JWZ Resignation (Part 2)

see cathedral and bazaar by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-02 01:49 · Score: 0

i guess you haven't read esr's ''the cathedral and the bazaar''. this is a shame, because if you had, you would have noticed that, if you want a free software project to go well, you should have a decent version ready before you allow the masses to hack away at it. mozilla.org broke rule #1. consequently, no one was motivated to do any work on a piece of software that they couldn't even use. jwz says it himself in his resignation letter.

Mozilla.org contribution Poll? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-02 02:26 · Score: 0

How about a poll on the # of /.'ers who've:

o Contributed to the Mozilla.org project.
o Thought about contributing but weren't able to. (no bandwidth)
o Haven't contributed but would NOW consider it.
o Never even considered it... never will.

I'm curious to find out if there are others out there who, like myself, would love to contribute... and who may have even seriously considered it, but who simply do not have the bandwidth.

What does a project like this need to attract more coders? . . . or even testers, tech writers, or other support type people.

What the heck? More FUD. by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-03 01:55 · Score: 0

What the heck are you talking about? IE5 hasnt crashed ONCE on me.

More FUD from slashdotter kiddies.

Uhh... yes he did. by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-02 02:19 · Score: 0

"April 1st, 1999 will be my last day as an employee of the Netscape Communications division of America Online, and my last day working for mozilla.org"

Strikes me as leaving... don't know what you read.

Hand over that clipboard by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-02 14:50 · Score: 0

I heard that IE 5.0 allows any web-page that you ask for to ask for and get (behind your back) the contents of your clipboard. Yet another security "oversight" on the part of Microsoft? You judge.

For now I will stick with an older version of Netscape that at least is stable for me and that I am not afraid will offer up my firstborn without bothering to inform me first...

Bad project management, worse product design. by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-02 10:43 · Score: 0

This all seems like a severe case of bad project management and even worse planning, management and design of the actual product.
If Mozilla was well designed, well commented and built from cohesive, pluggable autonomous components, maybe more people would have been able to get involved in developing discrete parts of the whole product.

I've never seen the source, but on reading JZWs resignation letter, this is what springs to mind.
Just a thought....

perl advocacy (was: Losing leadership) by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-04 06:53 · Score: 0

>What's even more impressive to me is the fact
>that he managed to write most of it in perl.

One ac perl bigot thinks it'd actually be more impressive if it wasn't written in perl...

This proves that licenses don't matter by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-02 02:08 · Score: 0

This proves something I've been feeling all along:
the license (BSD, X11, (L)GPL, you name it) matters a lot less than other social and technical
factors, most notably technical merit and the issue of control or perceived control over a
project.

As a corollary, the open source community should
spend less time argueing about ideological dimensions in software licensing, and more about
what is required to make open source software
successful.

Is it now that Microsoft will conquer the Net? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-02 03:41 · Score: 0

Without mozzila, wich browser do we turn to? Mozzila was maybe the only one with it's code open. Shouldn't we all take this oportunity to give Microsoft the finger? To tell them that with far less money, without getting paid, and with far less people, we can be better than them, and give people an alternative to their buggy, activeX, insecure, non-standard, made-to-conquer, browser(if it can be called as so).

Eduardo

see cathedral and bazaar by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-02 08:55 · Score: 0

> Curious. As I recall, Linux also broke rule #1,
> so maybe it's not such a great rule?

i don't think it did. after all, esr based his paper around what he learned from examining what linus did. he basically says that linus's strength is not necisarilly in his coding, but in the things he does to keep people excited about the project. he also points out that open source is not new. therefore, linus must have done *something* special.

as for the netscape issue: i think that starting with something that will compile is essential. what is a user's motivation to keep contributing to a project when they don't even get to see their own improvements (again, see 'cathedral and bazaar' and jwz's resignation letter)

people must realize that linux's mode of development *is* new. if you want to do the same thing, then you have to understand what it is that linus did differently than, for instance, rms and the gnu team.

He's somewhat right and you are somewhat wrong by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-02 02:54 · Score: 0

You seem to hate IE because it's a microsoft product. IE is better than netscape on several levels. I think even jwz would agree with that.

As for your comment "Javascript on IE? forget it", that's just wrong. I work with both browsers on a daily basis. IE support for Javascript is more complete than on current implementations of netscape's browser.

cheers

Losing leadership by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-02 12:17 · Score: 0

For me, the web solves this problem -- the
less clueful users happily use "applications"
that run under freely-redistributable software
every day -- Yahoo's use of FreeBSD is the most
noteworthy, but there are many many Linux examples
as well (not to mention Apache, PERL, ect) that
power websites all over the world.

I remember in my misspent youth, an IBM 3270 was
the thing on the desktop -- now its Mosaic or
IE5 or Opera or Lynx. No one then thought the
firmware that ran the terminal was the most
important/interesting part of the system --
the focus was on the machines in the glass house.
Why is it different this time?

see cathedral and bazaar by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-02 05:06 · Score: 0

well yes, that is essentially esr's thesis. is it really too much for me to ask you, if you wish to coordinate a project, to bring something to the table? yes, you have to give your co-developers something to be excited about. and yes, as coordinator, if it is a relatively small project, you will be doing most of the coding. a community of developers is not a prerequisite for free software. rms himself insists that this is about freedom first and foremost. free software, open source, whatever you want to call it, is not a mode of software development, it is a type of software license. so mozilla must do much more than simply release their source code if they want help in development.

Before we go digging Mozilla's grave... by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-02 11:45 · Score: 0

Frank,

If this were an open source product of an individual or a group of open source hackers, you'd see the old Mozilla code being release with builds that are used by masses (i.e. alphas or betas for nontechies) weekly if not daily, correct? You'd also see Gecko (new code) developed from scratch by everyone's while the old code is still being used and refined, correct? Like I stated earlier, I'm not much of a hacker, but this is my understanding of open source, by what I've read from ESR.

V. Heath Beltran
beltranh@wenet.net

open source failure by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-02 01:25 · Score: 0

The Linux kiddies are fond to point out that with open source, you can modify and hack your own software. I've always wondered if the people from whose mouths I hear this actually do so.

I have the suspicion that many of the new open source users (Linux in particular) are just glamor-users, out to prove how elite they are, but not too interested in really contributing anything besides advocacy.

Maybe Mozilla proves this point. Maybe when the going gets tough, the zealots blame MS or end-users or anything else besides real effort.

Bob Lisbonne by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-02 05:11 · Score: 0

How many smart people does Netscape/AOL have to bleed before someone fires the incompetent manager running that Browser division into the ground? Bob Lisbonne needs to go. His indecisive and weak management style has killed Netscape's chances of ever recovering in the browser space.

