Slashdot Mirror
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.
What is the volume of complaints you have received when the Mozilla suite was cancelled - more or less than you expected?
Get a free iPod Nano 4GB!
Now that the Moz suite is apparent non-official, how will new code be tested? Will there be some sort of "beta" Firefox release for testing? Or a new very minimal piece of code that is a testbed yet not useful to consumers?
Could you explain how the Mozilla Foundation currently gets its funding and what your vision is on the long-term funding for open source projects like Mozilla?
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
I imagine this next year will be some of the most trying times for the Mozilla foundation as lots of people and companies are going to expect Firefox and Thunderbird to do and be lots of things. How do you plan to handle this all this pressure?
--
suso.org website/email hosting, no disk space quotas and personalized support.
Prior to making the decision to not release a final 1.8 version of the Mozilla Suite, did you analyze the affect this would have on large corporate customers doing internal deployments? Although we are small, I work with some fairly large entities who are using 1.4/1.7 for internal deployments (>10,000 seats in one case) and were expecting there is be a 1.8 final - even if that was the last one.
Does this decision to drop Suite 1.8 in mid-stream as it were affect the credibility of Mozilla Foundation in the long run?
sPh
Composer is the only reason I keep the Mozilla suite around now. Will it be a standalone product? A Firefox extension like ChatZilla?
I saw it on Slashdot, it must be true!
So, what do YOU use on the desktop? Firefox and Thunderbird, Mozilla Suite, Internet Explorer and Outlook, Opera and Eudora?
Are there any more plans to put weight behind the calendaring solution?
I know that Sunbird exists and there's now Lightning but the project details are quite vague. The Mozilla Suite could benefit greatly from a fully functional calendar, especially in the small business realm.
What are the plans for incremental security updates to the Firefox suite? Currently we only get a new release of Firefox that has to be reinstalled. Are there plans to allow small security patches to be applied without having to reinstall the whole application?
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
Where do you see the Mozilla foundation in 5 years?
What types of new projects are the Foundation considering?
Why should the average consumer use Mozilla software over Microsoft's offerings?
What is Mozilla's greatest challenge in getting the average PC user to utilize their software?
Given how easy it is to deploy Firefox across a campus (load it into a Ghost loadset, then deploy in your next periodic reclone), why, in your opinion, are medium-to-large companies loathe to deploy anything but IE, especially given the tendencies of employees to use office machines for distinctly non-work purposes, which often leads to malware infections?
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
Clearly the fact that Microsoft had a monopoly on the browser market reared its ugly head; we haven't seen any improvements to IE for around 5 years. However, as soon as the hint of competition comes, MS is back on their feet.
Now that MS has put people back on their IE development team, it seems inevitable that IE will soon have the same features that Firefox does: tabbed browsing, pop-up blocking, 24-bit PNG support, etc. What is the Mozilla Foundation's move to keep people excited about installing Firefox over being content with IE? Many of my friends who are less than computer savvy are more than content staying with what Windows already has unless there are some compelling reasons to switch. Firefox at the moment has those reasons in spades, but a quick tune-up to IE would undermine Firefox's natural advances.
In short: how are you planning to keep Firefox ahead of the curve?
To make a pun demonstrates the highest understanding of a language
The new Internet Explorer is coming (at some point). Regardless of ones affinity or lack-there-of for the current iteration of IE, IE7 is sure to hold some major improvements. I dare say it might even be a good browser.
Does Mozilla have a plan of any form for weathering IE7's release? With the practice of bundling the browser with the OS, how on earth can Mozilla compete (assuming IE7 holds the major feature enhancements that it needs so badly)?
-dave
http://millionnumbers.com/ - own the number of your dreams
How is the overall morale of the devlopment team as far as being able to kid around and have fun? One example I can think of is about:mozilla in mozilla or firefox. It is obviously a pun of some kind, or an inside joke. I think it boils down to: As the projects get bigger and more professional do you see a difference in the team's ability to "have fun" with the software, or is there more concern for the need to "act professional"?
sig: Playfully doing something difficult, whether useful or not
After considering two developments:
1) The increased usage of Mozilla/Firefox browsers has seemed to be flattening recently, although still growing.
2) It is rumored that Internet Explorer 7 Beta will be released this summer. This would appear to steal some thunder from Mozilla & Firefox browsers.
What can be done to make sure that Mozilla and Firefox browsers will continue to reach and surpass the 10% usage point? How can the community deal with the probable hype that would be generated around the release of a Internet Explorer 7 Beta?
