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Mozilla Leaves Out Linux For Initial Web App Support

Posted by timothy on from the thy-fickle-heart dept.

darthcamaro writes "Guess What? Linux is not a primary platform for Mozilla. For Mozilla's upcoming Web Apps marketplace, Linux support is not part of the initial release. Some Mozilla developers simply are shrugging this off as Windows and Mac dominate the Mozilla user landscape today."

36 of 403 comments (clear)

  1. Fork it, then by crazyjj · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Unlike with Internet Explorer, if the Linux community feels strongly about this, they could always do their own fork. So stop bitching and start coding.

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    1. Re:Fork it, then by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      That's right Fork it! And fork them!

      I'll just use another browser!

      Forking summa batches!

      It mighta as well, too! The spiel checker hasn't worked on Linux in many many releases.

    2. Re:Fork it, then by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You most likely wouldn't even need to fork it, it's not like Mozilla is fundamentally opposed to the idea, they just can't justify the resources necessary for it at the moment. If you were to fully implement it with some decent code, I'm pretty sure Mozilla would be more than happy to integrate it.

    3. Re:Fork it, then by Ramin_HAL9001 · · Score: 4, Informative

      There are like 20 forks of Firefox for Linux already, I can't even keep track of them all: Iceweasel, Seamonkey, Icecat, Swiftfox, Flock, ...

      There are even more based on WebKit.

    4. Re:Fork it, then by cpu6502 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Forking is what causes forking confusion.

      It makes newbies runaway from GNUlinux rather than try it, and even experienced people like me say, "I'm tired of 10 different variants of Mozilla browsers, and the desktop changing every release. I'm going back to Win or Mac OS for some multiyear stability."

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    5. Re:Fork it, then by Vintermann · · Score: 5, Informative

      Seamonkey isn't a fork of Firefox, it's the other way around. Seamonkey is what remains of the old Mozilla suite. I'm surprised it's under active development.

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    6. Re:Fork it, then by localman57 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      According to Barry Schwartz (Let the spaceballs jokes begin...) it not only confuses people, it actually makes them less satisfied:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice:_Why_More_Is_Less

      One of the reasons for this is percieved "Missed Opportunities". The idea that, yeah, maybe you picked Firefox, but you have a nagging feeling that you might have been happier with IceWeasel. This makes you enjoy FireFox less, through no fault of FireFox itself.

    7. Re:Fork it, then by Brad1138 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It reminds me a bit of the cola wars, so many different variants, there isn't room on the shelves for all of them. It is what is killing Linux as a viable alternative to Windows/Mac. For us computer geeks, it is fun to switch between variants and pick our favorite. To the average computer user it is confusing, and just more work for software developers.

      Like it or not, Ubuntu is the best hope for Linux in the real world. It is becoming big enough that software companies and consumers can focus on one Linux product. If Ubuntu is just the flavor of the day and fades like Red Hat etc, I will give up hope of Linux ever really "making it" to the desktop for the average user.

      --
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    8. Re:Fork it, then by FictionPimp · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I suffer from some kind of mental problem where when presented with a choice, I break into a near frenzy of research on said choices. It can almost paralyze my choices as I try to discover the best choice. While I enjoy the research, sometimes I think I would be happier to just have one choice.

    9. Re:Fork it, then by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 3, Informative

      Er .. ah ...no. They renamed it to get around trademark issues. Furthermore, each Linux distribution provides a separate kernel build (or more than one) with various patches applied and different configuration options enabled, etc. This does not constitute a fork. A fork happens when active development of source code occurs in a software product.

      --
      Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
    10. Re:Fork it, then by marcosdumay · · Score: 4, Informative

      The "trademark issues" were that you can't patch Firefox and keep calling it Firefox. Thus people had to rename it for applying patches.

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    11. Re:Fork it, then by Pausanias · · Score: 3, Informative

      It's also one of the better lightweight HTML editors out there. Perfect for when someone without experience needs to edit a web page for content.