IE5 influence by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-04 07:02 · Score: 0

both CSS and javascript works... in fact I had to turn javascript off cause it was starting to annoy me.

see cathedral and bazaar by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-02 16:07 · Score: 0

Yes, but the first versions of Linux were *much* simpler (and therefore much more hackable) than Mozilla. I remember downloading it on M-Day and seeing one measly routine that was well over 1000 lines long and thinking, "Hmmm, maybe I'll just wait until the guys who have the most time clean this up."

Losing leadership by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-03 07:22 · Score: 0

" Well, let me ask you this: do you want to make fun stuff just for yourselves, or do you want to use that fun stuff to help improve the computing lives of less-clueful end users? If the latter, then you need someone who can speak to the clueless and get them to understand. "

I want to write fun stuff for me.

I couldn't care less whether or not it helped anyone else on the face of the planet.

Unfortunately such an attitude is self-destructive since one man cannot do everything that's required...

That's why proprietary programs are good, you can pay people who really don't live through their work to code. The world is big enough for both breeds (I hope).

Alternatively, you could create a religion and get people to do "what's good for the community", thus getting the poor fools to work for free on things that they aren't interested in, thus robbing themselves of life, and the end users of quality.
This phenomenon in the OSS community makes me laugh!

I have to ask, why would one want to code something they aren't interested in? For the respect of someone else? That's pathetic. To prove to someone that you/your community can? That's pathetic. For money? Reasonable -- assuming that you want to put the money to work doing something you really do enjoy (i.e. coding stuff you love in your spare time).

Netscape Sucks... by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-02 07:29 · Score: 0

...but it sucks the least.

Netscape crashed three times in a row while I was trying to open this article in a new window. Each time, it took out every other window I had open. Communicator is far and away the most flawed piece of software on my entire Linux system. If one window crashes, that's annoying. When it takes out five other windows, including the email I was writing in the background, it becomes dangerously useless.

But at least it doesn't crash the Operating System at the same time too!

IE5 influence by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-02 14:59 · Score: 0

buggy as hell? I've not had it crashed once so far since using it. I find most people on this message board to be rather childish actually.. they LOVE to talk about standards while they have a "browser" that supports those standards that doesn't even work yet. The only usable browser I've seen so far that supports most of the standards is IE5. I don't know about you but as a web designer I get rather pissed off at the kinds of things I am restricted by when people are using other browsers like Opera and Netscape. Granted, IE does render certain code a tad wrongly, but I find the old rant by people saying that IE5 crashes so much and Win 98 crashes so much etc etc to get stale rather fast.

IMHO I don't even think that you have used IE5 b4... which seems to be typical of most people here... I used to try to use Linux.. and realised how over hyped the support in channels are... most people there are too concerned with being "leet" that with helping newbies... so get a life... switch off that computer and grow up... you Linux people tend to get too emotional about stuff.. and as a result cause other people to do the same.

I Don't Miss Netscape by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-02 04:48 · Score: 0

Sorry, but Mozilla/Navigator/Communicator does not contain any Mosaic code. When Marc left the Mosaic project to found MCom (later Netscape), he figured it would be cheaper to build a new browser from scratch than to hack around the Mosaic code. In fact, that's why the company had to change its name from Mosaic Communications to Netscape; they didn't have a license to Mosaic (the code or the name). Meanwhile, UIUC licensed the Mosaic code to Spyglass, who licensed it to Microsoft.

MS Astroturf - Maybe Not This Time by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-02 05:14 · Score: 0

I suspect that astroturfing (as you call it) Slashdot is about as worthwhile as watering the Sahara.

-Secret MS Agent

dot party? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-02 01:44 · Score: 0

does this mean that he won't be at the dot party?

This proves that licenses do matter by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-02 02:42 · Score: 0

No. Releasing Mozilla under the GPL would not
have changed a thing. All of the reasons jwz
mentioned would still have applied.

On a technical note, being adopted by a desktop
project does not mean much. Projects don't
success by association.

Finally, the biggest desktop project today, KDE,
while being released under the GPL, has a much
more open, Linus-like attitude about it. There
is no reason whatsoever to think that the GPL
or non-GPL of Mozilla has played a role.

QT-Zilla! by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-02 11:02 · Score: 0

Netscape was incompetent! Otherwise how come they
could not release a working version of Mozilla?
Troll Tech folks (maker of Qt) took just 5 days
to port whole Motif-based Mozilla to Qt
to create Qt-zilla. They released it 5 days
after the source code release of Mozilla. I
downloaded and tested Qt-zilla. It was just 2
MB and it was lean, mean, fast, stable and
working decently. I think you can still get it
from www.troll.no website. Anyway, the point
is: if 4 Troll tech guys took just 5 days to
produce a working version (including a port
to the Qt toolkit), how come 100 Netscape
engineers could not do it in a year!

The big reason Mozilla got little outside
contribution is because Netscape did not give a working version to start with.

I'm a little surprised by JWZ's conclusions by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-03 06:27 · Score: 0

" Projects like GNOME and KDE avoid this -- people work on individual modules _based_ around a core
design, and with that Invisible Hand of massive public testing and fixes that keeps things more-or-less in line"

How can you say this? GNOME and KDE are still incomplete, let's see how stable they are once they're full featured and provide the same level of integration that windows apps have.

Lets see how well they work once there are thousands of client programs written for multiple versions. (i.e. running a KDE 1.3 app on KDE 4.6).

When, and only when, this is demonstrated will your point have any validity.

Open source no panacea by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-02 03:18 · Score: 0

The major flaw of open source development: it's excrutiatingly slow. Too much overhead, too little dedication. The other flaw: it's rarely innovative.

What many of you fail to realise is that a lot of open source software can only compete on price, not features. Proprietary products are almost always better designed and offer more functionality. If the proprietory competitor also happens to be free, it wins. See IE vs. Mozilla.

Many Linux niche products have not had much exposure to commercial competition yet. That's why so many people put up with KDE and other crap.

QT-Zilla! by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-02 11:09 · Score: 0

But working or non-working, the version that Troll worked with was the same version available to the rest of the world.

I agree with you - there must have been some problem with the Netscape "Engineers".

see cathedral and bazaar by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-02 04:42 · Score: 0

oh, so in order for the "bazaar" to be successful, first I have to most of the heavy lifting and then give the code away for free to the rest of the world.

the absents of jwz by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-02 08:41 · Score: 0

After reading some of the nice letters, and pathetic ones, I choose to speak up.

JWZ writes coming from such passion, this was obviously more than a job to him. I don't agree with his decision to quit, but he stated his reasons. I find his reasons for quitting a need for mandatory improvement in the business + open source model. If you compare Mozilla/Netscape to ESR's writings on the open source model you'll find out that Mozilla/Netscape should have
released what they had competed with consistence. I know they have automatic nightly builds, but I refer to complete builds. Jaime stated that such things weren't possible, but may have. Well I'm not much of a hacker, yet, but when reading
ESR essays, such builds are necessary for open source to work. Jaime seems to be aware of all this. Mozilla/Netscape has to be separate, yet still work together. You'll see more people contributing to Mozilla after the Netscape 5 release. The reasoning is that it will look more like the real open source model and gradually become open source. After people see a working build in action sparks will fly.