Dear Ms. Baker,
;-) I noticed the hiring of Josh Aas to the Mozilla Foundation and a commitment to improving Mac support, which I was very excited to hear about, and I was wondering if this includes improving the embedding libraries on Mac? (Modern Mac apps have significant troubles with the current embedding libs, which are geared towards OS 8/9 apps.) I realize this is open source, and I'm certainly willing to help in any efforts towards this end (and have already made headway towards some patches), but I would need some help and support from the Mozilla project to make this real.
I'm one of the core developers on wxMozilla, and for some time I've been wondering how exactly the GRE / Gecko SDK fits into the overall Mozilla framework and roadmap. I have two questions that center around that issue.
First, the current Mozilla communication issues are especially confusing for embedders, because, for example, the GRE has traditionally used the same numbering scheme as the Mozilla Suite. (i.e. there's not going to be a Mozilla 1.8, but what does that mean for GRE 1.8?) Furthermore, there's no roadmap for the GRE, so it's hard to tell where it's going or what the priorities are. So could you comment on what you see as the future of the GRE and Gecko SDK as Mozilla products?
I have one more related question, because I'm a Mac user.
Thanks for taking some time out to read and respond to these issues!
How about asking if the Mozilla Foundation has any plans to take on Nvu as an official MoFo project, if the MoFo has plans to work with Linspire on updates/integration, or perhaps even just generally, "Hey, what's the deal with Nvu?"
Mitch,
.focus() in FF
Specific to Web Application development:
Many MS Access and VB developers (specifically) are attempting to move to rich client Web apps.
One of the problems we are encountering in working with FireFox is that we cannot set the focus to any element we want. In my case, I want to set the focus to any valid DIV on the page. In the MS IDEs this is possible and very useful.
Here are a couple of products that are attempting to do grid functions that do not work in Firefox because it appears that FireFox has a more limited Javascript implementation compared to IE:
Active Widgets discussion on
Very functional JS grid. Works in IE, try the demos in FF
I understand that there might be XSS threats, but those of us who REALLY want to get away from MS development tools need to have just such specific functionality that is offered by IE and is obviously being used in the market in both closed and open source projects.
What is the plan to make FF a more development friendly tool for those of us who would like to attempt rich client apps with a cross-browser solution?
Thanks for your time.
Repeatedly, I see that members of the 'community' have
expectations of the Mozilla Foundation that aren't met. MoFo and
the community seem to perceive their respective roles and
responsibilities completely differently. I'm hoping you can
help bring together the two perspectives.
Many members of the 'community' seem to expect management and
development of the various projects to be as open as the code,
and they often complain that MoFo makes decisions without
consulting, warning or even notifying the community.
Examples include the decision to release Firefox 1.0 based on Moz
1.7 instead of 1.8, the decision to stop MoFo development of
Mozilla Application Suite, and the business relationship that
makes Google the home page.
On a smaller scale, in my limited experience I've seen some
community requests and patches ignored or dismissed summarily,
though I've seen some accepted and/or discussed.
I don't know that MoFo's approach toward the community is good or
bad -- I can imagine the limitations of interacting with so many
people -- but at least expectations should be clarified. I've
been participating for over four years and I'm still not sure what
to expect. It's difficult to contribute if you don't know where
help is desired or needed. Finding out in hindsight and seeing
hours of work wasted is frustrating and inefficient. I think
clarifying the roles would improve efficiency and improve retention
of contributors.
What is MoFo's official, internal policy regarding the MoFo's and
the community's roles and how they function? What is the de
facto policy -- how does it really function in your experience?
What resources are dedicated to community interaction? Finally,
what can be done to improve the situation, at least by aligning
expectations with reality.
Or perhaps I haven't described the issue well: Does MoFo see a
foundation and a community? Does it see something more subtly
defined? Something completely different?
Are there any plans to pull Gecko out of Firefox, Thunderbird, etc and making it into a shared library? Currently, the engine is re-implemented in every program that uses it. If a person were to run Firefox, Thunderbird, Sunbird, and Nvu at once, that can end up to be a lot of memory usage.
Extracting Gecko out and making it a shared library that the other applications build on could really help in the long run.
Microsoft has seemingly attempted to quash web standards by making early and strong support for CSS1 and CSS2 (thus making it a better renderer than Netscape 4), and then all but abandoning web standards in favor of Avalon. Does Mozilla have any plans to push web design technologies forward again, through more complete CSS2 support and CSS3? (and also widespread deployment of CSV?)
