.... Kinda sad.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Ok OK it's a little bit faster than NS7.2. But it's harder to use multiple profiles, it's still a little bit unstable and it has a hard time with certain types of Webpages with objects that the plugins can't handle. But since NS7.2 handles popups, etc. as well as Firefox there isn't a lot to really distinguish it.
And I found that Thunderbird, an NS7.2 mail lookalike, did not handle embedded URLS in mail as well as NS.
Sure it's better than IE but I imagine so are all sorts of other browsers as well.
Now here's the good part. Browsers are a strategic business application. And any strategic business application needs source code down to the level that any customer can customize the application to make it work. Oracle is like that, Tivoli and hundreds of other applications. So keeping that source away from customers and stopping them from exercizing that kind of control over development is a horrible thing that you've all been conned into accepting.
But keep in mind that like putting an alarm system in your house, a browser like Firefox can't stop someone from breaking in. What it can do at best is make it a little bit harder to break in than the guy next to you. So the criminal will move on to the next house. But sooner or later someone will paste up a gigantic bag of tools that can be used to easily crush Firefox and as soon as it reaches an arbitrary level of market penetration it will get hit.
And guess what wrangler dudes and dudettes - you'll have to patch manage two different browsers or three or however many you have now plus one.
Predict massive gains by extrapolating from a very recent improvement in a very small segment of your market.
Keep boasting about the features your product has that your competitor doesn't. Remind everyone that they need those specific features.
Keep telling the "journalists" out there about how your product handles the same tasks better than the competition. Faster. Smaller footprint. Better security. Easier administration.
If someone hasn't heard of your product, they aren't going to try your product.
Get out there and GLOAT.
That's funny, what you wrote sounds pretty much like what everybody was saying about Mozilla circa 2000 or so.
Now, of course, we all can see what Mozilla.org hath wrought. But it took a loooooong time to get there, and a lot of missteps. So Chandler in this respect is not terribly different from Mozilla.
That's because when Firefox 0.1 was released (as Phoenix 0.1) on Sep. 23, 2002, there had already been nearly five years of work plowed into the Mozilla codebase.
OSAF organized in 2002 or so, so if you want to see where Mozilla was at an equivalent point in its lifecycle, go dig up a copy of Mozilla Milestone 18 or so (bring your crash helmet, you'll need it).
Read my blog.
I've been reading about Chandler for a few years now. The progress in developing it, if any at all, has been glacial. This is very unlike Firefox which was developed quite quickly.
For years, I've been waiting for a worthy successor to Lotus Agenda. Can Chandler be the one?
Self awareness - try it!
Firefox chokes-up like a baby on hot sauce. It has some great features and advantages but it still seems more heat than light to me.
Is a fine thing(tm).
The one thing I miss going to FF. Opera, nice-as-pie, continues a download when you next get around to dialing up again.
FF just goes, if you close me now, I'm going to cancel these downloads.
Salesman: "Nothing makes you feel more like a man than a Thundercougarfalconbird."
I frequent some large forums and Firefox chokes-up like a baby on hot sauce. It's been the worst of four browsers I use and is more heat than light. It reminds me of one of those old MG sports cars - a great toy when it was working but prone to breakdowns.
But I always thought the goal for Chandler was to have sex with Phoebe?
Seriously,Mitch Kapor should worry more about Chandler.
.
The project started in 2001 and they haven't been able to show even a barely useable version of the software till date. They have had an unbelievable amount of time, goodwill, and friendly press and the results are zero. Compare the progresss evolution made in its first three year period - you got to hand it to the Ximian monkeys - they are coding machines. Evolution has it's own indexer and plug-in framework and the real point that clinches it for evolution in most corporate environments is the excellent integration using Exchange Connector. I work for a company where we use Linux extensively and many windows folks are able to use evolution without any problem , and are in fact highly appreciative of it. Evolution 2.0 has even shed it's outlook look and feel - evolution is an example of what you get when you mix pragmatic product management with some awesome coding talent. The Chandler vision, on the other hand has been over-arching and massively confused from the beginning - initially they threw in whatever sounded cool - jabber, rdf etc, instead of deciding the technology based on the product requirements.
Claiming that they are breaking new ground just doesn't cut it - not even one innovative feature is on display after three years. As someone pointed out in a earlier post evolution 0.1 was more useable than chandler 0.4 - Heck I used it for day to day work , in spite of the warts.
When you have a bunch of talented programmers and still have nothing to show, it is really time to ask, 'What's up with Chandler ?'
