Slashdot Mirror
IBM to Hire Firefox Developers
ta bu shi da yu writes "According to news.com, IBM has placed an employment ad for a developer who would be responsible for 'enhancing the Mozilla Firefox Web browser with new features complimentary to IBM's On Demand middleware stack.' IBM might possibly be interested in FireFox integration with their Workplace software. The job is not for just anyone, however, as those who wish to apply for the job should have some cred with the Mozilla development community."
It struck me reading this headline that the Firefox dev team is under tremendous recruitment pressure, and it makes me wonder how all this cherrypicking of developers from the Firefox team, by the likes of Google and Big Blue, will impact the project's future development cycle.
Is this brain drain going to cripple the project eventually or contribute to the problems we've read in March about the Firefox development review process?
A little refresher....
The Mozilla Release Process
Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday January 18, @06:25AM
from the every-time-you-ask-we-delay-it-one-hour dept.
David Gerard writes "Asa Dotzler from the Mozilla Foundation invited questions on his blog on the Mozilla release process. The answers are up."
Firefox Lead Now Working For Google
Posted by michael on Monday January 24, @03:50PM
from the speculate-all-you-want-we'll-make-more dept.
zmarties writes "In a very low key announcement on his blog, Ben Goodger, lead developer for Firefox, has announce that effective from a couple of weeks ago, he has become a Google employee. In practice his day to day job won't change that much, in that he will still lead Firefox through its forthcoming releases, but with Google paying his wages, we can be sure that new and interesting overlap between the Mozilla Foundation's browsers and Google's services are sure to develop."
Firefox Developer on Recruitment Policy
Posted by michael on Monday January 31, @03:05AM
from the cathedral-or-bazaar dept.
wikinerd writes "A Firefox developer talks about the project's controversial invitation-only developer recruitment policy and explains why Firefox will never grow up."
Problems With the Firefox Development Process
Posted by Zonk on Sunday March 06, @11:39PM
from the eyes-on-the-prize dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Mike Connor, one of the core Firefox developers, is raising a flag concerning the Mozilla Firefox methodology of development. From his blog: "In nearly three years, we haven't built up a community of hackers around Firefox, for a myriad of reasons, and now I think were in trouble. Of the six people who can actually review in Firefox, four are AWOL, and one doesn't do a lot of reviews." In an earlier entry, he raised concrete concerns about the community involvement. Asa Dotzler recently elaborated on the process, as previously covered on Slashdot."
Mozilla Foundation in More Development Trouble
Posted by samzenpus on Thursday March 10, @07:44AM
from the who-will-get-the-kids dept.
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."
It was intended as a rhetorical question. I was told to think "radical" after all. ;-)
- Sam Ruby
Well you sent me off to gather data to demonstrate how wrong you were. Of course it turns out you're right, so any belittling will have to wait for some other time. What's really amazing is that IBM earned nearly as much as MSFT's gross revenue. (And they both make absurd amounts of money.)
Seriously, hacking konqueror puts you in like the .01% of developers who have written any code for a web browser. Probably not a bad thing on your resume if you're really interested in this job.
I'm not sure how this got so hyped up, but this is not IBM waking up looking for a Firefox Dev, they already had one. Darin Fisher.
He moved on to bigger and better things at Google, so really all this Hype is over a simple position replacement ad.
Blah... the media sucks.
Except that IBM itself has proven that marketing to management works.
In the late 90s one of there boxes was not selling, so they pulled all tech ads. Instead they just advertised in CEO and management type magazines.
Sales of that box increased.
I wish IBM UK would remake those ads for the UK market. The ads are just SO tacky and look so out of place next to UK ads.
There's no reason this should be rated down, it's all quite true. I'm currently studying web-design, and half of what I have to learn is about how to get around the stupidity of various versions of IE. I only hope longhorn will properly support CSS, the last thing I need is to learn how to cope with another version of stupid IE psuedo-CSS rules.
If IBM is betting the farm on open source, tell me why their IT infrastructure consultancy business who run the (extremely big) network where I work are the reason we are upgrading to Windows XP? I think IBM see open source as valuable for what it can add to IBM's portfolio, but it's certainly not the only option they push.
Really? So why does searching the W3C site for XUL only give a load of mailing list posts? Why is XUL not mentioned in their site index? Is it, perhaps, because it is a Mozilla technology? The specifications are published, so it is an open specification, but it is not endorsed by the W3C.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News