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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."
This is the primary thing you need to remember about Free Software. You can't take it.
You can borrow it. You can improve it. You can give it to all your friends.
But you can't take it.
The copyright doesn't belong to you. It belongs to the guy who licensed the Free Software to you in the first place. Sure, you may own the copyright to the little bit of code that you wrote yourself, but you are forced to release that code under the Free Software license of your licensor's choosing. Not really free for you, the developer, eh?
Well, that's because the GPL is communism, and I like it that way.
Mozilla is Free Software.
This is misread by almost everyone in the business community and more seriously almost everyone in the OSS community. Even the originator of the concept (RMS) doesn't fully grasp the depth of the statement as he has become one of the proponents of what I call "the Free Software Lie". The Lie is that the "Free" in Free Software is freedom for the developer. It is NOT.
The Freedom referred to in Free Software is freedom for the software under the GPL. Because of the license, the Software has gained Freedom from being exploited in a commercial sense. It is Free from the possibility of being exploited for personal gain of a company. It ceases to be a slave.
It is precisely unfit for business or for personal forks because of those things that give it its freedom. Companies can't imprison or hide the software and remain in the good graces of the GPL and copyright law. If you want a license that grants developers rights, then stick with the BSD (UnFree) license. If you care about the Freedom of Software, then go with the GPL.
Thats right. Mozilla did have a nice marketing but due to the recent layoffs it was no wonder. Also people on the Open Source architecture get more and more settled to either KDE or GNOME desktop environments and thus like a Browser that smoothly embedds into their overall environment which is slick and easy to use.
While Firefox was the right approach in this direction it still is a huge monster compared to solutions such as KHTML (Apple WebCore or GTK+ WebCore).
People want small solutions that does the trick such as Atlantis Screenshots from Atlantis Homepage.
Atlantis is planned to become Open Source soon (as soon as the code gets cleaned up) and hope fully will lead a unified Browsing experience amongst KDE and GNOME by using the technological same Rendering Engine as well as sharing the same Bookmarks System.
If GBrowser is for real, why couldn't Google essentially take over by forking eithe Mozilla or firefox (or both)? They could become the effective owners of the software. Would that be considered good or evil?
Why not make Mozilla a container app for firefox and thunderbird? FF and TB would basically be plugins for Mozilla. That way you have a single code base for the browser and mail app. Adding the calendar to Mozilla would then be easy, you just load the plugin.
Imagine being able to open your email on new tab in the mozilla window?
The MoFo is merely experiencing some growing pains that come along with supporting a newfound success. The more popular something becomes, the more people want to change it and ride the wave. I think Mozilla should stick to their current development policy, but they've got to get rid of Seamonkey at some point. Firefox and Thunderbird (and soon, Sunbird) are going to do for Mozilla what Seamonkey should have done: getting the technology into users' hands.
You are only as much as what you do with what you know.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the Mozilla Foundation formed because Netscape/AOL wanted Mozilla to become a community project that the corporation has no responsibility for?
If the Mozilla Foundation has no responsibility for the Mozilla codebase, just what is the point of their existence?
I say desolve the foundation permanently. Give project leaders direct control over their codebases. Fear will keep the users in line! Fear of this battlesta-- . . . no, wait, I mean Microsoft, fear of Microsoft.
Seriously though, if the Mozilla Foundation doesn't want control/responsibility of the Mozilla codebase they should just simply disband and give the code back to the community. Someone will pick it up.
Big projects using CVS somehow all wind up with
with nasty politics. This is because CVS commit
rights give a very visible rank to some people.
It only gets worse if you add "core" membership.
Linus keeps things fuzzy. The innermost circle
of developers is poorly defined. This lets
everyone think they are "in" or "out" as best
suits their personality.
I've seen the problem on wikis too, with admin
rights. Giving out explicit rank is dumb.
Everyone always throws up K-Meleon as the Firefox alternative -- that's fine, under Windows. When you ask for a linux alternative, they blather about Galeon or Epiphany, or sometimes even Dillo, which is nowhere near useable.
Galeon and Epiphany require both Gnome and Mozilla to be installed on the system. That is a fuckload of dependency to browse the web. It also means Galeon and Epiphany aren't really standalone browsers; they're like MyIE or whatever IE wrapper is popular this week.
The only extension I ever use with Firefox is adblock*, and I'm learning to program in more languages specifically so I can strip Firefox down and get it back to where it was in the early days -- small, fast, and lightweight.
* -- yeah, yeah, I know adblock runs against the whole revenue stream of the web, and it keeps me from supporting websites, blah blah blah. If I want to support a website I'll donate to it.
REM Old programmers don't die. They just GOSUB without RETURN.
I'd just like to point out for the record that Microsoft employees contribute more to the Democratic party than any other company in the United States and that the Microsoft itself has made only negligible political contributions to both parties. Bill Gates is certainly no conservative.
The idea that the Bush/Cheney regime as you call it should be determining whether a browser should be embedded into an OS is rediculous. The last thing we want is our elected officials telling us how to package and sell our software. Let's press them on software patents, not bundling issues.
Someone you trust is one of us.
Sure, sure.... I used to run Galeon (spelling?) on Gnome, Camino on OSX, and Firefox on Windows, merely because I like consistency in my interfaces. However, ever since Firefox began looking native on all three, I pretty much stick with Firefox (and sometimes safari) and it's very nice to have the same browser on whatever OS you choose without it ever looking out-of-place.
For evolution to work, you need enough specimen (and a sufficient environment). If all specimen are bad, the entire species dies out. In other words, you need enough splits, and enough good developers for each split. And there must be a sufficient userbase to test out these splits. I wonder if this is the case with firefox.
