Slashdot Mirror
Firefox Developer on Recruitment Policy
wikinerd writes "A Firefox developer talks about the project's controversial invitation-only developer recruitment policy and explains why Firefox will never grow up."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
They say loudly that they are only willing to accept developers to the project that they have vetted themselves, no one need apply. And with this attitude in front of them, they drive away people who want to help but are unsure of their abilities.
Then they say that they want people to submit patches and pitch in to help develop the product. But how is anyone supposed to do that without being a member? Well, obviously you don't have to be on the team to work for the team. But who wants to work for someone that isn't going to treat them as part of the same team?
At this point, the Firefox team is pretty well entrenched and the product itself is doing fairly well (still can't parse Slash code for shit, but that's just a hurdle to be overcome soon). So for this particular project, a thorny attitude towards newbs is not going to hurt them very much.
However, the spirit of OSS (at least on the BSD side of the world) is one of openness and acceptance. Turning people away or accepting a new member only through invitation smacks of elitism. Unfortunately when you deal with human beings, you will inevitably end up dealing with some who think themselves elite and worthy of looking down upon others from the heights of their snoots.
Sure, don't invite me... FighterFax, my own personal fork, will be ready on thursday. :)
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
These anecdotes are funny, but what I wonder is... Are they different from any other development project?
Every development project I worked on, the developpers included some form of easter eggs or witty comments in the code. It's human nature to have fun, and it happens in OSS and at Microsoft.
I think perhaps the only differences are 1) FireFox code gets seen by the world, whereas non-OSS comments are hidden for the most part; and 2) Quality Control usually catches stuff like the 'cookie description' in time for public consumption.
Hey, it's great that FireFox was born in a fun environment, but I think it's just human nature to make 'work' as pleasant as possible. It's great in the case of FireFox that the 'community' gets to share in the fun.
A Firefox developer --> actually, Blake Ross (yes, we've heard of him before, and writer of the Firefox guide book)
... developer recruitment philosophy" line is.
why Firefox will never grow up --> from the article, "Firefox is growing and maturing--there's no question about it. But as long as we're around, it'll never fully grow up. So sit back, relax, and await the delicious delicacies that The Ocho will have to offer."
Website has gone down, so not sure how inflamatory the "controversial
well.. if they get too elitst.. just start your own branch.
that's what being open is about..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
a project that would have stated that they accept _all_ contributions would end up as a wiki-fight rather quickly.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
It was a reference to a bug regarding the incorporation of code to allow a kiosk mode. The patch was rejected. However the patch was re-implemented as an extension. I can't see how this is an important bug that is being ignored as there are readily available extensions to perform this function.
And so what if the author of the post gets a few karma points.
Oh man is THAT right!!! SOME PEOPLE take slashdot WAY too seriously...
But it is unethical to post such a link under your own username rather than anonymous...
I believe in standing by whatever I say and never posting as an AC (unless I accidently do so due to being on another computer). This includes mirrors. I've seen many people on slashdot share the ethic of not posting as an AC (which the coders perpetuate by giving anonymous people a degrading name).
Given that similar policies have gone(hint: "trusted friends" is really an euphemism for something else related to where Orkut came from) on in other places in that area of the States, why is this surprising? At least somebody accurately hits the nail on the head on this kind of issue - where else do you get such arrogance that results in good code being sacrificed for California style political games, where you win by excluding the most people while presenting the best facade to the public of what you do.
Sure, there is more than a shred of validity of checking code, but when you use politics instead of quality to determine what goes in, it's not a meritocracy anymore, it's not even about the code. At that point, things like the Xorg/XFree86 split and the various BSD splits happen. Not minor code forks, but major splits.
To preempt you nuts who think nothing can be forced, fine. You just mindlessly confuse theory and practice as being the same in any situation regardless of politics, especially if it deals with places too exclusionary for their own good.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
It WILL show them if most users switch to your version. Which currently seems to happen with X.org vs. XFree86
C - the footgun of programming languages
If growing up means becoming bloated, taking over the operating system, and opening itself up to every h@x0r known to netdom then I hope Firefox stays young and naive.
Exactly... I thought "Yeah, that'd be great developing firefox." and to test out if it really was for me I decided to take the extension easy path. I wacked up the super unuseful Slashdot moderator extension then realised that even something so trival took a shit load of time.
I gave up on that dream. But at least I didn't waste anyone's time checking my dodgy patches.
I can't be bothered to read all this pious waffle of the article past the first few sentences but I don't need to.
Firefox's biggest problem is it's attitude which is a hand-me-down from Mozilla. It's kind of well...puke enducing and silly and not neccessary. The article starts off full of vanity and nonsense like all of the FF blogs do.
It's largely thanks to the pious chip on the shoulder and lets kill M$ atmosphere that FF whips up that makes sure it is a browser I don't much use. Ok I am a Mac guy so IE vs FF doesn't mean fa to me, and FF is pretty crap on the Mac anyway but still I honestly think FF/Mozilla should just lay off the rhetoric and offer the goods if they want to but just shut up. And stop please stop trying to force it down people's throats. I can't speak for my Windows or Linux friends but FF on a Mac is an almost meaningless product and a poor 2nd browser.