V. Heath Beltran
beltranh@wenet.net

nah. by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-02 21:30 · Score: 0

Netscape/Mosaic were simply at ground zero of a near-nuclear economic explosion. The void the browser product was filling was so great, it's difficult to see how Netscape could not have been swallowed up.

The bottom line for me is that Mosaic/Mozilla made the web possible, and we now have a worldwide information network that is not controlled by Microsoft (yet). So Netscape has served its purpose.

It may serve us again if they can just get a working Moz/5.0 out the door.

The Audacity and the Idiocy by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-02 02:05 · Score: 0

Agreed. He could have done this gracefully. On the one hand, he was running around spouting to the media the benefits of developing open source. Then he publicly maligns it during resignation, and times that resignation to be on the very day of the mozilla one year anniversary party.

I've been very interested in mozilla, myself, downloading the binaries every day, filing bugs, and learning the code so that I can start contributing. JWZ had every right to leave, but he didn't have to shaft those of us who still care by departing this way.

He failed at his job as an evangelist and took it out on the project, and that's how I'll always remember him.

So let's see the #'s by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-02 15:50 · Score: 0

Well, let's do a poll and see if we can come up with some numbers. (granted it would only be the #'s of /.ers who contribute, but it might be an interesting number to investigate. If we get 10 people out of 1000 votes, we'll know that roughly 1% of tech-savy readers do contribute, and that might be an indicator of what really goes on outside of this circle. not scientific, of course, but it's an indication none the less.)

I for one would love to contribute, but I simply do not have the time to devote to it. I'm already swamped with with work and the only way I could seriously contribute (coding) would be to sacrifice some of my own private time... (and I'm too stressed from work for me to give that up at this point.)

I CAN contribute to Mozilla by using apprunner and reporting any bugs I find... but that's gotta be the extent of my participation for now. (I wish I could do more.)

Excellent jwz posting by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-02 02:43 · Score: 0

The jwz posting really sums up well why people aren't contributing to the Mozilla project. I have a feeling that for most people, we lay the blame squarely on Netscape for shipping a big stinking pile of nothing when they started this project. It wouldn't compile, it wouldn't work, and there were huge holes in it.

Until they get a complete, working product that people can use, hack, use, repeat, they're just not going to get the community support that they're looking for.

At least, that's MY reason for not contributing to this point...

Actually by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-02 03:32 · Score: 0

IE5 is more complete, but IE4 vs NS4. NS4 wins hands down in the JavaScript dept. ex: look at the window object's methods and properties

magnetx.org

I feel for the guy by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-02 01:49 · Score: 0

I can relate to the guy. It is painful to realize all the hard work you have put in did not accomplish your attainable goals. I had a similar experience (at a *MUCH* smaller start up :).

IE5 influence by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-02 23:14 · Score: 0

I think CSS and JS not working(at all) should be considered a bug. It worked in ie5b2 but in the final release it won't run javascript or display css(and yes it is turned on). I think I know why but I can't do anything but wait for a bugfix release and hope it fixes it.

He's right on the big points by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-02 02:07 · Score: 0

For the control reasons jwz offers at the end, Netscape(creator)/AOL(Wall Street thief) could never have offered the printing/shipping/billing services which Mozilla needed to begin growth and show that its open source model was working.

This immediately shifted shipping/billing over to RH (creator ostensible)/IBM(Wall Street thief, dow promagma and ultimate progenitor of MS). Concurrently, RH seemed to have almost unlimited cash to ship glossy shrinkwraps. This might have saved mozilla if they cared, but ... RH's new attitude was betrayed when they revised their site to one whose only refernce to the mozilla site which I can find is coined bugzilla. Mozilla's primary billing point referenced it as bugzilla.

Linus' reported attempt escape from Wall Street control is IMHO totally right and noble. The enemies of open source in the US (and in Finland and Russia) are way too large and powerful, but he is wasting his time trying to contribute in this environment, and will probably find more freedom, control and natural ethics in Russia. The corrective, INHO, requires a full understanding of an ancient hebrew word, used in the OT to predict the downfalls of babylon and papal rome, na-shek. Sorry for the tiresome flamebait, but it seems just another drawing of the same old picture.

IE5 influence by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-02 03:11 · Score: 0

I hope the recent release of IE5 hasn't affected his decision. I'm sure there has to be some
competition between the two camps.

I think Micrososft made the same TERRIBLR desision in releasing IE5 too early as Netscape did when releasing version 4 of thier browser. Its
just not ready yet. Its not fully compliant with
existing standardsm and its buggy as hell (typical of Microsoft's early releases).

Expect to see a IE5 service pack 1 out within a couple of months. It would be earlier but there are jsut sooooo many bugs.

IMHO, this is a time for the mozilla project to
really shine and separate themselves from Microsoft. Don't get too down about Jamie leaving. Good software takes time.

Personally, I have emailed a couple Netscape employee's asking if thier was anything I could do. I never recieved a reply. Who knows what I would have done...

Is this for real? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-02 02:15 · Score: 0

I agree... And worse, I'm afraid the press will interpret this as a failure of the open source model in general.

But he's right about one thing: large companies don't produce good code. The best code is created by small groups of programmers that have some kind of "firewall" between them and the beauracracy that surrounds them.

Did you ever use Netscape Mail or News by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-02 02:17 · Score: 0

in versions 1, 2, or 3?

Christ. YES, Jamie had a real job. he contributed an OBSCENE amount to the overall success of Netscape.

Get a clue, and stop dissing JWZ. I know exactly how he feels. You go somewhere, and it's a utopia. Now, NSCP's been swallowed up, and JWZ didn't want to be en'Case'd. Can't say as I blame him. There is something embarassing about "jwz@aol.com".

Netscape sold out the day they went IPO. by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-02 11:26 · Score: 0

PERIOD

Hand over that clipboard by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-03 06:30 · Score: 0

At least IE5.0 can view freshmeat.net...

I downloaded Linux2.0 communicator 4.51 last night, tried to view freshmeat.net and communcicator would immediately crash...and I don't have libc5 problems...

Open source no panacea by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-03 06:49 · Score: 0

" Your proprietry compiler is not as portable as GCC (-; So I guess GCC has an advantage in the feature battle. "

When it works...

Besides, most people are coding for one platform (whatever that may be) for a good chunk of time, I would much rather have a faster, more robust compiler, that produces faster code than be able to brag to my friends that "ohh yeah, well my compiler could run on a different architecture so blah blah blah...".

