Problems With the Firefox Development Process

An anonymous reader writes "Mike Connor, one of the core Firefox developers, is raising a flag concerning the Mozilla Firefox methodology of development. From his blog: "In nearly three years, we haven't built up a community of hackers around Firefox, for a myriad of reasons, and now I think were in trouble. Of the six people who can actually review in Firefox, four are AWOL, and one doesn't do a lot of reviews." In an earlier entry, he raised concrete concerns about the community involvement. Asa Dotzler recently elaborated on the process, as previously covered on Slashdot."

Comments

M$ Conspiracy?

[sunilrkarkera]

M$ may have bought these AWOL reviewers in an attempt to kill Firefox?

Bah, what's the big deal?

[PalmMP3]

Microsoft has been getting away with bloody murder for years, shipping buggy products. So who's to make a fuss if Firefox has a couple of measly problems for a while? They'll definitely get fixed before IE, that's for sure...

Firefox

[blobzorz]

Yeah, IE has been horrible with security and whatnot, who cares if firefox makes one mistake? They're still perfect in my eyes.

Re:Firefox

[tickleboy2]

It's like Angelia Jolie's morning breath.... one little thing doesn't mean a thing in the big picture.

Re:Why can Microsoft et. al get good people...

[MrResistor]

I'd pitch in a couple of bits for my fave browser!

Well, why don't you then? Or did you not notice that "Donate" button on your first link?

His blog...

[digitalchinky]

Best he be careful, blog entries regarding 'conserns' might get him sacked :-)

The number one problem with Firefox?

[earthbound kid]

Lack of new, innovative names. Look, I like "FireFox" as well as the next guy, but let's face it, that name is getting a bit stale. Sure, 6 months ago, FireFox had a "hip," "edgy" feeling, but today, FF just isn't cutting anymore. Only Korean old people use browsers with such old fashioned names. We all know that the most productive period in FF's history was the period in which it was changing its name every other week. Features got added like crazy during those couple of months. Some people look at that as coincidence, but as I always say, "Correlation is causation." Therefore, if we want to add new features to FF quickly, we're going to need to start changing the project name weekly, if not daily or even hourly.

In order to help out the FireFox team, here are my suggestions for new, catchier names:

Fox Fire

Brush Fire

Brush Fox

Foxy Britches

Fancy Pants

Panda Britches

Moz Illa Than You

Moz Def

Linky Clicky

Clicky Linky

Spider Webby

The Amazing Spider Webby

Ultra Browser

Supa Browsa

Supa Browsa II: Supa Browsa Remix

and finally,

Internet Explorer II: Electric Bugaloo

Re:The number one problem with Firefox?

[LS]

You forgot "Fire Bush"

Re:The number one problem with Firefox?

[khallow]

It's humor, Jim, but not as we know it. :-)

Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Switch to IE...

Bill Gates says "i told ya so"

They don't need no stinking development process

[Anonymous Coward]

All Firefox needs is to pay a major website to place a Firefox logo link in the upper-right corner of all their pages, like Netscape did with cnn.

Dude?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where's that 20 somthing-year-old whiz kid whipper snapper that Google recently hired because he was part of Firefox development?

Re:Coders != Maintainers

[solarium_rider]

if(Coders!=Maintainers){printf("That's why I always put all my code on one line.";printf("Like this.\n");exit(0);}else{printf("Whoops\n");exit(-1 );}

Re:Firefox is also Mozilla

[Anonymous Coward]

honestly, I can't see why one would want to use Firefox under Linux at all.

No other browser supports the Abe Vigoda Status extension.

Time to fork Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

I propose Gaff (Gaff Ain't FireFox) as a fork of Firefox. Who's with me?

Re:They often act out their anger.

[mrchaotica]

Warning: you have exceeded your Slashdot metaphor allotment for this month. Further use will be billed at $0.10/metaphor, or you may choose to switch to the unlimited plan for the low, low price of $42/month. Thank you.

; )

Re:Firefox is mostly a cute interface

[binford2k]

You realize that you are arguing with a firefox developer about how firefox is built, do you not?

Re:The Firefox people are great compared to Micros

[plierhead]

I've been reporting several bugs in Windows XP for literally years, and they haven't been fixed. If you work with both Linux and Windows XP, do you notice that Linux has a powerful, bug-free Command Line Interface, and the CLI in Windows XP is weak and buggy? (Yes, I know they are working on replacing it.)

I don't normally buy into the conspiracy theories about Microsoft, but I am absolutely 100% certain that the steady degradation of the dos box is a classic case of MS trying to herd people away from the dark side. The dos box used to work, and work well. MS have steadily - through 95, 98, and on and on in the rolecall of fucked up apologies for operating systems - made it more and more fucked.

It is absurdly obvious that to them the dos box is an abhorrent reminder of an earlier day, a trojan horse through which command line devil worshippers can work their evil, avoiding the safe, closeted world of Microsoft's GUIs.

They would absolutely love to get rid of the dos box forever, but even they need it - for example, when I was foolish enough to update the definitions in my Microsoft Spyware beta, it trashed my Microsoft firewall! MOTHER FUCKERS!! What the FUCK are you thinking! The good old dos box was the only way to recover (if you call running Microsoft's firewall "recovery"), allowing me to type in some cryptic MS bullshit "netsh Winsock reset" that rebuilds my tcp stack (or something like that). I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK IT DOES!!! Why the FUCK don't you just leave the FUCKING firewall ALONE!!!!!!

Its been a bad day dealing with MS bullshite today. No more posting tonight I feel.

The four AWOL people

[fr0dicus]

I bet they just bought Macs and got on with real life.

Re:Back on topic:

[Anonymous Coward]

>> I cannot hack a firefox extension easily

Oh really?

>> and I have a Ph.D in comp sci.

Ah! There's your problem!

Re:Firefox is mostly a cute interface

[Scarblac]

Reminds one of this anecdote.

Re:It's the Branding

[gnu-generation-one]

"They have to be defended against violations in order to avoid becoming generic and therefore invalid"

Just firefox a page on trademarks to read about how they become generic... I can thunderbird one to you if you like...

Re:It's the Branding

[FireFury03]

Most distributions do not ship the stock kernel, they ship a kernel with a number of patches. This is not a Linux(TM) kernel, it is a derived work of the Linux(TM) kernel.

Except Linus has no problem with this - he has openly stated that he _wants_ the packagers to patch and stablise the kernel for the end-lusers.

By your reasoning, if I had a Ferrari and I changed the stereo I would nolonger be able to call it a Ferrari because it's now a derived work... (Sorry, every slashdot arguement has to ahve a car analogy :)

Re:Firefox is mostly a cute interface

[ArgoTheWonderSquirre]

Gentlemen, I am the developer of Firefox. I wrote it using parts of Office 2000 and itunes basing it entirely on the Ski Free core.

Respectfully, Albert Gore