    12. Re:Fork it, then by chrb · · Score: 4, Informative

      The "trademark issues" were that you can't patch Firefox and keep calling it Firefox.

      You can if you have permission e.g. Ubuntu patch their Firefox, and yet it is still called Firefox. Debian also had permission, once upon a time. The dispute with Debian wasn't over source code patches, it was over the patch that removed the Firefox logo, because it was provided under a non-free license.

    13. Re:Fork it, then by washort · · Score: 4, Informative

      You're right, and people are doing just that. A patch for Linux support is under development here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=744193

    14. Re:Fork it, then by zidium · · Score: 3, Interesting

      In 2005, with the official suspension of the Mozilla Browser project, it was expected that the 30+ Mozilla devs would, naturally, just switch development to Firefox, the new child, which at the time only had 3 core developers.

      The Mozilla devs, however, upon looking at the bastardized, sloppy, memory-leak-filled Firefox pre-2.0 codebase balked. They considered the Firefox devs to be rank amateurs and there was a move to change up the org structure of Firefox. That backfired when the Moz Consortium, encouraged by Google, entrenched support against Firefox and basically shunned the old guard developers.

      The old guard then decided to fork the old Mozilla browser and, against the wishes of the AOL Corp., completely diverge from Netscape towards a more lean, memory-resilient browser/email/chat program called **SeaMonkey**. It took a while, and they didn't have the hundreds of millions of dollars, or even a modicrum of the advertising money or corporate backing that Firefox has had, but their product is vastly superior where it counts to Firefox and Thunderbird and maintains binary compatibility with their plugins.

      You should really check out SeaMonkey http://www.seamonkey-project.org/ It's how Firefox outside of the Moz Corp would be, and I enjoy it substantially more. Plus, they do a GREAT job keeping up with the Gecko Engine and are virtually always on a newer, better version than Firefox. Oh, and they don't have the memory problems, either.

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    15. Re:Fork it, then by groovepapa · · Score: 3, Informative

      Mozilla *is* hiring aggressively - http://careers.mozilla.org/ - *and* actively recruiting more community contributors - https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Introduction. There's no such thing as "____ is not part of Mozilla's ____" because we can all be part of Mozilla. See washort's link to https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=744193

    16. Re:Fork it, then by Spicerun · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "Making software cross platform can be extremely time consuming" BULL! Do your software right, and you'd be surprised how easily and effortlessly it will integrate into cross-platforms. Of course, that would require you to consider well your approach as you start to code, which would be 98% more work than most developers want to do.

  2. Useless anyway by Hatta · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What's a "web app marketplace" and why would I need one anyway? There's plenty of useful software available to me in the repositories. There are plenty of websites I can browse with a regular browser. There are plenty of extensions I can use to customize my browsing experience.

    Seriously, what does a "web app marketplace" have to offer that isn't already done better through one of the above resources?

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    1. Re:Useless anyway by Lumpy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "Seriously, what does a "web app marketplace" have to offer that isn't already done better through one of the above resources?"

      A way for Mozilla foundation to have direct access to your wallet.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    2. Re:Useless anyway by metalgamer84 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Welcome to to the tablet/smartphone age, where everything is an app. Apps on your tablet, apps on your phone, apps on your desktop, apps on your laptop. "Software" is no more, "apps" are the future...or something like that. I despise this market shift of the last four or five years of everything needs to be mobilized as an app so no matter if you are on a tablet, smartphone or laptop/desktop everything is an app.

      Apps have a place, I guess, on phones and tablets. Keep that crap off of my machines that I actually use for productivity(laptop/desktop).

    3. Re:Useless anyway by Rogerborg · · Score: 4, Funny

      How else are you going to leverage your cloudsourced synergies and focus your thinkspaces across the board going forward?

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    4. Re:Useless anyway by Chemisor · · Score: 4, Insightful

      App is merely the new name for software. It isn't even all that new; weren't we talking about "killer apps" twenty years ago? I, for one, welcome our new, shorter named, software.

