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.

Comments

Two questions spring to mind:

[tabkey12]

Are you going to change your name now that you are no longer updating your eponymous web suite?

What is the volume of complaints you have received when the Mozilla suite was cancelled - more or less than you expected?

Re:Two questions spring to mind:

[nine-times]

What do you think about asking this:

Why do you think it is that so many people continue to claim that the Mozilla suit was "cancelled" when the Mozilla foundation has just spent several years upgrading the suite to a new code-base which breaks the suite from a single executable into stand-alone applications?

Why do you think this caught people so off-guard, given that the Mozilla Foundation announced its intention to do so several years ago, and it has been clearly stated on the development roadmap for 2 or 3 years? What could you have done to be more clear?

Re:Two questions spring to mind:

[kollivier]

Why do you think this caught people so off-guard, given that the Mozilla Foundation announced its intention to do so several years ago, and it has been clearly stated on the development roadmap for 2 or 3 years? What could you have done to be more clear?

If it was stated on the roadmap 2 or 3 years ago that there would be no Mozilla 1.8, then why was it a discussion issue just a month or so back? It certainly seems like someone in the Mozilla dev crew didn't know as an absolute fact that there'd be no Mozilla 1.8, and if their own developers didn't know, how can you fault average users for not realizing it?

Yeah, people knew it would stop being supported, but I think they just thought they'd get a little warning beforehand. After all, what were all those people testing, then? The "backend" of Mozilla? Was this made clear to them? Did they realize they were testing software that would never be officially released? If they DID realize it, would they have still spent time testing it? I read about one poor guy who actually went through and updated language translations for Mozilla 1.8, only to find it was pointless of him to do so. A little communication earlier on in the process would have avoided all this.

Criticize all you want, but big organizations would be eaten alive by their customers if they pulled something like this. Microsoft has trouble discontinuing Win98 support YEARS in advance. Mozilla is growing, and open source is a give and take strategy. If the project wants the support of the community, they've got to be willing to accomodate the needs and concerns of the community as well. I don't think it's fair to simply bash Mozilla for their mistakes, but I believe they could have dealt with the situation better than they did, and it would benefit the project if they learned how to handle these situations better, especially now that they're getting the attention of the public in general.

Re:Two questions spring to mind:

[kollivier]

No, 2 or three years ago, there wasn't going to be anything after 1.4, but things had to be pushed back because Firefox and Thunderbird too longer than expected to reach version 1.0. However, it was stated publicly that Seamonkey would be discontinued after the stand-alone apps were complete. IIRC, there were rumblings at the time that 1.7 was designated the new stable branch that it would probably be final.

...

Because, somehow, I was aware of this without being a Mozilla developer, by only reading public statements and the development roadmap. So is the problem that developers don't read the roadmap and don't read the Mozilla Foundation's public statements?

I think where we're getting hung up is that you're saying that developers/users should have known that "the end of suite development was coming" and suggesting that people didn't realize this (obvious) fact. I think they did know that, and thus the question of "why didn't they realize it" already has an answer - they did. I think it's fair to say that most people did realize that, one day, Mozilla would no longer actively develop the suite.

What bothered many people (including me, particularly) is that the 1.8 release cycle mislead many people into thinking there would be a 1.8 release. In other words, that this wasn't *yet* the end of the suite. What people saw up until a few weeks ago was the normal alpha/beta/release cycle that Mozilla has done for years. They had no real evidence from Mozilla to show that this was in fact *not* such a normal cycle, or that they should react any differently than they did in the past. (i.e. bug test, tweak, update translations, etc. for the new release and prepare it for official release) There was no concrete evidence showing that 1.7 was the end of the suite.

Furthermore, this form of decision making projects the image that the Mozilla project simply makes decisions like this out of the blue. Everyone just got together one day and said "okay, let's stop developing this now". To businesses, that looks *very* reactionary, and it suggests that Mozilla doesn't have a plan. It would make them think - do we want an organization like that being part of our infrastructure? Are they preparing for the future, or just taking it day by day?

What could have been done to smooth things out considerably and avoid wasted effort was simply to make an official statement at the start of the 1.8 development cycle that there would be no 1.8 public release and that the 1.8 testing cycle was specifically for testing Mozilla's backend technologies. No confusion, no fuss, the future of Mozilla is laid out right after 1.7, the perfect time to do so. The core question, in my mind, is why didn't this happen? IMHO, that's the real question that ought to be asked.

What will be the testbed?