As far as I can tell you've supported the guys premise that proprietary code can be a good thing...

Such is the life of a Project Manager by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-02 01:32 · Score: 1

Especially one who works for a big company. If he wants true frustration, try being a software (or hardware) project manager for a defense contractor. That is the ultimate frustration (specs changing every month, classified information, the good ol' USDOD not knowing what it wants, but expects it in 6 months, etc.).

JWZ is still young and he will learn patience (he'll have to). He probably just isn't the "corporate type," which is typical of programmers. Maybe a better calling for him would be the official spokesman for the Free Software Foundation. He is far more articulate and personable than the guy doing that job now.

open source failure by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-02 02:11 · Score: 1

> The Linux kiddies are fond to point out that with open source, you can
> modify and hack your own software. I've always wondered if the people
> from whose mouths I hear this actually do so.

I do. And I send my hacks back to the maintainer(s) for inclusion in
the source tree. Sometimes they're even accepted! :-) (Those who
don't even bother with so much as a reply never hear from me again.
Yes, there are those like that out there :-(. And I frequently abandon
even the use of their projects thereafter.)

> I have the suspicion that many of the new open source users (Linux in
> particular) are just glamor-users, out to prove how elite they are, but
> not too interested in really contributing anything besides advocacy.

So? I hope they enjoy my efforts.

> Maybe Mozilla proves this point. Maybe when the going gets tough, the
> zealots blame MS or end-users or anything else besides real effort.

Hmmm... I don't think so. I believe that what has happened here is
that many who might otherwise have considered diving-in might be a bit
reluctant due to the size and complexity of the project. I know that's
one thing that's holding me back from seriously considering it. Not-
to-mention that I've already got my fingers into a couple of other
projects, am thinking about starting a third, and have a Real Job as
well.

But I'm toying with the idea nonetheless. Maybe once I get a new
system in here and have some disk space to play with :-).

Is this for real? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-04-02 01:16 · Score: 1

A project flounders for the better part of 6 months, then proceeds toward success at a less than expected rate for the remainder of a year, and the project manager just gives up?

Has this guy ever had a real job? These are issues that real life project managers deal with every day. Just because the job at hand isn't going to turn into the proverbial "Genesis Project", and be completed TOMORROW is no reason to give up.

This does not exhibit the markings of a HEROIC failure.

jay double-yew zee by plumpy · 1999-04-02 00:46 · Score: 1

What does a guy like jwz do for a followup, anyway? I mean, what could he possibly do that would be as rewarding as those first few years at netscape?

Perhaps he has a large enough amassed fortune to live the work-free, hack-for-fun life for a while?

hmm...?

He's somewhat right by kju · 1999-04-02 01:24 · Score: 1

I hate to say this, but he is right in some
points.

Netscape was a very good browser some time ago,
but nowadays microsoft internet explorer is
already better in some parts (and i HATE
internet explorer).

Netscape does not even complete CSS 1 completely,
let alone CSS 2. The CSS support of IE is
far superiour, and i would like to see the
same CSS support Netscape really soon. All
the interesting parts of CSS are not supported
by Netscape. Take a look for example on
freshmeat.net. The boxes with border effect
had to be done by putting one table into
another. With full CSS support, one table
would be enough, as you can specify all the
needed parameters. I have this o'reilly book
DHTML - the definitive reference, and at
least on every second CSS tag i can read
NN (netscape navigator): n/a. I like Netscape
very much for it very good scripting support
(Javascript and IE? forget it), but it will
sooner or later loose my support, if they will
not followup the development soon.

In the good old days Netscape was the first to support new technologies, nowadays is the last, if ever. I'm not happy about this.

Indeed by Alex+Belits · 1999-04-02 13:14 · Score: 1

It also should be noted that a lot of projects that are famous now, passed a time in their life when some basic things were in the process of being designed and redesigned, documentation written, code debugged, etc. Remember Gimp 0.54 and for how long it was the only semi-usable version? NCSA httpd and a-patchy Apache? Early versions of BSD (and impact of corporations' politics on them), then later non-so-painless history of 4.4BSD Lite derivatives?

jwz probably could be better encouraging patience, not demonstrating the lack of it.

--
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.

Danger Will Robinson - MS Astroturf by Aaron+M.+Renn · 1999-04-02 04:48 · Score: 1

Hehe. I'm glad to see you took so much interest in my post to generate such a long reply. However, I'm not associated with Microsoft. You can easily review the many, many posts I've made on slashdot by checking my user profile. You can also review the 2000 newsgroup postings I've made at DejaNews. And you can look at my home page. I'm easily to research and I doubt you'll come to the conclusion I'm a Microsoft shill. I don't think they are the evil empire though. An internet dominated by Netscape or any other proprietary software company would be just as bad as one dominated by Microsoft.

Oh well... by Isaac-Lew · 1999-04-02 01:05 · Score: 1

Netscape pretty much introduced me to the real Internet...been using it since 1.22 (even tho it was also responsible for introducing me to massive amounts of alcohol...one can only take a finite amount of "I can't get onto my Netscape" when you work tech support at an ISPwhile sober).

JWZ: best of luck man...I enjoy your site...keep us updated :).

I was under the impression that... by Codifex+Maximus · 1999-04-02 03:14 · Score: 1

mozilla was alive and healthy. I've used the Windows version quite a bit... never tried the Linux version (been too busy with other Linux things) and I think it has tremendous potential. I sit here expecting mozilla on my desktop by June - I don't care if it has no mail, newsgroups, composer etc... JUST GIVE ME A BROWSER. We can talk about additional features after that. Has Netscape put the ixnae on releasing it before it has all the bloat of the Netscape 4.5 browser?

So... what's the major problem? I'd have to agree with another poster that it is LACK OF COMMUNICATION - and that is no pun. Communication of project status, calls for participation, and interim releases via Freshmeat were not forthcoming and regular. In other words, The Mozilla Project has not sufficiently involved the community but has remained aloof and secretive. No wonder participation is not high.

If you ask me, the whole thing reeks of politics. I'll bet that Netscape didn't want any bad press over the troubles they were having so they didn't call for help. How utterly sad. Why would a guy like JWZ quit a project that he cares so much about? Politics! Too many chiefs and not enough indians. FIX IT!

--
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.

Largely right. by cduffy · 1999-04-02 02:54 · Score: 1

The differences between open licences are mostly minor. If I'm working on a program I have the source for, I mostly don't even look at the licence when deciding whether to make a change to it; I just make the change and send it to the author.

My rule: The licence doesn't matter unless

1) It stops me from doing something I want to do
2) I see commercial use for my code and don't want it to happen w/o permission and payment

Now, whether jwz's retirement proves that is a veeery different matter -- it's just a demonstration that issues other than a licence can cause a project's death. Making other inferrences is sloppy reasoning.

