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Firefox Lead Engineer Scolds KDE Project
trent42 writes "Firefox lead developer Ben Goodger has had harsh words on his blog for the KDE project, in light of its public tiff with Apple over the KHTML rendering engine. Goodger says 'Safari's renderer is vastly superior to the KHTML used by Konqueror,' and that the KDE developers should follow Apple's lead and focus more on the needs of users, instead of insisting on software perfection."
So basically, KDE should read this.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
So he pretty much gave KDE the finger haha
crap
Personally I can't wait for the KDE response which scolds the Firefox developers for having such huge and stupid security holes in their browser.
Maybe the Firefox team should get rid of the glass walls before they start chucking stones at other people.
the KDE developers should follow Apple's lead and focus more on the needs of users, instead of insisting on software perfection.
In a way, I agree. It's comforting to sit down, load an app, and have everything work. Knowing it's not quite perfectly written behind the scenes is a small worry sitting in the back of my mind, but it's smaller than when I have a slightly clumsy app that is otherwise technically correct.
Not that I think Konq is all that far behind in the user side of things.
Now only if Microsoft would insist on software perfection....
root@allevil:~#
Just what we need. Internal fights between developers for 2 open source projects...
I'll do the stupid thing first and then you shy people follow...
...and focus more on the needs of users, instead of insisting on software
Why not try something completely the opposite, like Microsoft, and focus on neither?
apple sucks
yeah i suppose it means fewer choices and competition.
Why is this a good thing again?
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/ben/ Who knows why the poster linked to a ZDNet article (Which incidentally can't handle a slashdotting) instead of the original blog.
So the two are mutually exclusive? We can only have software that is perfectly written or software that addresses the needs of the users?
Can't we figure out what the users need, and then deliver excellently written software to do that?
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
... since the early betas and a very happy user of Konq (mostly as a filesystem browser) all i can say is that software perfection is what draws me to the software both as a user and developer.
Who better than a firefox developer to start a flamefest!
"KDE developers should follow Apple's lead and focus more on the needs of users, instead of insisting on software perfection."
Now I think back to 1995, when IE focused on user needs over software perfection and the following of published specifications. And look what a mess of incompatibility we have today of javascript, css, java VMs, etc. Mainly because M$ focused on 'the needs of users.' No thanks, I'll stick to the specs.
Do we really need to start another flamewar between projects? Who benefits? Perhaps the KDE project and Firefox should *both* keep their collective mouths shut!
bash: rtfm: command not found
> perhaps Apple's devout zealots could address the issue of why
> Apple didn't back Mozilla in the first place.
Why? it's not an issue that needs addressing, or even thinking about.
I got on the KDE guys for their bit yesterday, so today I'll point out to the Mozilla side that the reason there was a decent browser for Linux in 1999 was that the Konqueror guys satisfied the needs of users while Mozilla went off constructing a whole new software platform...
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
"The KDE developers should follow Apple's lead and focus more on the needs of users, instead of insisting on software perfection."
Are these two things really mutually exclusive?
Completely different case. Did you miss where Safari passed a tough web page test? The whole point is that the Safari rendering engine is superior. Can't you read?
This is one question I'm really not sure I have the answer to. Is doing it properly better in the long run. The problem with a hacked bug fix is that it stays a hacked bug fix forever. Period.
Evenutally, that hack becomes a trouble to maintain and I'd bet my bottom dollar that it then takes more time to remove the hack and rework it properly that it would have taken to fix it properly in the first place.
I suspect the reason Longhorn is taking so damned long is because this problem is just starting to pinch Microsoft. The "Just get the product out" mentality works for a while - but then all that extra complexity comes back and makes your life very hard.
Simon.
I thought software perfection meant focussing on the users?
Ya know, I can't help but wonder if it's silly little pissing contests like this that, at least in some way, prevents OSS from reaching its full potential.
Here we have several very adept programmers slapping at one another over how their respective web browsers work. Am I the only one out there that finds this kind of bickering trivial and unproductive?
Yes, people will have disagreements, and people will have different ways of doing things. Fine. But why not harness those different perspectives and create something better?
As long as OSS projects are afflicted by this kind of petty squabbling, developers' attention will be diverted from creating quality software. Now knock it off!
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I have always found Konq to be the best alternative to FireFox on sites that are "IE-only". (including my companies intranet.)
As a general web-browser I find Konq to be slow and kludgy, but it has never dissappointed me on the stubborn sites.
Anybody found similar situations?
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
While not an apple zealot I can answer.
Apple decided not to use the Mozilla codebase because it realized that Mozilla would be a direct competitor for Safari and that every time an advance was made by Apple, it would need to be given to its direct competitor.
By using the KDE rendering engine, Apple could be fairly certain that the changes they made would not be immediately available on another browser. (Sorry guys, not many Linux on PPC folks in general)
It was simple business decision, competing products need to have a point of individuality, if the Mozilla codebase was used then Safari would offer nothing that sets it apart from Mozilla.
UPDATE: Good thing I hit the preview button. It's a ZDNet site or something like that. http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/ben/This is a link to Bens blog.
Bah.
R.
Well maybe as a software engineer I should. But does anyone that isn't a software engineer care? Probably not. Case closed.
And guess what KHTML's team is? That's right. Full of software engineers. Which is why they care.
Secondly, developers should prioritise releasing their products on time, even if they "may have to cut corners".
Software developers in the open-source world make software because they love to. They want to make their project (note: not product) the best it can be. Releasing products on time is straight from the Marketing Department.
Goodger has every right to give an opinion, but no right to flame others for caring about their projects, much like Mozilla used to, before they gave up a large part of their community.
Love for a project, not releasing products in a timely fashion is what makes open-source different, and much appreciated.
the fight between these 2 guys fighting like in Napolean Dynamite. They are sitting there slapping each other going "NAUGHTY BAD! HATES YOU! MEANIE!!!"
Does this make me a bad person?
Wheel of Time: Book by Book and Sumview (summary review) Bigdady92 style: http://bigdady92.blogspot.com/
Isn't that exactly what the KDE-developers said?? Sheesh!
I for one think that it's great that there are still people out there with a goal to create perfect code, and not just slap features together. It's interesting that Apple chose KHTML because the code was clean, fast and small. And now this guys suggests that KDE abandons those benefits and moves to Webcore (which has lost most of those benefits due to cutting corners and less than perfect code).
Is that it? Crummy code that is "good enough" is the way to go?
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
I can't say I feel comfortable hearing that type of reasoning coming from a Lead Engineer of my favourite web browser. I'm not a Microsoft fan but if an IE developer made a comment like that then geeks would be cutting him or her up for that. I might be wrong since I am not a coder but wouldn't keeping software perfection a priority lead to less bugs in the future?
Personally, I've always liked KHTML but have been frustrated by the lack of any real progress in it's use in Konqueror. Now, is this Apples fault? No, they just built a better mouse trap. This whole thing smacks of the same hurt feelings over the Debian vs. Ubuntu tift. The king is dead! Long live the king! and all that..
