Slashdot Mirror
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."
*SLAP!*
Don't set your standards low just because the competition does. Set 'em high because you can and should.
(I've just been in the mood to slap someone lately. Nothing personal.)
If it is a problem of documentation, then those two remaining programmers had better work on documenting it... and quickly. If they want the architecture to be preserved when new programmers who don't understand it come along.
-Vendal Thornheart
Funny how people always bitch about products when they dont have X feature, etc.. But when they include all of those nice features everyone wants they bitch about how bloated it has become..
Well it makes sense, people want the products they use to only have the features THEY want. This is why plugins/extensions are nice. I don't believe that Firefox is bloated.
They have to be defended against violations in order to avoid becoming generic and therefore invalid, but that doesn't mean you can't license them to the general public for a variety of uses that you approve of. The trademark on "Linux" is perfectly fine, despite all of the Linux variants calling themselves "Linux", because Linus licensed it for that purpose. That doesn't mean that Sun could call their next Solaris version "Linux" with impunity, if it didn't have a Linux kernel.
Mozilla is trying to establish a trustworthy brand and identity, as you say; however, having an identity excludes potential participants, who are being identified as not part of the project. And their fear that other people's versions would reflect badly on them excludes those other people from feeling welcome.
One of the key strengths of the Linux brand is that people you trust for other reasons have a stake in it. Sure, there are people out there who release terrible versions of Linux, but you don't get it from them. There are also people out there who release versions of Linux with special features for just your problem, and that's part of what Linux is about (e.g., Intrinsyc ships a Linux version with special support for the hardware on their embedded devices; the Linux Audio Development project has a version which avoids skips when recording audio; these projects couldn't call themselves Linux if Linus managed the trademark the way Mozilla manages theirs, and it would reduce the recognition of Linux as something that can solve any problem you happen to have).
As I read the comments in the bug, you were looking for technical information (ie, "do I have to create a stream, or is it provided to me by the dialog?" (not a direct quote)), not design. The design should be kept close to the problem, and definitely in the bug. The technical implementation details, and especially minor questions about how you do this or that, don't need to be logged in the bug. Again, as I read it, what you really needed was a comprehensive architecture document of Thunderbird, or failing that at least someone familiar with similar code that could point you in the right direction. That's a task for IRC channels (because the discussion is ephemeral, and doesn't need to be logged for anything but your development purposes) or mailing lists.
Consider it from the approver's point of view. You offered to help, ran into a technical snag, asked a question in an inappropriate forum, and disappeared for 7 months. I get that it's open source, and work is done by individuals in their spare time, but that doesn't sound to me like you were really committed to fixing the bug. If you were, you would've tracked down the information you needed (it wasn't a design question requiring a committee vote), and continued with the work. That's how I define "genuine".
That wasn't aggression, and I'm not affiliated with Firefox in any way (in fact, aside from having it installed but never using it, I have no association with the project at all). To turn it around on you, perhaps Mozilla is failing to build a community because people don't follow through on commitments? Of course, it's more likely that they're failing to build a community because they've failed to build a community. (no, really -- the fact that your technical question went unanswered can be seen as a sign of a lack of community, and short of some group of people stepping up and actively trying to build that community, the community will continue to not grow ...)
It was elaborated on slashdot once before.
I feel your pain, but I disagree with that it's acting out anger -- instead, from my experiences I feel that it's not anger but a lack of ability or experience with dealing with someone who says, either directly or indirectly, that something you made is "wrong".
One thing the FOSS paradigm has done is made it possible that people with no experience in the social aspects of software development to write code that is potentially used by millions of people. It can open up a "cowboy culture" where everyone is at odds with everyone else and where, if I may borrow a line from a certain movie, "we're all our own countries with temporary allies and enemies".
I say this with the benefit of hindsight, to be sure: I was a once a pimply, antisocial code-contributor and inlooking back on my own exchanges I see that I was as bad as it gets: if someone found a bug in what I did, instead of fixing it I would spend all my energy in combating the person who reported it because surely this person was out to get me. It wasn't until a few years later when I got a "professional" job that my boss pulled me asside one day and gave me a half-hour verbal bitch-slap that I realized that a bug report is usually someone who _wants_to_help_me_. Basically, I was too arrogant to see that, and now that I'm "old and wise" I see that same thing on others.
Of course, I'm not saying you should let them off the hook because thay don't know any better.. in fact, I'd hazard the sentement that more bitch-slapping needs to be done in the open-source world!
I don't know were I'm going with this, but that's my two cents.
Hilary Rosen's speech was about her love of money and her desire to roll around naked in a pile of money.
What features does IE have over Firefox?
RSS? PNG support? Popup blocker without a service pack? Proper CSS support? Integrated Sherlock? Tabbed browsing?
Oh wait, those are all features Firefox has that IE doesn't. About the only thing IE has that Firefox doesn't is ActiveX support, and the only good thing that has come from that is keeping me in business (people pay me to clean their computers of spyware/malware).
- Reviewers != Coders. There are more Firefox coders than reviewers. A bottleneck is created, but hardly a crisis
- Most of Firefox's changes come from Gecko, which is done by Mozilla coders (I guess you could call them Gecko coders, although I've never heard anyone say that). There are currently about 70 reviewers, and 20 super-reviewers for mozilla. There's about 84 coders a month (down from the 150+ haydays of the Netscape area)
The problem is, we're talking about a browser here, not an operating system like Linux - it's far easier to persuade people to download a web-browser rather than an operating system (Linux). Maybe that will change, but right now the Mozilla/Firefox people have to worry about security and all the unscrupulous free-loaders who would attempt to use their name.
A lot of spyware vendors for example would be tempted to ship their own special 'enhanced' version of Firefox with the same branding and call it Firefox+ or something, with built in weather, clock, terrorist headcount, free desktop pictures, plus of course key logging, pop-ups and god knows what else. Just enough fluff to make it seem useful to a non-expert user, and just enough spyware to keep them happy. Then when it all comes out that it is spyware, Firefox will be tarred with the same brush.
That kind of thing is one good reason not to allow just anyone to use the brand.