And licences can matter. Software under a licence requiring that the maintainer OK all changes is effectively dead when that one man disappears, and prevents others from Doing Their Own Thing (which may be cool). Software under a closed licence where code only goes out to folks who request it from the maintainer/author... well, that's a whole different discussion.

Pardon the rambling. It's morning, after all.

Losing leadership by gavinhall · 1999-04-02 08:45 · Score: 1

Posted by Mike@ABC:

Well, let me ask you this: do you want to make fun stuff just for yourselves, or do you want to use that fun stuff to help improve the computing lives of less-clueful end users? If the latter, then you need someone who can speak to the clueless and get them to understand.

see cathedral and bazaar by gavinhall · 1999-04-02 12:00 · Score: 1

Posted by shaver@netscape.com:

My point is that Linus releasedLinux source long before it was a fully-functional OS. As with GNOME. Likely, as with KDE.

The first code that Mozilla released _did_ compile. We went to such lengths as having outside people bring their machines on campus to make sure that Real People could build and run the browser.

There are many times when Mozilla doesn't compile, but you can always pull from a known-good date stamp or use one of the monthly (now more frequent) tarballs. There are times when GNOME and KDE don't compile either, I'm sure, but nobody waves CatB in their faces -- why is that?

I'm not saying that our development practices are perfect, by any means, and I fret over a horked tree as much as the next guy, but I'm not sure your criticisms are grounded in fact.

see cathedral and bazaar by gavinhall · 1999-04-02 07:47 · Score: 1

Posted by shaver@netscape.com:

Curious. As I recall, Linux also broke rule #1, so maybe it's not such a great rule?

As far as whether Netscape should have waited until there was a fully-formed product to release, I think it has no-win written all over it. If we'd waited until whenever to release a fully-formed browser, then at the point of release we'd have had 100% Netscape hackers, 0% others. And yet people are lamenting the fact that we're currently 90% Netscape and 10% others, or however you choose to pick the numbers.

What to do?

open source non-failure: a luser's perspective by pingouin · 1999-04-02 06:52 · Score: 1

The Linux kiddies are fond to point out that with open source, you can modify and hack your own software. I've always wondered if the people from whose mouths I hear this actually do so.

I don't have any Linux (kernel) examples, but I have two small examples of the useful hackability of open source. I had an old binary of ezppp-1.0B9 that I've relied on for dialing my ISP; I've grown quite attached to it, since I'm extremely clueless in setting up PPP using other tools. The binary stopped working when I upgraded to RH5.2 (SIGSEGV!), but I had the old source, though I'd never used it before.

It didn't compile, so I was screwed, since there was no newer version of the source. The problem turned out to be a matter of the syntax of one line of code - my guess is that it compiled properly with the (earlier) version of Qt that existed when it was written, but maybe a slight tweak in the Qt API since then made it necessary to change that one line of ezppp code. The first reference implementation of MPEG-4 audio that I used didn't seem to have Linux in mind (later versions were Linux-friendly); I had to tweak some of the headers (e.g. #define PI atan(1.0) * 4.0 and some other minor things, IIRC). I was really eager to have a "look" at VQF and AAC, but would not have had the chance to do so (on Linux, my OS of choice) had I not had the code. So having the source can be a necessary thing. No, I didn't hack it into something new and wonderful to give to the world; I merely had the chance to make a couple of pieces of important (to me) software compile properly on a platform for which it was not designed.

--

--
=8^

Mozilla is a new experiment by AshNazg · 1999-04-02 03:55 · Score: 1

I always had my doubts about how the mozilla situation would develop...
Let's not forget that it has never been done!
The Cathedral & Bazaar thing, and all other Open Source examples are based on projects that started and grew as open source.
That's much different from someone throwing forth a few million line of code and expectthe community to be able to pick that up.
At least now we know that if BillG would open his sources, it wouldn't matter much.

AshNazg Durbatuluk

Losing leadership by Falathar · 1999-04-02 08:26 · Score: 1

> That leaves Richard Stallman debating whether
> Linux needs a GNU tacked on in front of it.
Heh...rather than doing what he does best: write code.

In all honesty though, the people who would serve best as [advocates|proponents|evangelists] aren't welcomed with open arms by the programmers (see discussion RE: ESR quitting), and the programmers typically are poor in the advocacy realms.

Perhaps it would be best for OpenSource to lose the spotlight for a little while. Then again, if it does, we'll probably be hearing more "Whatever happened to..." questions like with so many other technologies (especially those at odds with Microsoft). That doesn't mean the movement's dead, but at the same time, it means loss of mindshare, which makes adoption of the technologies and ideas more difficult. Somebody needs to step up to the plate, but it doesn't do any good if the home team won't support that person.

Losing leadership by Phil-14 · 1999-04-02 10:05 · Score: 1

"Hell, you might not even need a true code hacker for it -- someone like CmdrTaco is great at expressing the Open Source ideas to the public."

Um, this slashdot system seems like one heck of a computer program, if you ask me. Try customizing your home page. It's great.

What's even more impressive to me is the fact that he managed to write most of it in perl.

Phil Fraering "Humans. Go Fig." - Rita

--
(currently testing something about signatures here)

Jwz... will be missed. by ChiefArcher · 1999-04-02 01:53 · Score: 1

Netscape will always be known for something that microcrap cannot.... It's coders.. Does anyone have the slightest clue who the coders behind IE are? No.. (at least I don't)..
Netscape had personality... with heros such as jwz.... And their homepages were online to look though to see what they do in their spare time (The aluminum can bridge for example)

Even though I go between windows and linux on a daily basis, I still use Netscape.... I even install Win98 without IE4.. because I believe in the values Netscape had (has?). It's good vs. evil... netscape vs. microsoft.

About the Open Source thing:
I'm sure more people will contribute once mozilla is out.. It's very hard to contribute when things are changing on a daily basis.... I've been following it for quite sometime.. When they were using the old codebase.. it was almost ready to release when they canned it to go to the raptor engine...

I still have faith that netscape can pull this off.... I hope other do to.

my $cents = .02;
ChiefArcher

This might be a good thing.. by way_out · 1999-04-03 05:36 · Score: 1

Wasn't there something like a "mnemonic" out there
for a while?

And what *is* happening to arena lately?

Yeah. Browsers and office suits should be next
projects after desktops

Open source no panacea by mvw · 1999-04-02 06:51 · Score: 1

I think his point is valid. What features, reliability, or performance does gdb have over a commercial compiler? Your average open source project is nothing more than an attempt to clone and make free something that was innovated by your traditional proprietary company.

You have no clue. First gcc is a very good C compiler, it's C++ frontend is worse but latest incarnation egcs is going to change this.

gcc is unique in one regard it runs on dozens of plattforms and supports even more plattforms as cross compiler.