Also, if anyone has the "capital" to expend on criticizing KDE, it would and should be the people who have made one of the most successful browsers out there to put a dent in IE usage. See, people kind of listen to you when you are successful as opposed to when you sit and whine because your take on things just doesn't seem to be taking off (Debian/Konqueror I'm looking at you).
*Fortitudo, aequitas, fidelitas.*
I love Mozilla, but this is nonsense. Obviously he did not read
this.
Let Goodger get back to selling the world on Firefox or whatever it is that he does and leave KHTML en Webcore to their respective developers.
Less than perfection means more bugs. Humm didn't Firefox get hit with that this week? Looks like Firefox is not worried too much about security.
Eat dirt you Khtml mongrels ?...
... It's just a browser on TOP of Gecko
... I wonder ... politics of OSS projects
With thanks to CPU Wars.
Btw, FireFox didn't invent Gecko
If Apple submitted a few more cleaner KHtml patches
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
A large part of the reason that Apple is still around with not even 5% of the market is that they do care about the user. With a user base that small for their platform, most vendors would be dead but Apple focuses heavily on the user experience. I don't see a lot of that at all coming from most open source projects.
Here's a little theory of mine: users are more concerned with having a great UI and having apps that work together than raw speed. Open source desktops used to have the speed advantage, but not anymore. Can anyone honestly say that GNOME is faster than Windows XP's desktop these days? Same for KDE and MacOS X.
For all of this bitching about Apple exploiting OSS, I don't see any recognition that the mere fact that OSX's underpinnings are OSS gives OSS a vote of confidence in the corporate world. For one of the two largest platforms in the world to switch to that foundation is a big endoresement and help lend legitimacy to OSS. The funniest part of this is that KDE's developers are finally discovering the fact that forks do happen. Imagine that, Apple actually forked KHTML for their own needs. Why is it OK for X.Org to fork and go off in one direction, but not OK for Apple to do the same thing? They give the patches back and excuse me if I am at a loss as to how a forked code base is going to maintain a lot of similarity with the original when both are going off in separate directions.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Well, maybe before everyone starts criticising KDE developers and Apple and everything, they should get a little more information on what is being done to solve the problem: http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/view/1046
As the guy suggests, I would advise everyone (especially developers of other projects who probably aren't that well informed) to keep quiet with the "vs" stories for a while and see what comes out of this.
However, they are angry at something: people like you. Coming here on
From the article: "...it was within their rights to do what they did, and no one should begrudge them for it..."
Now, while I agree with the first part, I certainly don't with the second! Just because it is legal does not make it right!
While Apple should indeed not 'bend over' and provide beatifull diff patches that seamlessly upgrade KHTML, SOME effort could have been made as thanks for the effort saved in not having to start from scratch. We certainly CAN and DO begrudge them this 'take all you can, give nothing back'- attitude.
Are they within their rights? Sure!Are they doing the decent thing? Nope
Because at the time safari began, mozilla was the whole bloated suite.
Firefox as a seperate browser came after, and therefore too late.
Also; because they didn't want to?
From TFA:
I would not be so sure of that. I seem to recall that the GPL defines source code as the "preferred form" of the program for making modifications of it. If Apple "comments" its patches by referring to numbers in a proprietary bug database to which only they have access, Apple could be accused of intentionally obfuscating its source code, which is a violation of the "preferred form" clause in the GPL. In any case, it's ethically wrong because the free-software concept is meaningless if the provided source code is not realistically usable without having access to essential information about what it does.
Gee, that sounds eerily familiar. Where have I heard it before, that "give Joe Sixpack what he wants and damn software quality" attitude? Marketing fluff at the expense of solidity and security? Oh right, of course, that's the attitude that brought us the virus propagation engine that is Microsoft Internet Explorer. Is it any wonder that Firefox is now on its way along the same route?
Ridiculous. The use of software is demanding less computer literacy by the year -- compare today to the MS-DOS days of twenty years back. But that is in fact a big part of the problem. People should learn to accept that using a computer requires some basic form of clue. If people are not willing to acquire such clue, they should watch TV instead so that they won't harm anybody with the viruses, spam and DDoS attacks perpetrated through their zombified computers.
KDE-guys did not complain about Apple as such. They even specificly mentioned that Apple is abiding by the license. what they complained about were the USERS who whined when KHTML took time to incorporate improvements made in WebCore!
Do you "get it" now, or do I have to hit you with a clue-by-four?
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Maybe if he spent a little less time blogging about KDE and a little more time working on Firefox, the security holes wouldn't be there.
You mean like Firefox 1.0.4? Anyway, the poster may have had a point if the dev was blogging about KHTML security, but he wasn't even remotely near that topic. Hence, troll. (but at least not AC troll like you).
And who made Firefox a slimmer browser? Why, Ben Goodger!
Hey, what's this?
This guy is obviously a fraud, everybody on Slashdot knows that everyone that supports open source has the same opinions on anything surrounds software.
Mod that blog down!
Ok, seriously, it's humorous how often you see crap like "The community says this" or the "The community thinks that". "The community is just ungrateful", etc. Can Microsoft lackeys shut up already with this crap?
Are you crazy? The Agile Manifesto has been around for a while and is generally followed by good programmers.
The buzzwords are only there to get management interested.
KDE is rather bloated.
"God of Rock, thank you for this chance to kick ass. "
"The gulf between the people making software and the people using it is widening,"
Now, the reason for that is basically that more and more users with no idea of computers are able to use it and use it. So it's not a sign of a Software designer failure but a sign that Software designers are doing "The Right Thing" TM and successfully so.
So the following quote
"Over time, software has come to demand an impossibly high level of computer literacy" is basically wrong. Just compare it to the times when the interface was binary machine code.
The base intetion of the article I agree with though...the Safari Engine is much mure advanced than KHTML, due to more pragmatism in development.
As long as you build software on operating systems who still are stuck in the concepts developed 30 years ago, you have to be pragmatic. Basically implementing anything there is a workaround.
Just because I can imagine doing a hippopotamus, doesn't mean I'd like to do it.
Okay genius, from the article:
Key to the open source community's concerns has been Apple's actions in fixing bugs in such a way that they could not be integrated back into the open source code base.
Nowhere in any of the linked material does it mention that the beef is actually with users. If so, you should be complaining about the shitty journalism, not me who happens to be responding to it.
The KDE developers were complaining about people who say they should be grateful for Safari. Perhaps you need to look more closely at Zack Rusin's blog on the topic.
I just want to personally thank the FF engineer for weighing into the KDE vs. Apple debate.
Some of the KDE dev's egos are starting to get way over inflated, to the point you can't have a constructive conversation about Windows Managers in general without them trying to convience you to use KDE , or just flat out bad mouthing you about your choice in Window Managers.
By all accounts I've read, KHTML had a smaller code base which better lent it to modification and expansion, and had a faster rendering engine. Apple's big push with Safari was to beat IE on speed. This was before Firefox had made its appearance, and Mozilla 7 was not making any real inroads with average users.