[Ars-Fartsica]

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?

Re:What will be the testbed?

[Reckless Visionary]

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".

Funding

[ites]

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?

Re:Funding

[fm6]

That's the first question most of us would ask. A related question: what's the significance of Ben Goodger switching his employment from Mozilla Foundation to Google? Is this just a device to offload some of your payroll costs?

Waiting for the dust to settle

[suso]

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.

Re:Waiting for the dust to settle

[quarkscat]

Abandoning Mozilla Suite in favor of stand-alone
applications will not inspire corporations to
look favorably upon any F/OSS project that doesn't
respect stability. The rapid-fire changes made
to FF/TB, including mind-numbing UI changes can't
instill confidence in the product, especially
when bug-fixes are abandoned in favor of glitzy
UI changes.

It would be very nice to have a browser suite
that incorporated the following feature set:

(1) stability, including timely bug fixes
(2) patches and/or module updates, rather
than full suite downloads.
(3) use of a single memory footprint (as
apposed to the new FF/TB paradigm
(4) UI changes as a "skin" module, rather
than complete N.1 version changes
(5) modular design of a suite that allows
inclusion/exclusion of components as
desired (browser/mail/news/composer/im)

As it is, the FF/TB applications have experienced
a rapid change in not only UI but also of under-
lying code. Use of separate memory spaces for
FF/TB is wasteful of resources. Elinimating
suite functionality like Composer will drive
many Mozilla users to other browser suites,
regardless of core compatibilities (like use of
the IE rendering engine).

I hope that Mozilla Suite does eventually reach
release 1.8, or even 2.0. I have tried FF/TB,
and the paradigm shift to separate applications
that have dropped much of the usability of the
Mozilla Suite is not acceptable. Separate memory
footprints for FF/TB is a huge resource hog.

Does Mozilla Foundation have any plans for a
re-evaluation of their decision to abandon
Mozilla Suite, or do the millions of suite users
need to look for either a stable fork under the
control of another entity (or just abandon any/
all Mozilla products)?

Names

[sulli]

What products are you planning on renaming now?

And if so, what 1970's muscle cars will they be renamed for?

Re:Duplication?

[smittyoneeach]

Are you saying the pot is stoned?

Brother?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you have a brother named Sue?

Consider affect on large corp customers?

[sphealey]

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

Re:Consider affect on large corp customers?

[shayne321]

Well, Mr AC, it's because the current roadmap that is on the Mozilla site today discusses the development and release process for 1.8 and 1.9. So anyone doing their "due diligence" would see this and assume more releases are forthcoming.

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?

Re:Consider affect on large corp customers?

[bunratty]

Well, Mr AC, it's because the current roadmap that is on the Mozilla site today discusses the development and release process for 1.8 and 1.9.

Yes, the current plan is to release Gecko 1.8 and 1.9 at the times given in the roadmap. Note this is the Gecko platform, which is not to be confused with the Mozilla Suite product, aka Seamonkey.

Composer

[krewemaynard]

Composer is the only reason I keep the Mozilla suite around now. Will it be a standalone product? A Firefox extension like ChatZilla?

Browser of choice?

[Sparr0]

So, what do YOU use on the desktop? Firefox and Thunderbird, Mozilla Suite, Internet Explorer and Outlook, Opera and Eudora?

Calendar

[EvilStein]

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.

Re:Will you allow the Seamonkey project

[jonasj]

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.

Security Updates

[Mr. Sketch]

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?

Obligatory

[m50d]

As a female with a fairly high profile among the open source community, do you get a lot of unwanted attention from losers like me?

Future / Challeneges

[Askjeffro]

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?

Corporate-scale Firefox usage

[Tuxedo Jack]

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?

I can answer that one for you

[CdBee]

It's already available as a highly-developed stand-alone, called Nvu and sponsored by Lindows/Linspire of all people.

Re:I can answer that one for you

[nine-times]

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?"

Raising the bar

[Grip3n]

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?

Re:Raising the bar

[pla]

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... ;-)

Competing with IE7

[MankyD]

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)?

Humor

[fr1kk]

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"?

Re:Will you allow the Seamonkey project

[sphealey]

That question is answered in the very latest post in her blog.

I am sure you realize this, but one of the purposes of a Slashdot interview is to start (or terminate) a "dialogue" with a community when that community feels alienated or ill-informed. Many of us have read that blog and similar statements from MozFo insiders, but would like a bit more in the way of explanation.