  3. Re:Chrome / Chromium by AltF4ToWin · · Score: 3, Informative

    And the marketplace works. Not that I or anyone in the known universe uses it. But at least it works.

  4. What? by Corson · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I thought that Web App = platform independence? If it's not not then what's the point of developing Web Apps?

    1. Re:What? by EMN13 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      In other shocking news, different platforms requiring different implementations of this rather non-critical feature don't get the feature exactly simultaneously. And here I was hoping they'd have quantum entangled programmers whose coding is either both done or not done.

      This isn't a story.

  5. pathetic by AntEater · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "...shrugging this off as Windows and Mac dominate the Mozilla user landscape today."

    And that is a big part of why Windows and Mac continue to dominate the landscape. The Linux versions of many apps tend to be second rate. Then the developers look at it and say "see, nobody really wanted it on that platform anyway."

    That's a pretty sad statement for an open project to make.

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    1. Re:pathetic by EMN13 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's also a fictional summary designed to grab your attention rather than represent the truth.

  6. Re:Turnabout is fair play by crazyjj · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I still have a hard time stomaching Chrome. Even looking past the fact that they don't have NoScripts, I'm very reluctant to turn yet another part of my life over to a huge corporation with a checked past when it comes to privacy issues. Mozilla may be largely in Google's pocket too, but at least they maintain some semblance of independence. I trust them a lot more than Google itself.

    --
    What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
  7. Re:A matter of share: 85%, 12%, and 2.5% by hendridm · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It would be interesting to see what % of Mozilla code is developed on each platform.

  8. No need to fork, article is nonsense by EMN13 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Seriously, RTFM: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=744193

  9. Re:... Has anyone actually bothered to RTFM (#7441 by Alex+Belits · · Score: 4, Informative

    Seriously, what the fuck is going on here? The comment about supported platform is from more than a month ago, the rest of the responses are about resolving it.

    --
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  10. Re:Turnabout is fair play by Killjoy_NL · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Isn't it a shame however that because more and more people get more and more powerful machines, that the developers code more sloppily because "the machines can take it"?

    --
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  11. Re:Turnabout is fair play by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Isn't it a shame however that because more and more people get more and more powerful machines, that the developers code more sloppily because "the machines can take it"?

    If you want to run software from 20 years ago, go ahead. What you call "sloppy" I call "defense in depth". For example, chrome spawns a process for the renderer in each tab, so that a buffer overflow in webkit doesn't allow malware to do anything to your file system. It uses more RAM. This is a good tradeoff, because RAM is dirt cheep and cleaning up malware is expensive. Don't like it? Buy a VAX.

  12. Linux Web Apps Development - How to Help Out by jds2501 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Hi Everyone, Linux support for web apps is actively being worked on. Our contributor (Marco) is driving the implementation of it here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=744193 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=744190 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=745018 If you would like to help out, then feel free to drop a comment in those bugs!

  13. Yes and No by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yes and No, but first and foremost it was a trademark issue with regard to use of the graphics: The immediate problem caused by the new policy was Debian's inability to use the official Firefox logo due to its proprietary license failing to comply with the Debian Free Software Guidelines.

    The wiki also states: Additionally, as Debian releases are frozen on a long-term basis, software in the frozen stable releases needs to be patched for any newly-discovered security issue. Under the revised guidelines, in order to use the Firefox name, approval from the Mozilla Corporation would have been required for all security patches, but the Debian project felt it could not put its security in the hands of an external corporation in that manner.[15]

    Note that the fact that Debian renamed it does not constitute proof of validity of Mozilla's claims that people can't apply patches from Mozilla's codebase and still call it Firefox. That claim never got tested, since they already changed the name anyway.

    --
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  14. Yeah, but this is also an insult by suso · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Linux is the premeire open source desktop. Mozilla is the premiere open source web browser. Many OSS people use both and have supported both. This kinda of decision is a slap in the face to the years of time invested on both sides. Indeed Mozilla has become more like a company than an open source project.