Cygnus is making some dough by adding embedded processors as backends - latest prominent deal is the Playstation 2 chip, where gcc is the compiler of the development kit.

I worked on a client/server application where we had NT, Solaris and Sun clients, Solaris and Sun servers. It was a major relief to use Emacs as IDE on all plattforms, to use gcc/g++/g77/egcs for compilation and gdb for debugging.

Just twisted thoughts... by mvw · 1999-04-02 02:23 · Score: 1

The mozilla.org people could recruit many helpers now who don't want to let the project die.

I hope they publish some introduction/state of the nation report to make entry easy.

The Law of Letters by Aron+S-T · 1999-04-03 05:59 · Score: 1

I am about to coin a new law:

Anyone in the free software/open source/your descriptive tag here community who is referred to by initials only. has an outsize ego.

I read "JWZ"'s post and why is he resigning. I wish him only the best. His role in creating the Mozilla project is enough of an accomplishment to make him worthy of entering the free software hall of fame.

But enough with the ego, guys. "Le project c'est moi" is the exact opposite of what the free software movement is all about. It's about community and sharing. No one individual, not even Linus Torvalds is irreplaceable. If anyone goes away, many more will come in his/her (we need more of these) place, of equal talent, to carry on.

I've worked in corporate environments, so I certainly understand Mr. Z's frustrations, and his fear of working under AOL. So as a personal decision, I'm sure he did the right thing. But then he made the egotistical mistake of confusing his own personal feelings, hurts and needs as somehow being identical with those of the project he helped create.

As a potential USER of Mozilla, sure I'm frustrated that it's not there yet. But as an owner of a development company which lives and dies with Internet standards, I am thrilled by the quite brave decision of Mozilla to go with standards instead of continuing down the dead end path it started. Moreover, that decision is in the best interest of the free software community at large, since ultimately open standards are what will preserve and protect our freedom.

So we have to wait a few more months. Big deal. In the end of the day, the new lean, mean, standards-based Mozilla will blow away IE and be the tool we are all waiting for. To call Mozilla a failure, is a very short sighted comment, related to ego issues and not to reality.

Mozilla.org contribution Poll? by Chris+Siegler · 1999-04-02 06:50 · Score: 1

Bandwidth just wasn't the problem. Once you have pulled the SeaMonkey tree, updating your tree two or three times a week takes only about 15 minutes over a 33.6k modem.

Uhh... yes he did. by Chris+Siegler · 1999-04-02 04:48 · Score: 1

I'd guess not. His work on Mozilla.org was as evangalist, not as a programmer. Check Bonsai, but I don't think he's checked in code for a long time.

Is this for real? by Chris+Blaise · 1999-04-02 02:22 · Score: 1

I think it's typical of the mentality of a founder-esque employee who in unable to grow with the company. Throughout our industry, you'll find many, many examples of people who were "there in the beginning" who are unable to make the shift as a company becomes successful.

I don't know if it's neccessarily "bad" though. Some people simply work better in that startup environment and perhaps that's where they're best at. From what I've read about the first year of Netscape, it was a really tight-knit family with incredible accomplishments. That's a tough act to follow or even the recapture and I think for some people, whether they would admit it or not, that period is the "win". After that, it's a case of "Where do you go when you're at the top?"

For many people, it's difficult, if not impossible to realize they need to accept the reset button and discover their next big goal.

What about Sun??? by Doug+Merritt · 1999-04-02 04:32 · Score: 1

The thing that puzzles me is that he doesn't say a word about Sun Microsystems. Exactly how things will shake out with the Alliance isn't clear to any of us at Sun or Netscape yet, and the cross-company meetings just barely started, so I can only assume that he made up his mind to leave a long time ago, and didn't care what the future with Sun might bring: he was just bummed out that the early days of Netscape are gone.

I sort of understand and I sort of don't. I know what it's like to be burnt out, but this is right on the cusp of major changes.

Of course, his vesting party was a long time ago now, so I would presume that he is now financially independent, and therefore, why work for someone else at all, if it's not rewarding every day? I guess I would have left a while ago, if I were in his shoes.

--
Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary

whither netscape?... by nadador · 1999-04-02 02:14 · Score: 1

JWZ can not be alone in his feelings of frustration with the mozilla project. I feel some of the same frustrations, but as someone who tried to help contribute at the very start, but was turned off by the absolute jungle of code that was first release, not as an insider. However, beyond that, there is a more important question.

Where next? If we resign ourselves to the idea that Mozilla as a project is heading down hill and that Netscape the Browser is heading toward insignificance, where does that leave the nerd community, those of us (the majority of slashdotters) who don't use a platform that IE is available on, and wouldn't use IE for moral reasons anyway? Where do we go?

Honestly, this can do one of two things for the Mozilla Project. You can take it as a stab in the heart, a loss of a major resource, and proof positive that you're in trouble. Or, you can take it as a sign that the project needs to be reinvigorated, that everyone should take a couple of days off and find that spirit that made Netscape such a cool company and a terrific product. That's really what JWZ misses, the spirit of a company on the move, on the cutting edge, the urgency of getting a good product out.

Open source or almost open source projects can fail, but seeing as how the nerd community has very few other options, this one needs to be a success.

Andrew Gardner

--

Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside a dog, its too dark to read.

Too bad... by Bruce+Perens · 1999-04-02 05:36 · Score: 1

Too bad Jamie had to leave. It was the right decision for him.

Various commenters pointed out that Open Source doesn't work so well if you release non-working code with a real steep learning curve. They are right. So, here's proof that we can't pull a rabbit out of a hat.

Thanks

Bruce

--
Bruce Perens.

Jamie Knows a good Web Server when he sees one by Anthony · 1999-04-02 20:40 · Score: 1

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Sat, 03 Apr 1999 10:40:21 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.4 (Unix)
Last-modified: Wed, 02 Sep 1998 08:47:24 GMT
Etag: "10cb20a-10aa-35ed061c"
Accept-ranges: bytes
Content-length: 4266
Connection: close
Content-type: text/html
(HEAD for www.jwz.org)

--
Slashdot: Where nerds gather to pool their ignorance

see cathedral and bazaar by Dastardly · 1999-04-02 06:17 · Score: 1

oh, so in order for the "bazaar" to be successful, first I have to most of the heavy lifting and then give the code away for free to the rest of the world.

Not exactly, but you should have something that compiles, runs, and does something useful. It doesn't necesarily have to have every feature, or even be completely bug free. If you don't have something that runs minimally it is real hard to spark enough interest to gain critical mass and have the open source project take off. That bare minimum should not be heavy lifting by any stretch of the imagination.

Linus isn't focusing on Transmeta. :) by Pascal+Q.+Porcupine · 1999-04-02 03:14 · Score: 1

Remember a couple days ago when we saw that article on Linus going to Russia to work on the E2K?