Wasn't there a /. article a few weeks ago about how elite the firefox devs were and how they wouldn't tell anyone how to be part if the "inner circle" because figuring it out was part of the secret handshake bull$#!+. And now they are running out of people with no community support? Hmm, I wonder why. Am I reading that wrong or are they getting what they asked for?
If you're not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate
I remember reading JWZ's blog back in the Netscape days. I remember one entry in particular where he noted that Netscape had changed. It used to be full of people who wanted to help create a great company. It turned into a place full of people who just wanted to work for a great company. The people who live to help create get replaced by those who want to ride on their coat-tails. This happens when businesses become successful. Everything changes. Like the band that was good friends and partied together every night. They get signed, shit gets serious, and suddenly they're fighting and arguing about things till they break up and go their separate ways.
From an old post in his blog:
What is most amazing about this is not the event itself, but rather, what it indicates: Netscape has gone from ``hot young world-changing startup'' to Apple levels of unadulterated uselessness in fewer than four years, and with fewer than 3,000 employees.
But I guess Netscape has always done everything faster and bigger. Including burning out.
It's too bad it had to end with a whimper instead of a bang. Netscape used to be something wonderful.
The thing that hurts about this is that I was here when Netscape was just a bunch of creative people working together to make something great. Now it's a faceless corporation like all other faceless corporations, terrified that it might accidentally offend someone. But yes, all big corporations are like that: it's just that I was here to watch this one fall.
Perhaps the same fate awaits Mozilla. Hopefully not, but when your product becomes as successful as Mozilla and Firefox have, things do change and change is inevitable. It all comes down to how the people involved with the projects handle the change.
Mozilla did rise from the ashes of Netscape though. Hopefully some of the original Netscape people are still around to help lead Mozilla in the right direction, using their experience from the crashing and burning of Netscape in the late 90's.
JWZ's rantings can be found at http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/
Many of your changes could wind up in firefox anyway...
8 and with a lot of help from existing developers, fixed it. As time went on, I found other things I didn't like, and worked on them. Since then, I've fixed quite a few bugs: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?query_for mat=advanced&emailassigned_to1=1&emailtype1=exact& email1=cst%40andrew.cmu.edu&chfieldto=Now
No, they CAN'T! Firefox people are very strict about not adding things for transitioning Mozilla users - for example, they rejected a patch I wrote that allows ctrl and alt to be un-reversed based on a hidden preference (basically, ctrl+enter and alt+enter are backwards in Firefox - an unnecessary annoyance). There are many other things they don't accept - my definition of "better" is just not the same as theirs.
If a developer only wishes to develop for the moz suite but no on is there to use it, are you making a difference?
So what, am I wasting my time working on Mozilla? No, it's a hobby which happens to benefit me (since I get a better browser). Besides, there is a difference between not having 25 million users and not having ANY users. If a Mozilla 1.8 is released, I'm sure there will still be many thousands of downloads.
If you abandon mozilla for dropping the suite you were never a true open source developer to begin with.
I liked Mozilla, but wanted it to do something it didn't support (play a sound when a download finishes). I found this bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1649
Does the fact that I do this work for free, in my free time make me a "fake" open source developer? Am I supposed to continue to contribute if the project moves in a direction I don't like? If that's what's required to fit someone's definition of "true open source developer", then fine, I'm not one.
It really boils down to this: I don't like the same things Firefox devs like, and as such, making Firefox "better" in my opinion would require that I fork it. Instead, I choose to contribute to Mozilla, whose developers I see eye-to-eye with much better. Unlike a personal Firefox fork, Mozilla at least has some users.
My server
Again, maybe this is a function of me being a clueless user, but I don't see that. Take KDE and Gnome as an example... these are two *very* separate and competing projects being developed in parallel by different groups. Firefox, however, *is* the new Mozilla browser. Sure, it's very different, and has been through a massive re-write (which is why I originally compared it to Windows 3.1 vs. XP or really old Linux kernels), but it's been groomed during the past couple years *specifically* to replace the old Mozilla browser. I know, it started out as a different project, but Mozilla took it on and announced that the standalone apps would *replace* the Mozilla suite-- I don't remember when, but over a year ago. They continued to develop the old version while the stand alone apps were still in beta, but now Firefox and Thunderbird are both >1.0.
While it makes a lot of sense to me to continue to maintain old products for a while, in order to support users who haven't moved on yet, I'd still think that, eventually, people need to move on. I still don't see why we shouldn't view the stand-alone apps as the new, upgraded Mozilla suite, especially considering that was the MoFo's intention. If you want to branch the old version and make a competing browser, then that would be the new, competing/alternate product.
But I guess it's all in how you look at it.
The thing is, just because some group says "Firefox is the new Mozilla", it doesn't mean that Mozilla suddenly becomes a bad, inadequate, or obsolete product. As you note, they ARE very different applications, and this is the problem - the group that says "Firefox is the new Mozilla" doesn't appreciate that some of the Mozilla hackers and users don't *want* a new Mozilla.
Imagine you had a group of volunteers building a car like the Accord, and one year the "head honcho" says "next year's model will be a Civic". Many people love the Civic, and it becomes hugely popular. Is it so wrong for the Accord designers to still keep maintaining their Accord line if they have the necessary skills and resources?
What you have to understand is that this is not just a version increment - it's a new product which can live in parallel. The developers mentioned in the story mostly want to know whether the head honcho of the volunteer group will let them develope the same way they used to, or if they have to create their own group with its own things.
My server
Keep up the good work please.