Check out the KDE reaction to the new Safari browser back in Janary, 2003.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Now knowing that Firefox's lead developer has this kind of "features now, fix it later" attitude, my respect for the project has just gone down a notch. I'm glad he had his little rant, or I would have mistakenly continued to praise the firefox project to my friends and family.
I have always found in hindsight that 'good' is not optional. The choice should always be between fast and good or cheap and good, depending on budget. Fast and cheap is always a disaster.
Submitted by carewolf on Fri, 05/13/2005 - 10:33.
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Safari and KHTML againNotice how there isn?t a vs in the title?
Hyatt and Maciej joined us on IRC yesterday, and we had some really good discussions. I might as well also admit that Maciejs comment was true (but out of context). Please notice that that implies we are discussing solutions and a common future. The idea of a common source tree is pretty much abandoned as we have very different goals and requirements, but we are discussing improved cooperation. With Apple just having released Tiger and us preparing for KDE4 we have a unique opportunity for bringing our source trees closer again.
Since Apple is being a nice guy for the time being, I will let them announce how things will improve once we have a solution, but please, no more ?vs.? stories for the time being, we are working on solving it.
Submitted by carewolf on Sat, 04/30/2005 - 13:22.
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Emphasis added by me...I just wish to weigh in on debacle to clear up some mistakes. First of all I would like to say I agree with Zack. The annoying part is not that Apple don?t cooperate as much as they could. They are actually helpfull in answering questions and _tries_ at least to separate OS X specific features in the code (allthough they fail miserably at it). No, our problem are users who think Apple does more and underestimate the effort it takes for us to implement patches from WebCore. We are doing this for free and for fun, all we really want is appreciation for our effort.
I don't claim I know more than I know, and if you know you know more than I know, then by all means, let me know.
..that Apple wouldn't have chosen KHTML for webcore if the developers hadn't tried to make it perfect. Obviously they looked at Gecko (who want to satisfy their users first) and found it lacking in some way.
When Apple first started on this they praised the KDE folks for their design. Now they can't work with the KDE devs because their own deadlines mean they can't wait around for their patches to be OK'd.
I'd bet that in the long term the "design oriented" view actually turns out better for the users then the "user oriented" view (which will just result in hard to maintain spaghetti code).
Fix it first, clean the code second? Na, hah.
Those kind of decisions ultimately lead to disasters. Things are forgotten about, budgets disappear, people leave and the dirt accumulates.
In the end, you end of with a nasty mess of a task that nobody will want to approach for a cleanup. And when something goes wrong again, you're pooched.
Kinda like a gas-station bathroom.
Keeping your ducks in line may slow you down on occasion, however, it leaves you way ahead in the long run -- which is what counts.
--- Dan
Considering that this thing has been discussed quite a bit recently, I would have guessed that by now everyone who is interested on this would have read the ORIGINAL messages that sparked this whole thing? I mean this message
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
It's only marginally slimmer, mainly wrt startup time. Firefox still has all the heavyweight platform goop that is of no interest to OS vendors like Apple.
GTK developers and KDE developers clashing ideologies!!! I happend to use solely Konqueror and although many find it hard to configure, once you spend five minutes to get used to the more complex options konq indeed provides a very reliable, fast and clean browsing abilities. Maybe Firefox dev. should rethink their memory management, I think users want a browser that doesn't use all their memory and doesn't take forever to load. That is the biggest feature firefox has, and maybe it is due to slipshod coding. However, its apples and oranges really each browser has it perks and downfalls, but apple safari, konqueror and firefox aside from evangelist views all are solid browsers. Joe
Math
However, they are angry at something: people like you. Coming here on /. and making a completely backwards post that misrepresents everything they stand for. Sit down and STFU.
Why don't you put your name next to your ignorant bile. I am not the one misrepresenting anyone. I just READ THE GODDAMN ARTICLE AND RESPONDED TO THE CLAIMS IT MADE. If those are false, than maybe someone should mention that instead of anonymously flaming a random response.
Ben Goodger has hit on one of the major ways that "free" software can fail and that is that the people working on the project are doing so out of the goodness of their hearts and for their own reasons. Some developers, like Goodger probably, are writing free software for the kick of having as many people use it as possible. This will make them somewhat use oriented. Others, and the KHTML guys appear to be this, are writing code for the sheer joy of writing code. And it's not fun to write stuff that cuts corners just so you can get it out the door. Of course, you may not be meeting the users' needs. But then, there's no requirement to meet users' needs. It's free - if you don't like it, fix it yourself or don't use it. In this case, Apple chose to fix it themselves. The fact that they diverged from KHTML simply shows that they have different priorities and isn't any different than FreeBSD and NetBSD spliiting.
Konqueror works just fine on all the pr0n^H^H^H^Hnews sites I visit!
No matter where you go... there you are.
I can't mod this article if I post with my username. I'm sorry if you don't like the fact that you made yourself look like an idiot with your hoity-toity response to an issue you couldn't be arsed to research. You ought to STFU and try again next time.
Considering that this thing has been discussed quite a bit recently, I would have guessed that by now everyone who is interested on this would have read the ORIGINAL messages that sparked this whole thing? I mean this message
Incidentally, no I hadn't read that. I really don't see how all the linked articles follow from that (completely reasonable post). Must be a hugely escalated flamewar which I had no business getting involved in. I apologize.
At least I RTFA. It's not my job to verify their claims. If you're so fucking enlightened then maybe you should post some truth instead of calling people names.
They get firefox bugs addressed pretty fast, I just wish they had updates instead of full downloads every time. A patch would probably be very small.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
i would rather have a highly functional UI than a pretty one. (doesnt XP stand for extreamly pretty?) yeah, yeah. we're doing this for end users, but that doesnt mean we have to create software were beauty superseeds technical excellence.
Power to the Penguin!
One does not have to 100% agree with the KDE guys to wonder why Ben Goodger is sticking his nose where it doesn't belong.
And I also cannot help but feel bemused by a person who thinks ending a rant with "Case closed." will result in anything other than lessened credibility in his argument.
The argument that Konqueror should do whatever the customer wants even if it means taking "dirty" and/or cryptic modifications from Safari is a double-edged sword. Will we in a few months down the road see Firefox adding ActiveX functionality because "only software enginers care" about the problems raised by it? Or better yet, why not abandon Gecko in favour of MSIE's rendering engine--that would make Firefox 100% MSIE compatible overnight (something assuredly a lot of Firefox users want)!
Akarsz Magyar Gentoo fórumot? Akkor
...reminds me of the wackos that bitch that the Linux kernel should be written in C++.
Yikes!!
In the course of every project, it will become necessary to shoot the scientists and begin production.
I don't have a problem rendering Slashdot with Konqueror, but maybe the firefox way is a feature...
Math
Why does slashdot have to link to an article about it? Can't it just link to the blog? I thought slashdot is a news site, not just a link site where other news sites do all the work.
I think right now in the browser area the most important issues are ignored: there is still very difficult to make any application in a browser as functional as a native application.