I hate IE, but I sure as hell am tired of people complaining about yesterday's problems.
1) Those who don't see the light will be left behind in a world devoured by plagues.
2) Represents the beginning of the final battle between good and evil.
3) The object of worship has gone through several name changes and major reworkings, with many unaware of its history.
4) Nobody knew/knows when it was/is coming, and there are always false alarms.
5) Lots of people don't believe anything will ever come of it.
6) Even the ones who do believe argue over it an awful lot.
7) No matter how nice it looks, the representative of the Dark Side will try -- and often succeed -- in convincing people they're better off with him, even though everyone knows he's out to screw them.
8) You'll know the shit has really hit the fan when a giant seven-headed beast rises from the ocean and declares itself ruler of the world. That happens later, though. Maybe around 2.0.
The enemies of Democracy are
Yeah, but what about the goal for Joey...?
Once enough people have Chandler installed, they will have Python and wxWindows running in their computers...
Every other time this post has appeared, it's been modded as a troll.
Why the change of heart today, mods? +5, funny? Well, that's cool. It's not really a troll anyway.
Why would anyone gloat about a piece o crap software that doesn't support common standard tag parameters, and that breaks the document object model, making many simple css tricks and javascript functions useless?
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
Ok, so I know this is beta software, but I just went and installed the latest chandler release, and wow... I hope they have a strategy to trim this thing down, it doesn't even work and it uses more than 300MB of ram and about 2 minutes to load... I don't know how this thing is gonna be an outlook killer. If they actually add functionality to it it's gonna be using like 500MB of ram and won't run on anything but an 8 way opteron cluster...
Anyway, I guess that's what happens when you use an interpreted language. (its all written in python) not to bash python, I think its a great language and has its uses, but this might not be one of them...
Hmm.. Let's see here.. Been running Firefox exclusively (with a minor exception of Windows updates, via "Help and Support" only on Windows XP for about 8 months now. Let's run a quick malware/virus scan and see what's infected. (No real-time malware/virus scanners installed.)
Hmm.. Virus scan? Nil. Malware? Nada. Problomatic sites? Zip. Damn.. I can't play a few free game sites that require IE and ActiveX. My loss. Oh wait.. I never played those anyway. Bummer for me.
Can't think of a reason not to gloat.
You want a gloat about FireFox?
I now work for a public agency in the State of Washington, the home of Microsoft and friends. This agency's website is most defiently not a destination for geeks and computer-savvy folks.
Looking at the stats for my employer's homepage for the year of 2004...while 94.8% of our visitors run MS Windows, the FireFox percentage is currently at 26.1%
He also forgot one other part of basic PR: the need to change the name of your product slightly enough to confuse everyone for at least three weeks (a la Firebird). I would suggest changing 'Chandler' to 'Chandlar' around release candidate 2.
Naming a program after its function is a good idea IMO. It helps n00bs/morons to find the software they want when they are new to a system (without too much searching). I guess you also think OOo "Writer" is a dumb name too? If you had never heard of "Thunderbird" what would you assume the program does?
Besides, which is more likely to lead to improvements? A sense of quiet pride tempered by some humility, or a superiorist attitude that Firefox is "da shiznat."
Projects that play catch-up (as happened for the first while) tend to go faster up to the point where they are more secure in themselves. Firefox is past the point of catch-up in many ways, but hopefully it will continue to show new features/improvements so that it can continue to become even greater, rather than maintaining a short lead.
I prefer Courtney Cox (no pun intended). And yeah Chandler is a lame name. Why didnt they name it Bing? At least thats kind of catchy.
Just an impulse post... most people can't decipher between offtopic and funny, though.
The promise
I remember when Chandler was first mooted. Finally an open souce project that has a vision of how to store and communicate small bits of information. Traditionally these types of applications have been lumped together with *ugly* (but accurate) acronymn, PIM.
Free the data
This is an important step in applications. Historically data is trapped or obfusticated into applications. Once you enter the data in it you can only get at it by jumping through the fire breathing coding hoops. Ocassionally its open souce (mozilla mork) but commercial applications take this to a new level - (think MS Outlook Express).
Updated Agenda? /.'s this is not the first crack Mitch has had at this market. In '88 Mitch Kapor (father of Lotus 123, Notes) Agenda was released into the PIM market to some success. The runs are on the board. Could Chandler be the answer?
