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Ask Mozilla Foundation Chief Mitchell Baker
There have been several recent reports of squabbles and problems involving Mozilla and Firefox development. In an attempt to clear the air about what's going on inside the Mozilla Project and the Mozilla Foundation, Mitchell Baker has agreed to answer 10 - 12 Slashdot questions. Please look at some recent interviews with Ms. Baker and check her blog before posting in order to avoid duplication. We'll publish her answers within the next week.
That question is answered in the very latest post in her blog. You know, the blog that was linked to in the summary with the note "check her blog before posting in order to avoid duplication"?
And the answer is no.
You know, Microsoft's street address also says a lot about their mentality.
It's already available as a highly-developed stand-alone, called Nvu and sponsored by Lindows/Linspire of all people.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
I have moderator points, but I want to respond instead. I can visit both of those two ABC links without Firefox 1.0.1 crashing. I've tried reloading the pages, changing the text size, printing, and it all works fine.
I was having problems with ESPN.com crashing when 1.0.1 first came out, and posted a bug report on it. Turns out completely deleting the directory and reinstalling fixed the problem, which was originally caused by a bad Flash app on the page.
The Firefox crew handles crash reports pretty quickly in my experience. Perhaps someone just needs to tweak the installer to completely remove all the old files instead of just copying the new ones.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
IMO the roadmap doesn't make it clear enough that the 1.8 and 1.9 releases shown are platform releases and not suite releases. Unless you follow moz development religiously (I don't) it's not very clear from the roadmap.
Also the roadmap reads much like the king james edition of the bible, it contradicts itself everywhere. At the top:
The new, significant roadmap update hoped for early in 2004 has been postponed. See Brendan's roadmap blog for thoughts that may feed into it. An interim roadmap update focused on the "aviary 1.0" releases of Firefox 1.0 and Thunderbird 1.0, and the 1.8 milestone that will follow, is coming soon.
... which makes one think 1.8 (the suite) is forthcoming. Then a little further down:
Updated: Continue to perform sustaining maintenance, including security updates, on the SeaMonkey application suite's final stable branch (1.7.x) for enterprises and other organizations with large existing Mozilla deployments.
... ah, this must be gospel. No more suite releases. But wait, a little further down:
We are not retiring the SeaMonkey application suite, or its XPFE front end, in the foreseeable future.
Emphasis mine. Is it any wonder people are confused and angry?
Today I didn't even have to use my AK; I got to say it was a good day -- Icecube
In short: how are you planning to keep Firefox ahead of the curve?
;-)
Simply by not supporting Active-(e)X(ploits)?
By leaving in the "dom.disable_window_open_feature.blah" options, one of the single best reasons to use Moz/FF? (hijack the context menu? I think not! Resize or move my window to appear how you think it should look on your sad little 800x600 (or worse, your envy-inducing 1920x1200) display, when most of us use a 1280x1024 or 1024x786 resolution? Nope!).
By continuing to offer and improve plugin support... Like Adblock, Nuke Anything, and FlashBlock as the three that make browsing tolerable (and ad-free) again?
Or, just the obvious "Only real alternative to MSIE" - And you Opera people, don't kid yourselves. Use FF for a week and you'll outright uninstall Opera.
I agree, Moz/FF have some bugs to resolve (simply visiting certain web pages should NEVER crash a browser... It might not render quite right, but a crash? Ouch!), and need to add new features to keep up with the web in general. But for now, they have such a healthy lead on the competition that I would go so far as to say the entire Mozilla foundation could take vacation for a year or two and still have the advantage.
Of course, what with the end of Mozilla Suite, and disconcerting rumblings from the half-dozen (literally) key FF developers, including the two "active" ones... One does have to consider that a new major version will never come out.
Hmm, perhaps I should take back that crack at Opera...
Recently I learned of a bug in Windows Firefox versions prior to 1.01 which was fixed in this version. This bug wipes user's hard disks. I've located 15 users who've suffered from this bug.
,MBX Eudora mail files"
Why did it take over *one year* to fix this serious bug?
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=2257 31
The bug only occurs when a user uninstalls Firefox. A user who uninstalls version 1.0 to prepare for installing version 1.01 is vulnerable. Why has the Firefox homepage not been updated to warn all users about this fact, and to offer a safe remedy?
At least 15 people reported the bug. Assuming that 5% of victims would post publicly about it, this would leave around 300 actual victims. Even 5% is probably too high; a 1% estimate would leave around 1,500 total victims. Since the bug only occurs when Firefox is uninstalled, many hundreds or perhaps even thousands of potential future victims exist.
The bug was reported in bugzilla and discussed without fixing for over *one year*. At one point a developer didn't remove the dangerous code because he said "This is not an acceptable solution to force on all users because some people make bad assumptions and then don't read dialogs." Is Firefox truly ready for "the masses" when developers maintain this sort of attitude towards users?
(copy, remove spaces, and paste bugzilla links since they won't work from Slashdot)
Original bugzilla bug:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id =23362 5
Firefox advocate ivanii attempts to raise concern about this bug (10/07/2004)
http://www.spreadfirefox.com/?q=node/view/2808
Here's links to a few people who suffered from this bug:
1.http://computercops.biz/postp82180.html
Thu Feb 12, 2004
"Using the Firefox uninstaller has deleted almost everything in the Program Files directory..."
2.http://www.terryfrazier.com/1391
10/5/2004
"What idiot writes an uninstall routine that wipes out everything in the parent folder?!"
"This is not some minor issue. This is a show stopper. I mean, damn!"
"..every last vestige of that vile firefox has been eradicated from my registry. "
3.http://sillydog.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=4062 6
04 Aug, 2004
"After un install Firefox lost all
4.http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic. php?t=64 871&sid=2d93836acbfea243769078b48c3eff90
2004-03-28
Also posted on Bugzilla as user "Cy"
"This is not a minor inconvience. This is CARNAGE!!! Uninstalling a browser and ending up wiping out almost your entire hard drive."
"This is ruining mozilla's reputation. I now have a distrust of any win installer release by mozilla"
5.rajarajan.sampath final bugzilla victim to post.
2005-02-04
"The uninstaller wiped off, 2/3rd of my programs. This shouldnt be the case, no matter what."
6. Thomas Passin (original buzilla poster)
2004-02-09
"This is DANGEROUS."
7.https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2 42 118
2004-04-29
"...I uninstaled the whole directory "E:/Program Files"!! It wasn't very nice for me..."
8. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=26969 9
2004-11-13
"All my backups and irreplaceble files are now lost.....Thank you for making a shitty uninstaller....i fucking hate you now"
9.https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2 71 805
2004-11-25
"Firefox will deleted all my other program in c:\program files. very unlucky,I did it!!"
10. https://bugzil
Asa Dotzler has answered this on his blog (kind of):
I suspect it will be called something like "the Mozilla browser testbed" or something similarly unfriendly to end users but it will essentially be Firefox.
This is in the comments to this blog posting entitled "mozilla product futures".
I think I'll stop here.