Or as WR put it:

I think your application of those reasons definitely needs to be categorized in the "How to Alienate Your Base Users in 30 minutes or less" department. It's like you filed for a divorce, split up the property, moved everything out, and finally after the dust settled, you informed your wife.

sPh

Can we continue to increase usage

[brandonp]

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?

Re:Can we continue to increase usage

[bunratty]

Actually, the usage is not flattening. The growth curve used to be exponential, and now it is nearly linear. That's a slowdown in the growth, but the number of new users the browsers are attacting per month has been nearly constant since around the time Firefox 1.0 was released.

Re:ABC News stories crash Firefox 1.01.

[TheFlyingGoat]

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.

Embedding (and Mac!) Support

[kollivier]

Dear Ms. Baker,

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. ;-) 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.

Thanks for taking some time out to read and respond to these issues!

libgecko?

[Compenguin]

Now that seamonkey has being discontinued are there any plans to release a libgecko/libgre type package that the aviary products can link against and that the embedders (e.g. yelp/galeon/epiphany) can link agianst?

Re:Will you allow the Seamonkey project

[jonasj]

Sorry, I meant to say that it was answered in the documents linked to from her blog, especially this ("We probably won't use the same naming conventions, as we need to be clear that this is not a Mozilla Foundation product release"), and this, which has release plans and project planning info, and notes in several places that the naming and versioning will change.

Sorry for the tone of my previous post.

Limited Javascript event model isses

[wils0n]

Mitch,

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 .focus() in FF

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.

How does MoFo see the Community's role?

[guanxi]

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?

Gecko engine

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Gecko engine

[bunratty]

I think that's what Xul Runner is all about. It includes not only Gecko, but other core technologies as well, such as networking, XUL, SVG, etc.

CSS2 & CSS3

[X_Caffeine]

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?)

integration and lost features

[codemachine]

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?

DevMo?

[diesel_jackass]

What's up with DevMo? Devedge has been down for awhile now. I'm really missing stuff like the MultiBar for Mozilla/Netscape/Firefox, and the Core Javascript Reference 1.5.

(Tell Deb to get crackin')

XUL as a development platform

[codemachine]

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?

Do you plan corporate Features in FF/TB?

[Val314]

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)

SVG graphics?

[Anonymous Coward]

When will there be a real effort to support SVG and have it turned on in the builds by default?

New York Times Ad Poster

[asoap]

I donated some money to the Firefox new york times campaign. None of us were notified when the ad was coming out, so we got suprised when it did. You guys apologized and said that you would mail us all posters if we requested.

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?

Firefox drive wiping bug took one year to fix?

[chris59256]

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.
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 ,MBX Eudora mail files"
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

Re:Firefox drive wiping bug took one year to fix?

[cot]

"I understand you experienced some problems because you didn't understand the install procedure but that's not the fault of Mozilla or Firefox.

The custom install option states it is for experienced users, if you managed to install to the root of the program folders you certainly are not such a user."

So, is the problem that if you install the software to your root directory it deletes your entire drive on uninstall?

That sounds like a major friggen bug to me. I don't care if you install it into your windows directory, the uninstaller should know to delete its own files only. Sure there are going to be cache directories that it creates on install and then will have to empty somewhat indiscriminantly, but it seems pretty stupid to just wipe everything in the root directory of the install when you know EXACTLY which files you put there.

Re:Firefox drive wiping bug took one year to fix?

[Ih8sG8s]

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.

Re:Several Questions

[sphealey]

> and the roadmap has said so all the time.

If you can point to one roadmap that says one consistent thing I would be obliged! The roadmaps I have seen over the last 3 years have said 29 contradictory things, often within the same document.

sPh

Embedding (was: Re:Composer)

[edburns]

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

Enterprise support for Firefox et al

[kaaona]

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.

Cooperation with GNOME

[jonasj]

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?

Firefox Classic?

[ralphdaugherty]

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

Re:Mozilla Project's Future

[reverius]

The GNU project was around for years even before the linux kernel. Here's a little timeline of when some prominent open source projects started:

GNU Emacs: 1984
GNU C compiler (gcc): 1987
Linux Kernel: 1991
KDE: 1996
Gnome: 1997
Mozilla: 1998

Admittedly, Mozilla had a head start by being based on Netscape, but it wasn't -open source- until 1998.

I'll agree with your point about the ending of the core suite having potential effects on the reputation of OSS (though I think it's very unlikely), but the first statement you made is just... off by many years.