For the younger
Release early and often
Well after 0.4 release I dont see anything compelling. It has trouble working on Windows, it's monolithic and appears to be *weighed* down in specifications of how to do things rather than results. Chandler looks good on paper but in clumping email, calandering, PIM and other messaging it has lost for me its original appeal. I want it usable now. Even if it is a little bit at a time. For me like its name sake (Raymond) I'm still searching for a usable application.
Alternative
So there you have it I've trashed a computer industry veteran who has runs on the board but has failed to deliver. Whats an alternative. Well one example is a Gnome app called Tomboy. Its a simple mono, GTK based note taking applet that is searchable. It allows you to click on links according to mime types and load an application. It has spell checking (along with references to various IBM patents). But the single kicker that has moved Tomboy into my sights is the integration of Tomboy with Evolution (unix version that mirrors crappy Outlook in too may ways) and Beagle The Gnome desktop is now using Tomboy as the *PIM* input and building a plugin to Evolution (email, calander), Beagle (searching). So bit by bit it's making Chandler less attractive to me.
lessons
It helps to have access to an open souce platform. Release often and early. Build an application (especially a first version) to do one thing and do it well. Get a result. Dont bloat a product with features if it is not vital and work out how can you work with other applications. Tomboy may only have a short shelf life or morph into something else in as it develops but it works right now and does the job.
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
Anyone who uses "gay" as an insult just isn't worth listening to. And, of course, that their penis is almost certainly undersized and laughed at by any women who chances to see it.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Well it was kinda both ;)
The unofficial
Why the hell do people post REPEATED off topic trolls anyways? like that baboons-face one. Do people really have that sad of a life? (or is it some kind of bot....)
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
You've got a point, but I don't know that Firefox, Thunderbird or Mozilla are particularly good names either. For example, what's "Firefox" supposed to convey? I guess it might just be me, but I don't see the relation to a web browser, or anything Internet-related at all. Could be a car, could be a toaster oven. Could be a database. For its alliteration and daring imagery, "Firefox" is a fairly bland and generic name.
:)
Contrast a name like Apple's "Safari," which just intuitively fits the concept of web browsing (it's a jungle out there, you know?) and alludes to "surfing." Genius.
</fanboy>
I would like to mod you troll, since I'm an Opera fan (both music and the web browser), but sadly I you have a point.
'Opera' is just a matter of personal taste, I guess.
"Chandler is OSAF's personal information manager which will offer e-mail, calendaring, address and task management."
Could it be any more like Outlook?
One way to get Microsoft off its butt is to make it angry or threaten its core business. Firefox is in the process of doing that. Firefox has a head start. Mozilla Foundation should be looking at ways to stay ahead of the curve.
Opera has been pretty popular for a long time.
People seem to enjoy the combination of singing and acting (same goes for musical of course). It seems there is even a browser with the same name, which of course is a rediculous name for something that neither acts nor sings.
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
Notice he didn't say anything about avoiding bloating.
"If it's real, then it gets more interesting the closer you examine it. If it's not real, just the opposite is true." -
I figured I'd give "Chandler 0.4" a spin on my 800Mhz, 1GB TiBook. First of all, it's a 36MB download. Once you get it unpakced and start it up, you see a start-up screen stating:
Now, sit back and relax for a minuteAnd yes, it really takes a full minute before you're greeted with one of the ugliest UI's I've seen in a while. Chandler has a awful long way to go before it can even begin to compete with the like of ThunderBird or Evolution. Both of which load quickly and look great. Not to mention work amazingly well. Just my 2 cents.
I would say more skilled people look at Firefox and Mozilla actually. With IE everyone knows "ah, it's rather easy to find a security hole in it", but with Firefox and Mozilla it might be rather more a challenge to find one.
Actually, it makes sense if you think of gains in market share as an exponential process. 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64.... once you manage to get 10% of the market you are only a couple doublings from having a majority of the market share.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
Who's gloating? Firefox has done well, but there's nothing to gloat about yet. Once use of FireFox get's over over 50%, then we'll be gloating :-)
If viruses and spyware keep popping up at their current rate and if Microsof sticks to it's guns about not applying the SP2 Internet Explorer fixes to platforms other than Windows XP, than I believe that Firefox may get there a lot quicker than you might expect. Longhorn keeps getting pushed back further and futher and I doubt we'll be seeing a whole lot of innovation in IE until Longhorn is released. Meanwhile Firefox keeps getting better and better and won't require that you upgrade your operating system to upgrade the browser.