There is still time until Microsoft puts out their own solution for the FOS world to push forward something that would become widely accepted and eventually turn into a standard. Otherwise we will soon be stuck with whatever Microsoft throws at us. Be it good or bad we can surely guess that it will be in their tight control.
but i haven't read that apple is hiding the source, only radically forking it. forgive me for my ignorance, but if they use open source code, make whatever changes they want, then release them, what's the big deal. last time i read the gpl (and by the way, i wrote an AMP based intranet message board for my school, released under the gpl.) it didn't require anyone to explain their cahnges, only release the code. so what is the deal, you have to clean the hotel room too?
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
Didn't I read this on Slashdot several months ago? I'd check but I'm either a) Too busy or b) Too lazy.
Seriously though, I'm just glad its Friday.
Companies that might have wanted to use the KHML code will now be greatly hesitant because even though you laid down the rules how you want sharing to work and Apple complied by them EXACTLY, you bitch about Apple not going above and beyond where you want to. Not many other companies would want to risk their prestige by using your code, contributing back, and getting publically insulted by your team.
If you have a problem with what Apple, then CHANGE THE FREAKIN' LICENSE, otherwise your whining is just sour grapes. Apple is doing exactly what you asked them to, and you can't expect them to bend over backwards whenever you want. And likewise you can't set down rules of the game and complain when somebody else is more successful than you while adhering to the rules. If you're really doing open source for quality software and to benefit the world, then you shouldn't care whatsoever how good Apple's code is. But it seems like you want to compete with them instead, and are whining that they've succeeded better than you have.
But in any event go ahead and keep bitching about Apple and keep driving away other would-be collaborators that might have liked to use the KHTML codebase.
It's an inherent problem when you have big companies (like Apple) who grab the GPLed code and drop the occasional updates (complete with proprietary API calls, and other useless crap) back onto the original developers.
Apple obviously wants their Safari to have an edge, so they have little interest in actually helping the KDE developers. So, it's greed vs. GPL, and greed wins...
Am I the only one who expects this to happen? Which is why many communal societies can so break down...greed (and laziness). So, when you get large companies using your GPL source, I'd call it a Pyrrhic victory.
This sig donated to Pater. Long live
My memory is that Apple spent a long time working on code strictly with users in mind. Eventually they had a huge nasty mess that wasn't worth fixing, and they decided to take an OS project's work to use as a starting point. Hence OSX.
I sure don't want that to happen! On the other hand, I see a lot of the efforts to push F/OSS developers toward creating user-oriented software as a good thing - I'd really like to not see my work held up if I need a feature or driver that's not exciting or reasonable to code well, and these usability enhancements have been really helpful.
Seems reasonable that the KHTML people could look at all the noise they're seeing as (probably sometimes irritating) feedback about their users desires and take it as a sign that they could tweak their priorities a bit, at least for the time being (I'm not informed enough to specify how to best do it).
Not that they should be free to work on what and how they want, but finding a good balance would probably ensure their work is both high quality and actually relevant for the longest possible time.
Er, not that they *shouldn't* be free. Silly of me to ignore that preview..!
Konqueror is NOT released under the GPL, and thus is not "free software" in the strict sense.
This is a good example of the differences among open source licenses; one of the reasons KDE code was attractive to Apple is that it does not REQUIRE them to publish changes to the code.
Konqueror code, like BSD, and Mozilla, many other projects, is free for anybody to use more or less however they like; the GPL, by contrast, requires anybody who changes the code and publishes software based on the changes to publish the new source code as well.
Pete Forsyth
Actually, it is 40 to 1000 times more costly to fix a bug once the code goes to production. There is a famous chart showing this by Barry Boehm in Software Engineering Economics. The relative cost to fix a defect found in each phase goes something like:
requirements - 1
design - 3 to 6
coding - 10
development testing - 15 to 40
acceptance testing - 30 to 70
operation - 40 to 1000
And yes, these numbers came from data not just out of thin air. And you have to remember, what could be a one line code change COSTS a lot more to fix. In my 12 years experience in software QA and testing, these numbers are accurate. In the end, it is ultimately a balancing act between the risk of the defect manifesting itself and the business benefit of getting the product to market.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
So I gather from this that KDE is suppose to start developing all sorts of features and do'dads instead of making sure that the software is built securely and works well within the entire KDE framework?
It reminds me of the conflict between Lucid and Stallman over emacs.
Lucid had a product to get out, Stallman wanted to do everything right and his way. It resulted in the emacs/Xeamcs schism. I didn't work on this directly, but saw my coworkers dealing with this as it happened. My view of the whole thing certainly biased by my experience there. Regardless, it wasn't pretty.
Wherever there are multiple development teams this tension between the ones that want to get the product out now, and the ones that want to do "the right thing" will exist. I personally think the tension is good. You should strive to do the right thing, but when it comes right down to it you need to produce something people can use in a timely manner.
I just hope this doesn't produce another schism.
Whoa, that's out-of-bounds, dude. How are we going to keep up this pan-fora flamewar if people go around apologizing and admitting that the other side was reasonable!? If you don't have something destructive to say, don't say anything at all.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
"Anyway, the poster may have had a point if the dev was blogging about KHTML security, but he wasn't even remotely near that topic."
In the blog, a KDE developer (Zack Rusin) is quoted as saying, "In fixing one problem, they were breaking a whole bunch of other things."
One of the things that they could have been breaking was security. Now, it's not definite that they had a security example, but security is under the aegis of "things that can be broken by quick fixes." In fact, it's the first thing that came to my mind as well. To my mind, when discussing bugs in software, security is *always* on the table. The mindset that it isn't is part of the reason why Firefox and IE keep popping out security holes.
The shell exploit was a clear example of something about which Firefox knew for several *years*, but waited until there was an active exploit to fix. Yes, the real hole was in the MS Windows security model. However, it was exploitable through the browser.
The exploit that 1.04 fixes is interesting because it's actually *two* security holes and a paradigm issue (Mozilla trusts update.mozilla.org by default; without that, even both security holes would not have been exploitable). Similar issue even, they trust by default.
Firefox is in fact more agressive about adding features than maintaining security, much like IE. Now, they seem to be doing better than IE, but that doesn't mean that they couldn't be doing even better.
Do good work.
It's longer in the short run,
But shorter in the long run.
- Christopher A. Young (alt.hvac)
There's a reason "team KDE" is taking some lumps despite the fact that yes, the text says that he's angry about people who accuse his team of being lazy, etc because Safari code is not instantly merged into KDE.
Its because the tone of his comments make it clear that he's plenty pissed at Apple. The tone is one of "So there!" Which is why so many people have percieved this as a slap against Apple, and not ignorant end users.
Had he said something more neutral in tone like, "The roots of the problem lie in the fact Safari is now forked in a different direction than KHTML, Apple's inhouse code isn't the cleanest, their commenting isn't detailed, several features rely on things specific to OS X, and they drop us massive 'code bombs'. This means that it takes time to pick through the code and see what works with KHTML. They zigged, we zagged, and don't assume we're working closely because we're not in eachother's backpockets." we probably would not have this kerfluffle at all.