Or was that another damn april fool's article?
---

--
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?

This is extremely depressing by cthonious · 1999-04-02 01:21 · Score: 1

We all have such high hopes for Mozilla, it is so depressing to hear that so few outside people have picked it up. We keep hearing from the press about how mozilla is "on track" and now this. One gets the impression that the whole project has been a disaster.

Unfortunately, jwz is right. Netscape has become huge, greedy and unweildly. The management is making stupid decisions (like the effort poured into 4.5). Big companies are just that. Obcessed with the bottom line, they get too fat and conservative, and finally, paralysis sets in.

Perhaps it is for the best, but one cannnot be but saddened, as when your two best friends start hating each other.

--

support gun control: take guns from cops

Too early to give up by Julian+Morrison · 1999-04-02 08:22 · Score: 1

One important fact about open source projects: the ones people use most get the most code attention.

Once Mozilla gets a product out the door that works well enough to replace the old Netscape 4.x browsers, then I expect the developer group to grow explosively. This is when we will see for real if it is going to sink or swim.

JWZ by jra · 1999-04-05 10:29 · Score: 1

> jwz is one of the few latter-day saints to
> become known by their initials. i mean, you
> know, GLS, RMS, ESR, ETC.

"ETC"?

Who's that?

Cheers,

nonsense by arielb · 1999-04-03 18:31 · Score: 1

that just shows how little you know about mozilla. IE5's CSS1 is sorely lacking compared to the m3 build. And it actually supports the w3c DOM unlike IE

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Mozilla's Dominion by arielb · 1999-04-03 18:14 · Score: 1

hey I'm not dead. I started my site almost when the mozilla code was first released and I'm still kicking at http://members.xoom.com/mozilla5

--
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This might be a good thing.. by John+Fulmer · 1999-04-02 00:49 · Score: 1

JWZ had an extremely long, stormy history with Netscape and the browser, and has been reportedly unhappy for a long time as well. He is absolutly right about Mozilla STILL being primarily a Netscape product, with Netscape engineers doing a lot of the development.

However, maybe this could be a developer wake up call for more 'outside' people to start contributing more to the Mozilla project.

It's unfortunate that JWZ is throwing the baby (mozilla) out with the bathwater (AOL), and can't find it possible to donate some of his time to it's further development. That is what Open Source is all about, right?

jf

This might be a good thing.. by John+Fulmer · 1999-04-02 01:11 · Score: 1

Mozilla is definately a baby, granted a rather slow moving, awkward one at the moment.

And there are always POTENTIAL babies, you just have to work at them... ;)

This might be a good thing.. by tomblackwell · 1999-04-02 00:56 · Score: 1

I think his problem is there is no baby.

JWZ Resignation by tsikora · 1999-04-02 04:46 · Score: 1

A sad day! Probably long overdue. He stuck it out in an otherwise unbearable atmosphere. Believe me I am no stranger to this type of atmosphere. It's like slowly sucking your soul from you. It would have been kinder to have laid-him off originally. jwz is one of Mozilla's founding fathers and Netscapes actions up to and including AOL's take over must have been like a stab in the heart. Has anyone forgotten AOL and what it stands for. It has been an industry byword and an abomination. Is it now legit now that it has taken
over Netscape. I hope no one expects continued cutting-edge releases because Netscape exists no more. I would not doubt if Sun starts taking it over as a result of their recent liason with AOL.

--
-- Ted tsikora@powerusersbbs.com

Except, anything.0 from MS is beta. by argonoid · 1999-04-02 06:12 · Score: 1

Like IE4.0, IE5.0 is quite buggy. Granted, it's less buggy than NS4.5, and faster than NS4.5, but I still think aheitner is right when he said "they're on an unstable beta of ver5". When I'm forced to use Windows, I'll stick to IE 4.01, at least until a less-beta version of IE5 (i.e. 5.01 or 5.0 SP1 or whatever) comes out.

Danger Will Robinson - MS Astroturf by Mike+Cornall · 1999-04-02 04:23 · Score: 1

For those who don't know the background, astroturfing refers to an attempt to use paid help to fake grassroots support for something (e.g. a bill in congress). Microsoft was caught in the act preparing for an astroturf campaign to help them against the DOJ. The plan was to pay people to write letters-to-the-editor, put posts in newsgroups, and so on. All the letters and posts would be written so as to appear to come from an individual, i.e. a concerned member of the public, but they would always follow a script designed to push the Microsoft agenda. The controversy may have subsided, but there is ample evidence that the astroturf continued.

With JWZ'z resignation, Microsoft can smell blood, and you can bet your last dollar that they have moved quickly to figure out how to turn it to their advantage. After all, the Netscape browser is one of the greatest impediments to MS expanding their OS monopoly to the Internet (others include Linux, Apache, and Java). As long as there is a viable browser on the market besides IE, it prevents MS from playing with the web standards. This is a greater danger than anything they could do to Linux, because an OS runs independently, while the web lives or dies on standards. If MS could manage to become the leader in the browser market, they could do what they have always done--implement complex, hidden, and quickly-changing standards that no one else can follow. It would become almost impossible to avoid using IE, at least part of the time, in order to access the web. And, to keep up with the changes, we would be forced to pay, and pay, and pay for the "upgrades" (whether to IE or Windows).

The biggest victory MS could have would be if they could get people (users and developers) to lose confidence in Netscape, and especially in the open source version, Mozilla. Remember that OS/2 didn't lose to Windows for technically reasons--it lost through lack of support by IBM, which was a direct result of loss of confidence by IBM management. IBM lost because the were foolich enough to listen to the barrage of MS-sponsered articles and editorials, with their constant message: "Of course it's inevitable that Windows will take over".

Consider the above post in this light, and what do we see? It has all the earmarks of MS propaganda. It does not really discuss JWZ's resignation. It doesn't talk about how we can move forward to ensure the success of Mozilla, or some other good standards-supporting browser. The only purpose of this post seems to be to support the MS message: "It is time to give up on this Netscape foolishness. Though you may not like it, IE is inevitable".

All I can say is, don't fall for this. As tragic as JWZ's resignation may be, it is not the end of the world--Internet standards will survive as long as we keep up our confidence. We need to, and will, do whatever it takes, whether that is supporting AOL's Communicator, Mozilla, Forkzilla, Opera, the KDE File Manager (try it), or some completely new alternative.

MS Astroturf - Maybe Not This Time by Mike+Cornall · 1999-04-02 05:06 · Score: 1

Okay, I've re-read the original post again, and maybe Aaron is too disrespectful of Microsoft for his post to be real astroturf (No, wait--thats just what they want us to think! Bwahahaha :^). Aaron's post, however, is not helping the cause.

First, Aaron's description of Netscape's early days is a mischaracterization, at best.