For me it's all a moot point anyway, I've got a Mac Mini on the way and if I like it as much as I think I'm going to, then I'll have a dual processor G5 Powermac in 6 months and my Windows box will be for games only.
Talk softly and carry a big stick - Let the idiot Ballmer do all the talking.
Problem is, Lucas, is that you have more to fear than a zero day when you have a lot of bugs in a certain product...that go months before they are patched or even ACKNOWLEDGED by the vendor.
I get a bit of a feeding-the-troll feeling here, but you are modded way up...
A couple of counter points:
You seem to take the "it's your own fault if you don't keep your patches up-to-date" argument. What about the vulnerabilities that haven't been patched?
( http://secunia.com/advisories/12889/ ). Keep in mind too that this is a product for end-users on home computers (ie your Grandma). Are you going to say "Hopefully you have other layers of security such as a border firewall, IPSec Transport mode with packet filtering at every host, multiple antivirus vendors software (with at least one of them configured to block password protected archives, known dangerous file types and dangerous content), ongoing training, locked down servers with all the fat trimmed, middle tier servers, etc", or are you going to say "Here, try this other browser instead." I'm not saying Firefox is the solution to end-user security issues, but I am saying a step in the right direction might be to stop using IE, one of the most exploited virus vectors ever.
You also give that old argument that IE has had so many vulnerabilities found because it's so popular, and to that I have to provide the standard slashdot counter-example of apache. It has got a greater marketshare than IIS by far, and enjoys a reputation of less exploits. In addition... let's assume Firefox will one day have the same number of vulnerabilities. The key issue for me is my security right now though. I certainly hope the Firefox developers stay on top of things security-wise, but if not, I'll probably hop to some other browser. Choice is good.
Maybe security-through-obscurity is "another layer of protection", but I really don't see it working for MS in its products. I see Outlook, IE, and Word being exploited more frequently than any other closed or open source apps. It seems to me that MS has been talking about security initiatives for a few years while relying on this security-through-obscurity, and leaving just a skeleton crew to work on IE. In this case I think I prefer the many-eyes approach, even if some aren't the eyes we want.
It should be "Mitch Kapor has a new product he wants to pitch that's going to compete against Firefox, so lets bring on the Firefox poopooing..."
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
The Mozilla people promptly threw away all the old Netscape code and started fresh, and worked on the project for several years on a corporate payroll (AOL/Time Warner's). So the example is better than you think.
It does if it indicates that the poster doesn't understand where Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox came from. When you add in the time spent developing Mozilla to the time spent from Phoenix 0.1 to Firefox 1.0, Chandler's development cycle starts to look positively snappy.
Read my blog.
Internet Explorer has been a black eye on Microsoft's face for a long time. It's full of security holes, and costs them big time in both manpower+time="lots of money", and in the public conscience. I think letting Firefox gain as much of the browser market as possible would, and is a very viable strategy for them. It allows them to move programmers to areas where their needed, like longhorn for instance, which has slipped repeatedly over the last year or two, and saves them the cost, and trouble of updating, and the ongoing process of patching all the holes. It also saves them the bother of handling the help calls, instead people are told to go to mozilla.org. If I was in MS's shoes I would gladly surrender the market share. Something like Open Office however is a different story, and after looking at the latest pre-release of 2.0 (while still very buggy) it looks like Microsoft is going to have fight on its hands. You start taking away $200-500 per seat licenses from Microsoft, and they're going to notice. If you put software on your computer that replaces software that you've already purchased from them, I doubt they'll care. -manno
What I would like to see is someone adding the ability to sync Thunderbird and Sunbird with Pocket Pc. If you want to sync now, you'r stuck with Outlook.
Furthermore, after reviewing this GPL our lawyers advised us that any products compiled with GPL'ed tools - such as gcc - would also have to its source code released. This was simply unacceptable.
Totally unacceptable. I see your point. You should fire your lawyers immediately and hire some that know what they're talking about.
Evidently I was good enough to get you to reply.
origally evolution was the result of 17 full time coders, 150K+ KLOC (I see refereces to 750K but I'm pretty sure evolution pre release was about 1/4 of this) and a year and a half in development. The sad story is that Ximian had trouble making money out of Evolution and hence the exchange connector.
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
>> I think letting Firefox gain as much of the browser market as possible would, and is a very viable strategy for them.
It ain't about how viable it is, how much money it would save, or about how good it would be for the public. It's about power and control. The same motivations for rape I might add...
Regards,
BubbaJon