// I will show you fear in a handful of jellybeans.
I'm wondering whether there are any plans to integrate the existing stand-alone applications, and whether this will even be possible now that the Mozilla Foundation is not doing development on all of them.
For example, it might be useful to see integration between two or more of Firefox, Thunderbird, Sunbird, Nvu, the address book, and a chat component. But since the Mozilla Foundation does not develop Nvu or Chatzilla any longer (is anyone working on Chatzilla or any XUL chat app any longer?), this won't necessarily be easy.
Is there any plans to work with Linspire and other application developers to integrate their work with Firefox and Thunderbird? Will the Mozilla Foundation be doing official extensions that bring some of the suite functionality to the stand-alone products?
What are the Mozilla Foundation's plans regarding the future of XUL as a development platform, especially as it regards competing with IE/XAML/Avalon? Will you push Firefox as a platform in itself like Netscape tried to do with their browser, or will the browser project and the XUL platform be handled seperately?
I ask because it seems like many of the Mozilla 2.0 goals would apply to all XUL applications and the platform itself, not just Firefox. I could see two approaches to the development of Mozilla 2.0 - one being that Firefox becomes the testbed that the Suite used to be, the other being that the FireFox team only worries about producing a browser and another group develops the "platform" as a whole. But how would this platform be developed and tested going forward, and will it be capable of competing with Avalon/XAML?
I hold software distributed by the Mozilla foundation in high esteem and use two of its products daily (Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird, to be precise). Despite the quality, ease-of-use and practicality of these programs, I must speak out as far as one issue is concerned, and that is the initiation of one instance of the somewhat memory hungry Gecko rendering engine per program requiring it.
Indeed, when I launch Thunderbird and then Firefox in what is a rather typical day of computer use, both programs initiate an instance of the Gecko rendering engine instead of using a common instance used as a control, and this is often the cause of slowdown varying in the level of severity. So please could you reveal when you beleive a single instance of the Gecko rendering engine will be used by software requiring it, such as Mozilla foundation's own?
Are there any plans to make the Mozilla Apps corp. friendlier?
i'm too lazy to dig up the Bug #'s, but i'm talking about Exchange Support (not via IMAP) for TB/SB, possibility to switch to MSHTML for specified pages (most intranets i've seen use at least some ActiveX stuff, that requires IE and i doubt that they'll recode their Apps just to be Mozilla friendly) for FF (as some kind of plugin)
When will there be a real effort to support SVG and have it turned on in the builds by default?
Well, I requested a poster, and I've never seen it. What's the deal with that? Have you not sent any out, or is it because I live in another country, that you have not sent it to me because it costs to much to ship?
Anyway, I didn't put up a fuss, because I assumed that the whole thing got dropped.. So what heppend?
Treat me like a marketing stat, and I'll treat your movie like a series of ones and zeros
Hello Mitchell, Good idea to leverage /. for community input. My main question, as you may guess with my interest in the webclient project, is: what is the future of the embedding api an the Gecko Runtime Environment? Lots of people are embedding Gecko (and a few of them are doing so with webclient). Can we count on these APIs being supported going forward?
Ed
Does MF have any plans to produce a Custom Configuration Kit and Mission Control Desktop capability for Firefox, Thunderbird, and the other now independent parts of what was the Mozilla suite? These new components are being marketed toward end users with no apparent regard for the needs of universities, corporations, government agencies, or other large enterprises for CCK/MCD support.
All of the points lead to installer issues, not uninstaller bugs. It seems to me that the uninstall problems are symptomatic of installer deficiencies.
The uninstall program did exactly as it should, which is to remove the installation. The problem would not manifest itself if the installer had not been less than intuitive in the first place.
So while there is (was) an issue, people were barking up the wrong tree it seems to me. It looks like a communication disconnect.
Absolutely, users should be protected from themselves. On a personal level, I think it takes a special kind of numbskull to custom install to a bad place, then subsequently agree to removing the installation folder and all its contents.
Was it a problem? Yes. I think the whole thing was pretty funny in a sick way.
There used to be talks of a Mozilla-GNOME alliance, perhaps even a merger, to stand united against .NET/XAML/etc. Any news on this?
You know, Microsoft's street address also says a lot about their mentality.
Would you consider putting your blessing on a Firefox Classic suite that integrates Firefox, Thunderbird, and other Mozilla projects with the advanced keyboard functionality of the Mozilla Suite?
rd