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Mozilla Foundation in More Development Trouble
sebFlyte writes "After the reports of problems with Firefox' development earlier this week there are now rumblings about more serious problems with the Mozilla Suite. Some developers want to spin the suite out as a community project that the foundation has no responsibility for, and others want to create a Firefox Foundation to deal with the success of the standalone browser."
I see this sort of instability as only hurting the cause. It will show the general public and/or typical PHBs that closed source software is better because the companies/foundations making it are more stable. Mozilla really needs to try to keep it together.
The Firefox interface is all XUL - not minimised at all, just with fewer features. It's what allows themes to change the interface, and extensions. If you want a XUL-less browser, try K-Meleon.
Mozilla has become a well-known name (through its history and through Firefox), while the Gecko engine is relatively unheard of. Similarly, people know Internet Explorer instead of Trident or Tasman, Opera instead of Presto, and so on.
Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
Ah - experimented further with about:config. Found that "browser.tabs.opentabfor.middleclick" seems to do it. Cool - now I'm not so anxious about losing future Mozilla updates.
Ryan Fenton
Here's the differences:
Firefox starts up slightly faster.
The Firefox UI has a lot of features removed. The idea was to make the core browser "simple" and allow it to be customized via extensions.
Firefox generally used IE's UI as its model, whereas Mozilla used Netscape 4.x as its model.
Once the browser is loaded, rendering and speed wise they're the same. Benchmarks recently posted on Slashdot showed that the 1.8 versions of the suite were significantly faster than Firefox (based on 1.7). The next Firefox release should gain those improvements.
If you use FireFox and Thunderbird, you end up with higher memory usage as you get two copies of the Mozilla core loaded, whereas with the Suite you only have one copy loaded. This problem gets worse if you also use the standalone Composer or Calendar.
The biggest difference is to get a change done in the Mozilla UI, you have to get a large group of people to agree. Firefox has about 2 people who decide on the UI, so its easier to get changes done there.
Really, the biggest difference in Firefox is it shuts up the people who want to be able to download just a browser without the other stuff, but who also refuse to use the Mozilla net installer. If you used the Suite's net installer, you've always been able to tell it not to download the extra junk, but there's a large portion of people that liked to ignore the net installer and then bitch about being forced to download and install the parts they don't want.
Here is an article at EWeek about some of the problems with FF 1.0.1 update and the need for a better update system and more servers. He also mentions the problems with reviewers, but the update problems are far worse in the near term. The fact that the update.mozilla.org is very slow to update extensions was a bad sign. Of course extensions are non-critical compared to the browser itself. Now it looks like browser updates are handled the same way. I had much the same experience on my laptop as the author of the article. First it took forever for the update to appear. When it finally did show up the update system pushed out a completely new installer file, and messed up the installed program list with two install enteries linking to the same program. When Firefox went from 1.0PR to 1.0 it was handled much better. Only some files needed updating, it was not a complete reinstall. I believe that much of the criticism is valid and not just anti-Firefox FUD. Encourging more external contribution and finding more reviewers, as well as defining the relationship between the Firefox and Mozilla suite developers are longer term issues that need to be addressed, but better managment of the update system is something that is more pressing and is having a negative impact on users today.
OSDL doesn't sell advertising, and isn't related to Slashdot or OSTG .
No, I don't want to explore the Recycle Bin.
What is being suggested is to spin off the suite into a community driven project rather than one handled by the MoFo.
Actually, I did read the article. The user comment said, "You Firefox boys start a separate foundation -- 'The Firefox Foundation'." Now, a lot of this argument ends of being about technicalities, and not about whether people can continue to develop the old suite. I totally agree that if there's a community that wants to continue to develop Seamonkey, then they have every right to do so. If someone wants to take Mozilla in a totally new direction, they can do that too. That doesn't require some sort of a "spin off" by the MoFo, it just requires that the community pick up the source code and start working.
But I have heard people before comment (the user cited in the article isn't the only one) that Mozilla is somehow at fault for deciding to focus on a Firefox/Thunderbird/Sunbird suite instead of developing Seamonkey more. Sort of a "The MoFo is for the old suite. If you want a 'Firefox Foundation', go start one, but get Firefox out of the Mozilla Foundation!" attitude. Clearly these people favor the old suite, which is fair, but they [at least] seem to be in the minority of those who actually use Mozilla based software.
Also, the idea of naming it the "Firefox Foundation" is a little silly. It's not all Firefox, but it is focused on Mozilla-based products, which should eventually all tie together into a new Mozilla suite. "The Mozilla Foundation" is an appropriate name.
No, politics, just a quick note:
Though the employees are heavily Democratic and the company itself contributes equally to both parties, Bill Gates himself is a staunch Republican.
Take a look: OpenSecrets.
Not only Republican but a clever one at that, he contributed to all the Republican parties in each battleground state.
If you give away your source code and promote the open source aspect of it, you need to live with the fact that you're not going to be in charge of it. The only way to own it is to release only binaries and write all the supporting libraries from scratch so you're not restricted by the GPL.
"Rather than get angry at politicians, look to the appeals court which overrulled Jackson and found there was no merit to the charge that IE was "tied" to Windows. In otherwords, sticking IE into Windows was legal, and MS couldn't be punished for it, regardless of the administration in power."
Ummm, you better look at that again. The appeals court upheld the finding of fact, so Microsoft was found to have violated the law. The current administration just declined to punish them for it. The appeals court sent the case back because Jackson talked to the press before the trial was over.
You're obviously one of those people who doesn't let facts get in the way of their poorly formed opinions, but next time try a little harder not to look like an idiot, 'k?
No, FireFox and Thunderbird don't share the same libraries. The code is just coupled too tightly for the libraries to really be seperated out. Mozilla.org has had seperating the libraries on their todo list for years. The target date has always been "6-12 months from now", but it's simply not a priority and doesn't look like it'll happen anytime soon.