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Over 27% of Firefox Patches Come from Volunteers
dolphinling writes "Everyone is aware that the Mozilla Corporation makes some money, and employs some people now. Google has full-time employees working on Firefox too, as do a number of other places. Yet despite that, in the six months up to Firefox 2 some 27% of the patches to Firefox were submitted by key volunteers, and those patches represent 24% of changes made to the source code. What's more, those numbers only counted contributers with 50 patches or more, so the actual numbers are probably quite a bit higher. It's good to see that even as Mozilla does so well in the business world, it can still keep its ties to the community so strong." They were running these number to find out who they need to start offering support to. So: contribute to Firefox, and you know you'll get a hand up. Nice work, folks.
Everyone is aware that the Mozilla Corporation makes some money
I am so out of touch. Must be getting old.
How do they make money?
There's more to Mozilla than coding - volunteers also do quality assurance, documentation, and other things that aren't reflected in these numbers, but are just as important to the finished product.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
and those patches represent 24% of changes made to the source code.
When do we get to rename FireFox to Apache Broswer?
Have you read my journal today?
[quote] Nice work, folks. [/quote] Let me be the first to say thanks!
Hey, good point.
Me: "Firefox deleted my bookmarks when I updated to the new version."
Mozilla: "Shut up. That's fixed in the new version. Download it here."
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Volunteers would probably patch IE too, except they can't, because it's closed source... hence the main issue with closed source. Even if you wanted to fix it, and you knew how, and you had the time, you still can't fix it.
stuff |
Good. Maybe they can get some time to fix some embarrassing, long-standing bugs now.... (It's ridiculous how this hasn't been fixed yet. More than two years now and they can't get that list sorted (despite several tries). Something must be seriously wrong with Mozilla).
Won't you please help support their work? Just visit any web site, you'll get some downloaded for free!
ME!
"an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often, quite often, picturesque liar" - Mark Twain
Mozilla doesn't just make "some money", it makes $50 million a year from firefox.
f ox-a-50-million-dollar-cash-cow
http://www.netscape.com/viewstory/2007/01/03/fire
After all, if you are contributing patches, that means you don't have commit privileges. The people paid to work on Mozilla don't need to contribute patches because they just commit their changes.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
you damn near got me fired!
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Just because the folks submitting patches aren't being paid by Mozilla, doesn't mean they aren't monetizing their accomplishments.
... maybe 30% of them accepted as-is (or a bit less, this is off the top of my head).
Finding a popular / useful OS project to work on is a very common (and worthwhile) practice used to build resumes and compensate for lack of 'proven' experience. Another *really* good example of this is Xen.
I don't have statistics like these for Xen, however a quick glance through their mailing lists (xen-devel) will show a flurry of activity daily, sometimes up to 15 - 20 patches a day being submitted,
The point is, being able to augment your resume or CV with "Patches xxx, yyy zzz for Firefox, xxx yyy zz for Xen, xxx yyy zzz for Open Office) really helps to show that you like doing what you do and quite a few people happen to think you're rather good at doing it.
So if you submit, say 10 patches, 3 of them get accepted which helps to get you that 80K a year job, well you did in fact (indirectly) get compensated for your efforts and so did everyone who uses the browser that now works a little better due to your contribs.
I really fail to see anything 'sinister' about that in and of itself, but had no idea that Mozilla brought in that kind of dough. I would have guessed maybe 1 - 2 million, not 50. But even knowing that, I still see it as a win-win situation. Maybe I'm a little more laid back than most.
Bug 306276 (windows not going where the user wants to put them under OS X) annoys the hell out of me. So much so that I'd happily pay $100 a fix for this in v1.5 or v2.
Is there a centralised system for offering this sort of incentive to volunteers?
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Even more remarkable: 13 percent of the patches were submitted by Al Gore.
Ba-doom boom
Always someone has power over you. The thing to consider is this: Is the power good, or bad?
Um. Fixing IE is simple, just figure out how to package the mozilla activex control into a self-installing cab file. Haven't had so much luck with that myself, though...
"browswer"?
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
firefox constantly crashes and/or locks up even with 2.x. This is even with a clean install and no extensions.
This makes sense since 27% of security threats come from volunteers.
Well, when you're like the 100th person to submit a duplicate bug of something that's already fixed, I can see why they start to get hostile.
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
I'd like to e-buy you an e-drink. Perhaps on E-Bay? (Sorry, friday, plus i'm a little hyped up today. The B-Flat song on NPR this morning put me in a goofy mood)
One bug I'd like to see fixed is to get the damn middle button working on OS X. I mean, Opera and Safari let me open a link in a new tab by middle clicking it. And middle-clicking opens a link in new tabs on Linux and Windows.
I know you can Cmd-click on a link to open in a new tab, but that's just a workaround, and Cmd-click on a tab doesn't close the tab clicked on like it does on Windows and Linux.
Sure, OS X users are used to modifier keys for clicking (ctrl/cmd + click), but that's OK when you're using a single button mouse. When you're using a multibutton mouse and the middle button doesn't work where it works everywhere else (other browsers in same OS, same browser in other OS), it gets frustrating. I believe several people have submitted patches to fix the OS X port, but they keep getting rejected...
Do you think some of that money could be spent paying someone to ensure that the documentation doesn't fucking lie ?
First I try XUL. Half the documented elements don't work. Then WSDL. Which just tells me "component failed, no idea why". I've never tried XSL but I remember people saying it was the same.
Is it really too much to ask that the documentation bears some slight resemblance to reality ?
Yes, peer review applies to the trunk as well.
The main difference is that new features and "risky" fixes (i.e. large patches with high regression danger) are almost never accepted in a branch, unless they answer an urgent security need.