"Pobody's Nurfect" and all, but when you've got a spotlight on you as a project heavy, you've got to watch tone and content of posts.
OS X:*nix for the real world.
Which needs of what users? If Apple focused on my needs, I'd own some Apple product. I don't because they don't. Perhaps the key issue here is simply that each group is attempting to continue to provide what their existing users have come to expect.
Making the world a better place, one psychotic episode at a time.
This looks like a classic case of a developer arguing against a manager.
dev: If we don't get the code in good shape, we'll never have the opportunity. It will just get worse.
mgr: just do whatever it takes to meet the deadline, we'll fix it later (thinking: I've got two projects after this one)
dev: The bad code makes new development take longer. So the result of a shortcut will mean we'll still miss the deadline.
mgr (missing the point): Yes, I understand but, we don't have time to fix it.
dev: (nods head, returns to desk, pulls tequila from desk drawer)
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
Holy Guacamole! Someone apologized on Slashdot!
I'm sure tickets are being sold for the whole Hell Freezing Over show. Wonder where I can get mine?
H0ek
Think you're smart? Prove you've got brains!
The first question is why are they writting it.
If it's for the user then , hey what the user wants should be a priority.
If it's for the satisfaction of the programmer, then write what you want.
What you write for yourself may or may not be useful to others. The question is , "is it what I want to do?". This is a "value judgement" on the part of the writer.
maps.google.com
I am sure to be modded OT as this whole thread is, but...
The Agile/XP movement is warped at best. Tests are no substitute for good design and they cannot prove any useful level conformance to a design (except in an extremely trivial application). Tests are useful in many cases, unless they are used to rationalize bad practices based on false notions.
And the more extremists you have trying to force it to be so, the worse the XP/Agile movement is percieved. Sure, they picked up on parts of a number of good practices that good programmers already followed, but when will they stop twisting them and advocating that experienced programmers abandon principles of adequate forward-looking design and methodology and follow the way which is what they ultimately believe to be The Only Right Extreme Way.
They resemble the pointy-haired managers who would like to think they can substitute their process for masterful programming and design.
I was attracted to XP by their advocacy of some of the more-reasonable principles until the fanatics showed why it was really called extreme programming. They need apologists to start really apologizing.
Typical apple fanboy moderation.
You can't handle the heat, can you?
Funny this is coming from a group that took over a half a decade to get a product out.
and let hardware sell itself, yea, sure.
I do not believe your 4% interpretation exhibits a clue about their focus and efforts on software or the value of the software to those purchasing the hardware.
And you are trying to claim that they got by on 3 million in total net sales last year?
Not likely.
Apple's Webcore is a major revision of KHTML to support OS-X features and Objective C to work with Apple's standalone browser.
Firefox is a cross-platform standalone browser.
KDE is a complete desktop environment and programming framework that builds its components to integrate well with each other; KHTML and underlies the working of a great many programs, and Konqueror is not just a web browser.
KHTML programmers, pay no attention to this mindless brouhaha. The overall integration and design sense of KDE is a bigger strength than any minor perk of either Safari or Firefox. When you get there, you will have more than the sum of your features.
- A very satisfied user of KDE
Open source deveopers have been bickering since there were open source developers. Hell, even closed source dev bicker.
It can actually be a good thing when they are bickering about the code. A resolution usually results in higher quality and new design patterns. We all get to benefit from it. But, sometimes its just bickering and then, you're right, time just gets wasted. Unless, a dev says "I'll show him", and goes on to write some awesome code to prove a point.
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
But a big part of that is supplying what the users need. I think all three sides of this discussion could learn a thing or two by listening to the others.
You don't get involved in an open source project to write crappy code. You get involved in order to fix a problem that bugs you, show off your coding skills, or do a little good for the community. One of the benefits of coding for open source is that you really can take the time to get it right.
Businesses often fail to pursue excellence in coding because they believe that by taking shortcuts they save money. That's almost always wrong. One of the reasons that Netscape got beat by IE was (and I know I'll get beaten for saying this) that IE was written in a modular way that allowed it to be used more flexibly than Netscape. The IE code was better planned and executed. The developers who joined the Mozilla project took the original Netscape code and hammered on it for a long time to produce the successful browser that we now have. Even so, it was bloated and in need of a lot of trimming. So the Firefox project fixed those problems and now Netscape is based on the Firefox core rather than the original Mozilla core. (Sharing is a good thing.)
Apparently Apple believes that by taking short cuts they save money because the FOSS community will come in behind their engineers and clean up the code for them the way they did for Netscape. Why shouldn't Apple take advantage of the same mechanism?
What happens too often in corporations and is apparently happening in this part of Apple, is that they have forgotten that they are dealing with people. The FOSS crowd seems to have more than it's fair share of idealists, and they dont' like being taken advantage of. Hopefully Apple has figured this out by now and is working on a plan to mend fences. Otherwise it might be very hard for them to get help from the community in the future. It would be a shame for OS/X to fail because of foolish management mistakes on the Safari side.
Open Source can learn a lot from what Appled did, though, even if we don't like how it turned out. Appled focused on fixing things that were causing problems for their customers. They also focused on becoming standards compliant. A lot of FOSS projects come up short in that area. What gets attention is whatever is cool to code or bugging a particular developer. Not enough of the FOSS projects have any real central focus.
Listen, learn, and move on. The best thing that could come out of this whole mess is a good discussion on how FOSS and regular software companies can work together to mutual benefit. Perhaps we need some kind of template agreement that makes responsibilities clear so that the companies involved don't make bad assumptions like the ones Apple seems to have made.
-All that is gold does not glitter - Tolkien
www.ra
To Ben I would say:
Maybe if your code was a little more "perfect", Apple wouldn't have had to use KHTML. The fact that Apple chose KHTML is a testament to the quality of the code. Maybe the KHTML team isn't the problem. Maybe you should clean up your own code (and your attitude, while your at it), and stop worrying about what other people are doing.
"Why? it's not an issue that needs addressing, or even thinking about."
Spoken like a true Apple Zombie. Don't talk or think about it, just do what Steve tells you.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
I can't tell if you're being ironic, sardonic, or juest sarcastic.
Actually, if your other respondents had read Scott Ambler's article sited in your post ("The Fragile Manifesto"), they would have noticed that it is entirely sarcastic, and fairly amusing. For example, Scott writes:
Scott goes on to write about the beauties of comprehensive documentation, and how perfected processes permit the hiring of "monkey" level employees.
Funny.
Apple is on record for offering to jointly attempt to make the important parts of WebCore cross-platform, similar to the situation with Gecko.
The KHTML team turned them down. They probably did so because it would shift the focus away from the KHTML they know and love and more towards the more realistic (but messier) WebCore, which they don't seem to want to do.
The KHTML team doesn't even seem to want many of the changes. Apple makes a product, and they don't care if they break small things to make deadlines. KHTML is a product of the opposite school, preferring to make a very small, clean codebase. The price of this is feature deficit.