I'm sure a lot of hard work goes into Mozilla and Firefox and all that stuff but whats happened over the last year or 2 that hard work and pride in one's work has turned into a ridiculous ego trip and vanity spree for the developers and that just undermines a lot of what they think they are trying to do.
There's two basic reasons why volunteering sucks, and unfortunately, volunteering for firefox is just as bad as regular volunteering.
1. You don't get paid, that's why its called volunteering.
2. Nobody respects you. This is the worst problem, it's simple really. If an organization doesn't value your help, working for them will be much harder than if you were getting paid.
Case in point: Try to fix phone lines for a local nonprofit. I end up standing around for 30 minutes to talk to a decision maker, only to be passed by someone with no apparent contribution. If I was on the clock, they would have respected my time if not only to avoid high fees.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
Bollocks to outline, why the fucking hell can't somebody implement inline-block? It's been supported in ie for years, and it'd make the lives of every developer who's trying to stay standards compliant much, much easier.
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
That's not what I'd called enterprise, that's what I'd called embdedded use. Anyone can wrap the Gecko engine into something if they can program. It's much better to do this than just have some half-wit configure IE to be locked down. Much more robust and secure for starters.
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
Apparently, nobody cares enough about that feature to implement it or fund the implementation.
Commnercial software can contain any kind of junk, because they have locked their customers to proprietary technology. But free software is market driven, only stuff which matters to people with the right skill or money are implemented.
Sometimes it is not an issue of elitist but more like how a companies hires new people. They are looking for people who will help keep the product going in the same directions. Sure there are many talented programmers out there with a lot of great feature but not all of them fit in the direction that they want the product to go. Many time young and imbisios programmers want to shack the world and make an existing product new and exciting. While the application wants a more consertive approach. Newer Projects will often have younger programmers on board. But older projects such as XFree86 will have more older people. It is not eletism is it more of an issue they dont want to rapidly change the project because the people who use it don't want it to change that much.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
That kind of policy can ultimately, in the long run, only be a bad thing, and those who talk about the merits of a meritocracy should keep in mind that this is none. Quite the opposite: if it was a meritocracy, someone who'd contribute good code and prove to be interested in helping out and implementing/fixing things that matter to them would become a developer without any big deal being made.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say that if it really a meritocracy (or a project which really understood what free software is about), there wouldn't be such a clear distinction between developers and users, anyway. All that really can be observed HERE is a kind of "ivory tower" elitist attitude that will ultimately hinder rather than help; people seem to be afraid to actually have an open development process as soon as projects grow larger or get a larger (and, in particular, a larger non-geek) userbase, but I think Linus' success with Linux' development model shows that this is not a reasonable thing.
Ever wondered why Linux actually *is* more successful than the various BSDs, and why (for that matter) hundreds of Linux distros coexist in peace while the *BSD developers generally seem to be unable to even talk to each other? It's not just because the majority of people are more inclined to contribute to a project that not only is free but *stays* free; it's also because with Linux, when you scratch your itch, you have a good chance of it actually being picked up, used and included into their trees by others, ultimately even Linus, as long as you're willing to demonstrate you're actually willing to maintain your code for longer than a few weeks.
The Xfree86 vs. X.org schism is another good example: people used Xfree86 because there was no real alternative, but they weren't happy with it and with the fact that the developers cared so little for the users and instead chose to form an elitist club of their own, so when an alternative popped up, they started using that. Can you name a major Linux distro that still uses Xfree86 instead of X.org? There may be a few left, particularly those that are more conservative about these things (like Debian, although I haven't checked which implementation they use), but I think it's safe to say that the majority has already switched, and that this trend will only continue in the future unless the Xfree86 developers radically rethink their attitude.
As for Firefox (or Mozilla in general) again, I can't say I'm too surprised, though. They have had this attitude forever (if you ever reported a bug, you'll know what I mean; if you don't, check out bug 18574, for example), and I think it's reasonably safe to say that people are using Mozilla mostly because there's no real alternative (IE decidedly is not one, and it's windows-only, anyway; Opera is not free and has banner ads unless you pay for it, and Konqueror is integrated too much with KDE for some people's taste, not to mention that not running on windows means a good share of Mozilla users can't use it, anyway). As soon as a new, better browser project gains ground, Mozilla will find itself in the same situation that Xfree86 is in today. It may be less serious, since it's more easy to include two browsers with your distro than two X servers, but ultimately, it's adapt or die, and I think some Mozilla people (asa comes to mind, as do some others) will have to learn that the hard way.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Maybe it is about having fun...
If you limit the developers to people who actually like working together, and have simular ideas of how to behave and talk to other people, more can often be done than if you also invite all the socially dysfunct coders, who cannot take a rejection of patch as anything but a personal insult (or, for the true nutcase, some political game).
There are more than a couple of great coders out there with zero people skill. They can damage a project because, even though their own contributions are great, they lower the fun level and therefore productivity of everybody else.
Some of them make great solo projects...