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The Mozilla Release Process

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the every-time-you-ask-we-delay-it-one-hour dept.

David Gerard writes "Asa Dotzler from the Mozilla Foundation invited questions on his blog on the Mozilla release process. The answers are up."

6 of 59 comments (clear)

  1. the every-time-you-ask-we-delay-it-one-hour dept. by Slash+Watch · · Score: 0, Interesting

    An explanation of this little editorial line. Back in the bad old days of Slashdot, its source code wasn't free as it is nowadays! And so, a grass-roots campaign kinda appeared out of nowhere to "FREE SLASH!!!!!11". Using his famed diplomatic skills, CmdrTaco responded: "I will delay 24 hours every time someone mentions it."

  2. Relating Firefox vs. Mozilla by cablepokerface · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So, what exactly is the group of users the mozilla browser targets now with firofox out and all?

    1. Re:Relating Firefox vs. Mozilla by 0x461FAB0BD7D2 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      No particular group, IMO. The Mozilla Suite will remain for those who prefer it over Firefox, but as for marketing, there was very little marketing by the Mozilla Foundation, and that's unlikely to change.

      However, as he said,
      "I believe that there will continue to be trunk based releases of the Mozilla application suite because there are members of the community who want it to continue and will contribute the resources to make that happen."

      For many Mozicianados aficionados, Firefox will never fully replace the experience of Seamonkey. Firefox was targeted primarily at IE users anyway.

    2. Re:Relating Firefox vs. Mozilla by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Wow, finally somebody not whining about discontinuing (killing) my beloved seamonkey :) In the dark ages I used Netscape, Mozilla is still like that program UI wise, only the rest of it is way better nowadays! I've been following and using Mozilla since around M12 or so, I actually like Seamonkey better than Firefox. Since Firefox and Mozilla proper share the same back end (Gecko, Necko and friends) there is no real reason in my mind to kill Mozilla proper anyway.

      Why can't Firefox users be just that ... Firefox users and not some holy warriors trying to kill of every other Gecko browser. Stop whining enjoy Firefox whilst I'm enjoying my Seamonkey.

  3. Mozilla/Firefox by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What is the relationship between Mozilla and Firefox development/releases? Is there a common core project, enhanced/stripped for each specific app's release? Is Mozilla or Firefox developed/debugged first, then the other? Or are there just two projects closely related in target market, drawing on each other's open source as it's entered in CVS (or other public code repository)? Do bugs get fixed in Firefox or Mozilla first, or does it depend? If it's the latter answer in the last two questions, won't the two apps inevitably compete, fragmenting their mutual marketshare vs. Internet Explorer?

    --

    --
    make install -not war

  4. Process by marvin2k · · Score: 4, Interesting

    When I heared of the creation of the Mozilla Foundation I thought that this would be a big step forward since the developers could leave most of the rigid, slow and often over-designed bureaucracy behind but when I look at it today I'm not so sure about that anymore.

    The first thing that I'm wondering about is the way the releases are organized. Why was most of the Firefox work done on a branch and then "crash landed" on the trunk? Some of the bugs resulting from this crash are yet to be fixed. Why make things so complicated? If the main development had happened on the trunk and the releases had been branched off of that this process would have been a lot easier to manage in my view. Almost all other open-spurce projects do it like that.

    What about the closing of the source tree for releases? For a while I was wondering why so few checkins got made despite the pending release of Firefox 1.1 in March but then I realized that the tree was closed for a Mozilla release instead. This looks a bit like the Big Kernel Lock to me. One process has to wait for the lock to be released even if ultimately it isn't dependant on the resources the lock has been acquired for.

    When I read the projects roadmap I had hoped it would get split up in distinct pieces like Gecko, Toolkit, Firefox-UI, etc. which could be developed individually instead of in one X11-like monolithic blob that requires a global closing/opening process. Gecko for example could be shared by Firefox, Thunderbird, etc. and have independent releases that the other bits could rely on just like QT or GTK applications rely on respective releases of these toolkits. A Gecko 1.8 release could be branched off of the trunk and developers could just continue to check in new and potentially dangerous code on the trunk despite any impending release of higher-level components. These would simply rely on the last stable release of the lower-level ones.

    Maybe I just get a lot about the Mozilla process wrong because it seems to be quite opaque at times just like the X11 one still is. There still seems to be no clear decision wether X11 is going to be modularized or not for example, just like with Mozilla. Anyway I hope most of this was caused by the first Firefox release and that 2005 will be used to chop Mozilla up in smaller more easier to swallow pieces because otherwise I'm not sure the project posesses the agility to compete with Microsoft for long.