This isn't about Apple being evil, or KHTML being snobs. It's about a project being forked. As time goes on, Apple has less and less to offer to KHTML. WebCore and KHTML are diverging, and people seem to be upset about this. I can't imagine why, this sort of separation was inevitable. Apple's best interests are served by leveraging their own excellent environment, and every time they do, they further exclude the KDE project.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
Flash has its uses, and some website just won't work without the plugin. I know, you're gonna say just don't visit that site. But sometimes I either have to or really want to.
The bad thing about Flash is the lack of control. Especially annoying when advertisers started to use flash. I am happy with the Firefox/adblock solution of being able to block flash as needed. I have flash installed on Firefox and I don't remember seeing a flash ad in months.
Let me be frank. As web browsers go, there is Internet Explorer, and then there are all the others. It is in Microsoft's best interest to ensure that a substantial fraction of websites work on only their browser, thus maintaining control over the web. The easiest way to do this is by making Explorer render pages in an idiosyncratic way that web designers choose to follow rather than ones that will work on other browsers. It is in all the other browsers' best interests to prevent this. The only fair way to do this is by rendering pages according to a common standard. Which already exists and is the product of years of careful consideration. And yet, few browsers can actually implement it! But the longer this situation continues the more time Microsoft has to solidify its position. And the other web browsers have only themselves to blame by not meeting their own common standard.
I don't know why it's so hard to render things correctly, but so far WebCore is one of the few to do it right. Even if they had to break a few rules to get there, they still have found success where others have not.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Thanks to this perfection, KDE builds and runs, while Mozilla/Firefox can fall over when you pick wrong compiler flags -- especially on "exotic" platforms like FreeBSD/amd64.
The amount of compiler warnings in Mozilla code is astounding. Quite clearly it was written by result-oriented professional engineers, rather than the process-enjoying hobbyists.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Netscape's businsess to that point was actually selling server software. The browsers were necessary so that people could be victimized by, err, see, the netscape extensions such as "blink."
In theory, there was always a price for netscape. In practice, it was hard not to fall into one of the exceptions that let you have the browser without charge. And if you didn't fall into any, ther was something like a 90 day evaluation period, after which you were supposed to send them a check.
hawk
Not at all. While the KDE devs said that Apple was abiding by the terms of the license, they also said, and I quote:
So they never said that "no one should begrudge them for it". Far from it; when you read the post that started it all, you'll see there's lots of not-so-subtle hints about resentment towards Apple. A lot of this is because people on Slashdot seem to think that because Apple is using KDE code, there's a mutually beneficial relationship going on there. Not so:
So can we finally knock off the "Apple is a great supporter of open source" drivel? It looks like a lot of that support is one-way.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
I can't wait for the KDE and Firefox developers to gang up and scold the IE developers for merely existing.
It's firefox, not KDE that is challenging microsoft.
Most users are compiling anything, becasue most users are running windows.
In an e-mail, a leading Apple browser developer suggested that architects of the KHTML rendering engine -- the heart of a browser -- consider abandoning the KHTML code base, or "tree," in favour of Apple's version, called WebCore. KHTML was originally written to work on top of KDE (the K Desktop Environment), an interface for Linux and Unix operating systems.
"One thing you may want to consider eventually is back-porting (WebCore) to work on top of (KDE), and merging your changes into that," Apple engineer Maciej Stachowiak wrote in an e-mail dated May 5. "I think the Apple trees have seen a lot more change since the two trees diverged, although both have useful changes. We'd be open to making our tree multi-platform."
So is anyone working on this? I'm primarily a Mac developer but I'd be willing to contribute.
Upfront design is certainly valuable, but here's the rub.
After you finish with the code, its doubtful you will ever go back and generate enough tests to have good coverage on your code, and even if you did, the quality of the tests (number of assertions, correctness of assertions, etc) will likely not be very high.
So grant coding tests while generating the original code gives you higher quality tests.
Now, move into the maintenance phase (or the "version 2" phase) where you have discovered that you must change the design to accomodate new or different requirements than you originally thought.
Its easy to show that if you have quality tests with good coverage, you'll be able to alter the code to meet the new requirements with a much lower chance of breaking compatibility with the old requirements.
Without the tests, you're most likely going too end up hacking in new features and breaking the coherence of the design because you can't safely alter as much code as you need to.
So, are tests a substitute for good design? Not even close.
But, will tests and good design go hand and hand over time? I think so...
OK then, go the opposite. Why is it an issue that needs addressing, that apple didn't pick Mozilla?
Binary diff patching is planned for Firefox 1.1 (currently being implemented on the trunk i think), due to be released somewhere during July (with the public preview release aka beta version in June)
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
telbij is fucking gay, don't bother to check the facts, just fuck him in the ass.
Aviod responding strongly if you don't know what you are talking about.
Admit your mistakes if they are pointed out instead of attacking whe one who pointed at them.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Ohh sweet, thanks for the info! I don't follow Firefox development too much; only maintenence on current releases.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Tests alone cannot be a substitute for good design, because tests should be part of the design.
After you finish with the code, its doubtful you will ever go back and generate enough tests to have good coverage on your code, and even if you did, the quality of the tests (number of assertions, correctness of assertions, etc) will likely not be very high.
In good design, test cases should be generated before the code is written. After the code is finished is way too late to start thinking about testing.
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
You guys are still pissed off about that [blink] tag, lol.
But if we hadn't waited on software perfection, we wouldn't all be playing Duke Nukem Forever on top of the GNU Hurd.
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
Comparing the Mozilla Foundation to Microsoft makes you look like an idiot who understands neither Mozilla or Microsoft. Additionally, your elitest crap that requires a CS degree before touching a keyboard only is extremely tiring. We should try to make the internet work better and safer for everyone, and firefox is doing that. Chris DiBona
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
The summery said something bad about the people who make Apple's web browser, why would people do something like read the blog and understand what the author is really saying?
It didn't happen with the rabid Apple fanboys in the last few KDE articles, and it sure isn't going to happen anytime soon.
I agree. It's really annoying to listen to all these people whining "oh no, not a flamewar! that will ruin everything!" How does people getting emotionally involved in their projects hurt open source projects? If it were me, I would only be inspired to do a better job if someone criticized my code. Besides, high profile flamewars are entertaining--they're sort of like watching gladiators duke it out in the colleseum back in the good old days :-).
Mozilla was not picked because at the time the Safari team was put together, there was no Firefox - just a very, very bloated communications suite. KHTML was the lightweight.
At lest it isn't safari, now that is buggy, slow, and sucks complete ass!
If the KHTML folks did their homework and their code base is indeed cleaner, more robust and more maintainable than what is known as WebCore, then the KHTML team should have few problems matching WebCore on any metric (from performance to features).
Otherwise, what is the point of having a cleaner code base?
Real classy... my 8-year-old brother coulda come up with that, the only difference is he has a reason to be living with his mother.
Properly factoring your code is a heavily front weighted investment that can pay off big in the long run, by enhancing reuse, easing maintenance, and making changing requirements easier to implement.
Check out these points from "Principles of the Agile Manifesto":
- Deliver working software frequently, from a
couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a
preference to the shorter timescale.
