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An Open Source Pitfall? Mozilla Labs Closed, Quietly
mikejuk writes with this excerpt: When Google Labs closed there was an outcry. How could an organization just pull the rug from under so many projects? At least Google announced what it was doing. Mozilla, it seems since there is no official record, just quietly tiptoes away — leaving the lights on since the Mozilla Labs Website is still accessible. It is accessible but when you start to explore the website you notice it is moribund with the last blog post being December 2013 with the penultimate one being September 2013. The fact that it is gone is confirmed by recent blog posts and by the redeployment of the people who used to run it. The projects that survived have been moved to their own websites. It isn't clear what has happened to the Hatchery -the incubator that invited new ideas from all and sundry. One of the big advantages of open source is the ease with which a project can be started. One of the big disadvantages of open source is the ease with which projects can be allowed to die — often without any clear cut time of death. It seems Mozilla applies this to groups and initiatives as much as projects. This isn't good. The same is true at companies that aren't open source centric, though, too, isn't it?
There was an outcry when Google Labs closed because people actually used stuff that came from there. Mozilla Labs, on the other hand...
#DeleteChrome
Seems to be the way things work with the Mozilla crew. Look at the "progress" of the Thunderbird project. For over a decade people have been complaining about its inability to accurately render html, yet that problem still exists in the software today. No one wants to work on the un-sexy nuts and bolts stuff; everybody wants to be the guy who wrote the flashy new UI. Kinda difficult to do anything about it when you can't fire someone and hire a decent replacement.
Its lost the browser initiative to google. I can't imagine it will still be around in its current form in a decade.
SURELY NOT!!!!!
Stagnation is death.
Is that because closed source enterprises never get shut down?
Gee, if it is Open Source, you can even branch it and continue on your own, if you feel like... now, with closed sources....
In my professional career, several projects I have worked on have been canceled despite a good state - not behind schedule nor over budget, or even ahead of schedule and/or under budget. The reasons were usually variations from "marketing has decided to change direction" to "after management re-org, the new managers decided the risks were too high". The latter happened to one project despite us having 5 fully and correctly operating prototypes, and having invested 3 person-years of effort and over half a million US dollars in development tools and licensing of third party libraries. Another project was canceled because the primary stakeholder lost interest despite the first two phases being highly successful.
Don't try to out wierd me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you, free with my breakfast cereal. --Zaphod Beeblebr
How can open source software die? the source is there! Anyone interested in the software has had ample time to get the source.
This, right here. Even if it goes stagnant for years? If you can get (or already have) the source, you can resurrect it.
By contrast, if you wanted to resurrect, say, WinCE? Well, good luck with that.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
This has nothing to do with open source at all. An organization closed down a unit, and got rid of some projects. That happens pretty much every day in the private sector and in the closed source world. What makes open source special in this regard. Do you expect them to keep supporting things forever even when the organization doesn't want to anymore?
The only difference is that with open source, someone could take that code and keep working on it, if they wanted to. That's it. The rest of this has nothing to do with open source at all and is just a flagrant attempt at drumming up controversy by asking a bullshit question in the headline.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
It was the C++ re-write that screwed Mozilla/Netscape. C++ is the worst language that ever had widespread adoption as far as productivity.
They announced that they killed Thunderbird too several months after the fact. It was months and months after the latest update, suddenly they're like "Oh yeah, that? We're done with that." Outlook sucks, Windows Live mail sucks, Incredemail is a disease, and Eudora is dead as well. There are a grand total of zero good e-mail programs out there now. What were they thinking?
Actually, they announced what they were thinking. They're focusing on making new versions of Firefox every single month for no reason and causing massive crash glitches, incompatibilities with webpages, and an all out war with Flash player as well as a go-nowhere phone OS project. Great choice! But what would you expect from a company that gets over 90% of its money from Google, who makes a competing product.