Trunk, instead, is considered a playground for innovation, but changes are nevertheless bound to the same proposal/discussion/review/commit life cycle.
--
There's a browser safer than Firefox, it is Firefox, with NoScript.
There's a browser safer than Firefox, it is Firefox, with NoScript
Only thing I wish was if they made a good set of centralized documentation for extension development. There are many people who simply give up on extensions because the whole process is such a giant PITA. Hell, some of the fucking documentation is plain wrong unless I'm reading it wrong (like session store and when it does certain things) which is even worse. Other parts are incomprehensible on their own. Finding out how to do something non-trivial should not involve searching five+ different locations (forums, 2+ websites, googling for good measure, other extension's source code, firefox source code).
I mean given the extensions are pretty much Firefox's only strength (Opera is leaner, faster and has more built in features) you'd think they'd put a lot more effort into making it as easy as possible for people to make them.
Wow, so what would that be... damn near 28%?
Shouldn't at least some of the $50m that Mozilla makes go to the volunteers?
if so many people are putting in patches how come it still sucks so badly?
CTRL+E -> Search field FTW
It was a sad day for me when the Abe Vigoda: Dead or Alive monitor quit working. I liked the Abe face in the corner.
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
I would just like to say thank you to all the volunteers and paid staffers working on FireFox. It's a marvelously useful piece of software and whether you're a core developer or volunteer helping with documentation, I sincerely appreciate FireFox and the universe of helpful plugins available for it.
You've all done a fantastic job and don't get nearly enough credit for how great it really is.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Hmmm, I would have titled this article as "72% of firefox patches come from people who's paid job it is to write them". But then that makes it too obvious that the open-source attitude of "anyone can fix anything" is, if not a lie, at least vastly overstated.
And when you're the 100th person to add details to a bug, that has been open for... years.
What then?
There are two types of people in the world: those who divide people into two types and those who don't.
If volunteers are giving so much to the project, and they have 50 million usd in revenue every year, then some of that money should be going to these volunteers that are contributing so much. 50 million is a lot of money. As it stands, it just seems like total exploitation to me. Where is the indignation? I mean, it's one thing to contribute your services to a project that doesn't make any money, it's another thing to work for free for a very profitable entity. These guys need to spread that money around some more in the form of a reward system.
Is the 27% number because the volunteers are especially active or because the paid staff is not doing much work. Perhaps it's just me, but I can't remember the last time I saw a striking change to the browser. Maybe they have a PR problem. Mozillazine has diminished to release notices. I haven't seen "look at me I'm cool" articles there in months or maybe even years. I use the minefield nightly builds so I would think that I'd be first to notice anything significant.
Seems like an as-yet unsolved problem.
o untytype=1&cat=33
There have been proposals to have a centralized mozilla bounty system at mozilla.org, but they've been dismissed as WONTFIX in anticipation of human conflict becoming distracting to those with authority over the code base.
Some, like Mark Shuttleworth, once held hope for more support for bounties from Mozilla, such as a bugzilla feature to associate bounties with bugs. That hope seems to have disappeared.
Mozilla-related Wiki attempts have also disappeared, and the other websites out there seem to lack critical mass.
However, Mozilla has started a limited bounty program for security bugs, with help from long-time bounty advocate Mark Shuttlesworth.
As far as the mechanics of moving money around, http://fundable.org/ might be an option.
other sites
----------
http://bountycounty.org/
http://www.opensourcexperts.com/bountylist.html?b
http://croczilla.com/zap/bounties/
Vote for it I guess. I don't like how many bugs are years old in Mozilla, but it happens. Bug spam never solved anything. If you've got an idea on how to fix it that hasn't been mentioned already, go ahead and propose the idea. Ask about what needs to be fixed in order to fix the bug to perhaps get some people motivated to fix it (outside of the Mozilla developers).
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
Voting doesn't do anything either. You can tell this, not just by developer comments, but by the fact there is no report in Bugzilla to show the top N voted bugs. (It's possible to make a custom report that kind of gets the result, but if voting were important for decision making it would presumably be a default report).
Many highly voted bugs have been open for years. This is very dissappointing to me as it's these ones (when in core parts of the browser) that I believe the Mozilla developers should be working on. But they show more interest in shiny new features - fine when you're a volunteer, not so great when you're getting paid.
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
Good documentation
I was almost beginning to wonder if it was just me!
THIS IS UNTRUE!
If goatse was made by Mozilla folks, it would be a huge bloated smelly hippie-ass with gaping holes that leaks liquid feces all day long.
I find the lemmings to a cliff jump to use Firefox amusing.
1. It's better than IE, we know that. IE itself wouldn't be bad if they would stop supporting and enabling goofy Microsoft extensions that eventually Firefox goes along and supports as well.
2. Opera has been out there for ages. It's a better browser with much more advanced use of tabs, has had them for years, and is much more COMPLIANT to the spec.
3. Konqueror has been out there for ages. It's use of tabs is not as great as Opera's, but more importantly, it is COMPLIANT to the spec.
50M/year in revenue and Firefox is still like a CS project?
You know my bias, I use two browsers: Opera for when I'm locally using my windows applications, and Konqueror for when I'm in an NX session in KDE. I check rendering of my own html markup through those two browsers, if it looks good, then I check it in IE and Firefox - annoyingly sometimes finding they are not renddering how I desire - but not significantly or frequently enough to make an issue over.
While I do not believe that Firefox is a *bad* browser, I find it disturbing how many opensource addicts blindly jump at it - without consideration for the fact that it still is not 100% compliant and the fact that there are just plain better options out there.
http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/acid/ -- useful info.