- Welcome changing requirements, even late in
development. Agile processes harness change for
the customer's competitive advantage.
- Continuous attention to technical excellence
and good design enhances agility.
- Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount
of work not done--is essential.
Without question, software quality is important. But Agile developers accept that just "doing it right" is so difficult as to be impossible. Instead, we get the smallest slice of work that we can done, then refactor and iterate as needed.The between-the-lines point here is that getting working and not-awful code now is the secret to success in the long term. Dozens of projects have proven this over and over. UNIX is probably one of the most famous examples, as suggested in the famous "Worse Is Better" essay.
Polishing code until it's perfect without new feature development is an excellent way to get outdated.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
They do the same on gcc. Maintain their own tree and don't really care about contributing clean patches to mainline. Something like a semi-fork.
This is actually worse for OSS than MS. It's unethical.
Any clues why are they doing this?
I call bullshit. Software engineering has improved somewhat, but very little. The problem is, lots of places call what they do "software engineering" when all they are doing is coding. I have heard developers bitch that software doesn't get the respect that other engineering disciplines get. That is precisely because software development is not a discipline. Not that much software is "engineered", it is thrown together with very little methodology and forethought.
But having said that, I am not saying it is a bad thing. Sometimes software doesn't NEED to be engineered. But not all software developers are software engineers.
Software languages, tools, and methodologies have grown and died since that book was published - but matured is a stretch. I think a lot of the fundamental problems with software development still exist.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
funny how apple originally chose khtml over gecko because
it was "smaller and cleaner" than gecko. i haven't looked at
any of the source but i imagine in the interests of having a
product that "just works" apple's webcore's codebase has
gotten to look progressively more like gecko's. i wonder if
the mozilla/gecko folks are thinking "i told you so" but are
just too polite to say it?
It had the rating of zero which, while the default, is much too high for such a shitty, shitty post.
KDE ascribe to properly written code; Hyatt plays online games and screws up royally; buddy Ben comes to his defense.
Was there anything else here?
And the end-user, for whom the software was ostensibly created in the first place, cares about this for what reason?
Don't get me wrong. I understand what you're saying (and agree with the spirit of it) but should the focus on software written for widespread usage really be what turns on the engineers or what turns on the user?
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
...is that while Apple is not required to do anything for KHTML developers, other than what they already did, the issue is more associated with the sense of OSS etiquette, or "developer-courtesy" if you like, and this is where Apple is at fault. Allow me to explain:
Apple got a very clean codebase from the KHTML developers which they managed to deploy rather rapidly and thus we got Safari, which ultimately helped Apple to move away from Apple version of IE (which, as we all know already, is abysmal version of an already less-than-adequate browser). Apple has clearly profitted from this move.
In return, they have provided patches in order to keep compliant with the LGPL license, but they have done so in much less "courteous" way than what they got from KHTML developers (perhaps buggy, but nonetheless clean code). And this is where the problem starts, especially considering that Apple is a for-profit company. The least they could do is provide such patches in a fashion that all other KHTML developers/contributors adhere to. Why should they be above the etiquette established by the project, especially when they have clearly profitted from this collaboration, while KHTML people have not nearly as much.
And for those of you, especially Mr. Goodger, who as a lead engineer has very likely had his share of patching experiences, who claim that KHTML developers should go ahead and patch the whole project with the bundled superpatch from Apple, perhaps you should try to do that on your own just to realize how much overhead such patching introduces when it comes to debugging and clean-up.
This is why most of above-average programmers will rather not use such patches at all and make comparable fixes from scratch.
So, in short, Apple has not done anything wrong legally, but they surely did prove that they are just another corporation that cares about self-gratification, but then again, is anyone surprised?
could you stop formatting your replies like shit? there is html available for a reason, dumbass.
Sure clean code is important. But what is more important is that it does what the end users want. This is a mistake that novel did early on. They kept of development and added features what Novell wanted but not nessarly what the customer wanted. So after a while and seeing that their competiters had products that did what they wanted they dropped Novells stuff although it ran better and faster for what it did, It just didn't do what they wanted. It is akin to Making an electric car that excelerates at 100mph/s that can maintain 100mph for 30 days without a recharge, and a recharge only takes 1 minutes plugged to a normal house socket (Without coming close to tripping a breaker). But the car has solid steel wheels and no suspention, wooden seats, no lights, no seatbelts, and no way of stearing it. Sure it is a great machiene but it is unusable.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Konqueror is much superior to FireFox... so who cares what FF devs complain to Konq devs about?
Luke-Jr
While testing can be a quite useful tool, it is not the only available one, and it should be followed only where it makes sense, not just to be following your methodology. Good coding can be done and may be appropriate in some cases with no tests at all. Even extremists have to admit that where to stop testing is arbitrary because you are never done writing tests. You do what is appropriate. Writing tests for a part that is unlikely to break is a waste of limited resources and ultimately at some level impossible. Likewise, testing an infinite set of inputs may be much more trouble than its worth, and the obvious cases may be the uninteresting ones from a testing standpoint.
The interesting cases become known first after the code is written and the implementation decisions have been made. Tests that test one implementation of a unit well, may completely fail to test another set. In many ways, assertions are far superior to unit tests, because at least then your tests are the real use cases.
Your process strongly conflicts with my experience.
True, and different languages fit a particular paradigm better. ADA for Fragile, and Lisp for Agile.
Also people do need to keep in mind that Agile isn't a particular process, but a pool of different processes.
"The Laws of Software Process" covers some of the different agile methadologies.
"the KDE developers should follow Apple's lead and focus more on the needs of users, instead of insisting on software perfection."
:P) but they still like to bitch like hell when it flumps after opening X tabs (although none have defaulted back to IE)
Opera.. [Yes damnit I'm mentioning Opera to be made an example of in an Apple-KHTML-Firefox related article so mod me offtopic if you must] manages a smooth, sexy well refined, suite with distinct lack of clumsiness, a fast and obviously efficient backend, with excellent standards compliance and features. You can almost taste the oodles of care put in to perfecting the product for the 'users needs'.
IMHO 'software perfection' in terms of a smooth and stress free user experience (and I don't mean just the UI - Opera particuarly has never, for me personally, crashed or blown bugs at me with 12 months of use) is waaaaaay more important than 100% compliance to standards or sitting on the cutting edge of the blade.
Firefox almost makes up for it's clumsy floppering about (which i'd rather not digress into and start a flame) with it's feature set. But, for me, and MLHO, not quite.
The "needs of the users" in the way meant in the entry, for example a better renderer, don't come into the equation much in terms of 'perfection' here.
You can enter one discussion and everyone says ~"Use firefox, it's more secure!", then someone pipes up that logically, and quite rightly, it is not (again let's not digress into that debate). Then everyone says ~"But firefox has tabbed browsing and standards compliance and all these neat extensions!". The fact is the geekdom minority pushed, and is still pushing, the majority to use something most people simply don't care much about. IMHO the 'average Joe' primarily wants a program that won't crash, slow down, or exhibit visible or annoying bugs.
Most of my friends I admitedly pushed into using Firefox still use the default theme and 0 extensions, some even use windows (note the little w
Obviously you need a balance of the latest whizzy gizmo compatibility and careful implementation, but being a bit of a perfectionist myself I would urge the KDE team to stick their nose up and get on with what it is they are doing. I wouldn't let a minority of people push them about. There is nothing wrong with being a perfectionist, even if you are seemingly 'wasting' time or a bit behind the 'competition'. Good for you KDE.
According to the reports, they are sending huge patches that combine many fixes without any documentation.
"According to the reports" they're guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors.
You can see exactly what they're providing by going to opendarwin.org and looking at the source code to what they're releasing. Yes, you, right now. Go and download WebCore. It's not just "huge patches that combine many fixes", it's a complete source tree that you can build yourself. And it's significantly different from KHTML by now... that was inevitable.
They have tried to mark the "Apple Unique" sections. They have used a compatibility layer as much they could. They have more than complied with the spirit of the GPL: the problem isn't that they're behaving in an antisocial way, it's that their code base is too far from the original one, and their environment and goals are so different.
Use The Source, Luke. Some folks at Nokia did, and the Gnome people have a similar project. What Apple released is good enough for two separate groups to take it and backport it to X11 when they're not even using the same X11 toolkit that Apple started from (and are using as the base for their glue code). The KHTML team could do the same thing, but their goals are different so there's no reason to demand they do.
And it's the people who WERE demanding it that started this whole mess. Not Apple. Not KDE. Not Nokia or Gnome. No, it was the folks on Slashdot... that's where the blame lies.
You and me, too.
I know where I contributed to the bad blood, after the "Acid Test" announcement. Oh, not deliberately, and I didn't say anything unpleasant, but I didn't know how far Safari had diverged and I thought Safari and KHTML were tracking pretty closely so I was one of the many people pointing to the patches on "Surfin' Safari".
How about you?
Agile methods are the ones to claim omniscience, despite many straw men they build to the contrary.
They do not rely on running code. They rely on tests, which are inherently incomplete and according to the doctrine should be created based upon a test-writer's attempt to predict where the implementation will break before the implementation has even been written.
Conformance to a design constitutes far more value than conformance to an arbitrary set of tests. Tests are inherently arbitrary and incomplete. They are often useful, but only with respect to how accurate you are in predicting where the implementation will break. Assertions might be said to be far more useful, because at least they focus on the actual use cases.
Compiler-warnings are the first layer of testing. Developers who ignore them deliver shoddy software.
Firefox is a fine example -- try building it for amd64 with ``-march=opteron''...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Are you asking him to apologize for apologizing?
How many compiler warnings were generated by the code inside your TV? Most users don't know or care. The browser window is the new TV: users just want it to work.
cpeterso
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Oh bullshit. Sure it's clear what they are doing through the patches, the question is why.
Do you sugges that the KDE folks blindly apply the patches with out knowing why the change was made in the first place?
As a general web-browser I find Konq to be slow and kludgy
That's damn strange since, every benchmark test I see that includes Konqueror says that it is the fastest.
Talk about glass houses!
FF is packed with so many useless features and security problems it's not funny!
Hey "FireFox Engineer"! FIX YOUR OWN DAMN BROWSER!
Stop "innovating" useless crap and SECURE YOUR BROWSER FOR GOOD!
UNfucking believable!
Your "cookie" batch metaphor doesn't apply. First, it makes it seem like Apple is taking finite resources that other, more polite individuals perhaps, could use.
This is not the case.
Your metaphor also implies that somehow the KHTML is project is worse off for their involvement in Apple.
This is also not the case, unless you consider it from a PR standpoint, and then the point is arguable.
So pretty much, your entire post is -1 Wrong.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
Actually, the Gimp now has CMYK support. The first few times I tried to use the Gimp, I hated it. I used to say that with the Gimp you can do anything you can imagine, but you can't imagine how to do it. Until I found the "Grokking the Gimp" book online. When you read that book you start to realize that some perspective change is needed. After you grok it, the Gimp becomes light years more advanced than Photoshop (4 letters: Perl).
but:
"Do you sugges that the KDE folks blindly apply the patches with out knowing why the change was made in the first place?"
I made no such claims. In fact, I said (and I'll quote it to just to be absolutely, undeniably clear), 'Preferred Form doesn't mean "braces where I want them with comments I can use" it means "not printed on paper."'
I'm not on anyone's jock, as you put it. I'm saying that the GPL is very clear on what one's obligations are. There is no clause in the GPL that says "when you release your changes to the public [under the same terms you were granted permission to redistribute this code] you have to include revision control information and commentary meeting or exceeding some unspecified standard."
Of course I also took exception to McDutchie's absurd claim that "[...] the free-software concept is meaningless if the provided source code is not realistically usable without having access to essential information about what it does." I mean isn't that obviously wrong on its face? How could I or anyone else reuse code if it was just some kind of black box that was unknowable without reams of documentation ("essential information about what it does"). Is it just me? Do you honestly agree with that? Isn't that exactly what makes open source different from relying on proprietary code with documented APIs (i.e., I can only write against Win32 with documentation; I can't just look)?
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
I hear this, and my first impulse is really to agree.
But I do have to sit back and think about what you're really saying. Which is, "Okay, Apple, here is our source code. And here is the way everything should be done."
I've cooperated with other companies enough to know that, when there is a clash of corporate culture, it is very rarely just one side that is to blame. It is generally either both or neither.
Sometimes the two companies are just two different in philosophy to cooperate smoothly. That's no one's fault, but when it happens, there are two choices: either deal with the unpleasantness at the interface, or stop. Yelling about it is a waste of everyone's time, and yelling 'We're right! We're right and they're wrong!' is a good way to get premature age lines and dyspepsia. And not a whole lot else.
Including popularity.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
you make yourself look better and better with each one of these. good job!
since you're on a palmtop, why not omit spaces? only the smart people will be able to read your bullshit and you can be happy
Qt and its solution to dynamic message dispatch is utterly inferior in every conceivable fashion to Objective-C++, which gives you the target action paradigm for free.
They'd be doing themselves a favor by paving over Qt.
I see you couldn't respond to give a reason why it's an issue. Didn't think you could.
I have a much better idea. Instead of thinking about some stupid user, and in the process, end up with software that's so automatic that nothing works properly; that's designed so stupidly because stupid users think doing it the right way is "too confusing"; that has all kinds of stupid things like Clippy the talking paperclip because users are too dumb to read a dialog box; that's slow because all kinds of poorly written and totally unnecessary graphical crap takes up all the resources; that causes loss and destruction of data because it contains errors that allow malicious software and users to gain control over the system... instead of creating such trash, all in the name of "the user", programmers should strive for software perfection. As each piece of software is perfected, we can move on to the next piece. Maybe all the "features" won't be there right away, but the software will be reliable, won't crash, won't do all kinds of weird things... and yes, you'll have to learn how to use it, but once you do, it'll just work. None of this garbage that made Windows the complete and utter trash garbage shit that it is.