Second, while Netscape did tend to add their own html extensions, as far as I can tell it was always done to add new capabilities. This is a far cry from many of Microsoft's extensions, some of which seem mainly intended to break Netscape.

Third, even if Netscape did extend standards in the past, the current AOL/Netscape/Mozilla efforts seem to be strongly supportive of standards.

And last, I had a serious problem with the phrase "Microsoft dominated web". If ever there was a lie that MS wanted us to believe, this is it. MS is not even close to dominating the web, but if we keep repeating that phrase long enough, it will become a reality.

My warning about MS astroturf is still valid. If you look further up among the posts, and look over the last couple of weeks of Slashdot (since about the time of Ed Muth's anti-Linux comments), I think you will find dozens of candidates. Just--be careful. Question everything you read, and always check it against your knowledge of the facts. Don't let your opinions be formed for you.

Microsoft and Mosaic by Mike+Cornall · 1999-04-02 05:20 · Score: 1

You forgot to mention that Microsoft is being taken to court for their Mosaic license. Do you think MS knew that they were going to be giving IE away when they licensed Mosaic for a percentage of revenue, rather than a fixed price? Can you say "negotiating in bad faith"?

Another key Mozilla figure departs by Sam+Ruby · 1999-04-02 15:53 · Score: 1

Full story

"They've both done really excellent work in getting Mozilla where it is now. But Mozilla is bigger than Netscape, and it's certainly bigger than two or three people. Obviously it's a negative thing for us to have these two leave, but it's not fatal for us at all."

--
- Sam Ruby

This might be a good thing.. by llywrch · 1999-04-02 06:23 · Score: 1

>JWZ had an extremely long, stormy history with Netscape and the browser, and has been reportedly unhappy
>for a long time as well. He is absolutly right about Mozilla STILL being primarily a Netscape product, with
>Netscape engineers doing a lot of the development.
>
>However, maybe this could be a developer wake up call for more 'outside' people to start contributing more to
>the Mozilla project.

I wonder if there are any more outside people available to contribute to Mozilla.

I was looking for some code to build on for a browser for the Palm Pilot, & happened to look at the ftp site for Arena -- development on that Open Source browser came to a halt at about the time Mozilla went Open Source. All the other people interested in browser hacking apparently either have their own projects (e.g. Lynx) or do it for a living on a proprietary product (e.g. Opera).

And to contribute to a software package that interprets & renders HTTP/XML/CSS/etc. is not something that anyone with a few programming classes can slide into & begin to code for. I'm learning that there is a steep learning curve to it.

Geoff

--
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p

The Audacity and the Idiocy by Evan+Vetere · 1999-04-02 00:56 · Score: 1

This really strikes me as infantile.

A year ago, Jamie said that if Mozilla fails, Open Source will fail - in approximately those words. Now, on the one-year anniversary bash he organized, he steps out and accuses Mozilla.org of failing, and ditches the effort - and expects everyone to keep on partyin' hard at some dive in San Fransisco celebrating what he just told them wasn't worthy of their praise.

He's driving a bullet into his own effort and giving up, walking away. I just lost nearly all my respect for this man.

Let's see it Rob! by scrytch · 1999-04-03 00:55 · Score: 1

unix in general needs a good browser. oh and there's BeOS and MacOS too, though Cyberdog still has a big fanbase on the latter.

right now my job pretty much revolves around using a three-tier app (problem tracking db), using java servlets to access a db backend, and the front-end is web-based and HEAVILY javascripted. Despite that, it still feels like loading web pages, taking around 3-5 seconds to flip between summary, problem description, ticket lists, open filters/queries, and so on. It really sucks. If we had a browser that supported DOM, we could just rewrite the HTML in the page on the fly and it would redisplay itself without having to do all this load/refresh/redraw crap. Perhaps it can be done now with layers, but last I looked at the code to write and display them dynamically like that, I ran screaming.

And I DON'T want to do it in JavaScript, which has become a crawling horror and the best (or worst) language joke this side of INTERCAL. This language has astonishing concepts like having THREE equality operators that use = signs. There's =, ==, and now ===, the last being an operator like `eq' in lisp. Can you say unreadable? To top off this insanity, a literal false is false in an identity test as in "if (x)"), but an object declared Boolean and given a false value has a TRUE value in identity tests, meaning "if (x)" and "if (x == true)" return DIFFERENT RESULTS. Changing the version attribute in the script tag changes this behavior. God forbid you'd ever mix them.

IE at least allows one to escape from this monstrous insanity by using other languages to manipulate its object model, INCLUDING perl and python. With Netscape, I'm stuck with this phenomenal idiocy.

--
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.

open source failure by elflord · 1999-04-02 04:09 · Score: 1

> the Linux kiddies are fond to point out that with open source, you can modify and hack your own software.

This is a straw man. Everyone knows that most linux users can't make a major contribution to kernel developement. The advantage of OSS is that you have peer-reviewed code, ie somebody else can , and will look at the code.

The problem with Mozilla ( AS JWZ STATES ) is that the OS developement model can not save a project that is already dead. Moreover, you had better have a useful codebase before you open up. It's not enough to say "hey, let's start an open source project together and write something new". Then the developers can add bugfixes and patches on top of an already functional codebase. This is how the linux kernel started ( it worked before he pulled in outsiders ) and the fact that you need something working from day 1 escaped Mozilla's founders.

Open source no panacea by elflord · 1999-04-02 07:50 · Score: 1

Performance? My proprietary compiler beats GCC hands down every day in speed of code produce and speed at which code is produced.

Your proprietry compiler is not as portable as GCC (-; So I guess GCC has an advantage in the feature battle.

Your average open source project is nothing more than an attempt to clone and make free something that was innovated by your traditional proprietary company.

Huh ? well it depends on what you mean by "innovated". Many OSS projects are "clones", but there are several that aren't, and some of these offer more functionality than many closed source products. (sendmail, perl, Apache, X11, kerberos ) . And even the "clones" ( such as GIMP ) add features of their own.

Open source no panacea by elflord · 1999-04-02 03:59 · Score: 1

"Compete only on price, not features" ... ?

How about reliability ? performance ? On these points, OSS such as apache, linux, FreeBSD, and postgreSQL soundly whip their MS alternatives.

By the way, now that you mention features ... Linux kills NT server for server finctionality.

Cheers,

Is it now that Microsoft will conquer the Net? by Larne · 1999-04-02 05:35 · Score: 1

> Without mozzila, wich browser do we turn to? Mozzila was maybe the only one with it's code open.

There are other open source browsers in development, although as far as I can tell none are as far along as mozilla. Mnemonic seems to be the one that is moving the quickest. Their site also has a page listing some other alternatives, both available and developing.

Arguably it would be better to concentrate all efforts on a single best candidate, and no doubt JWZ was hoping Mozilla would be that candidate. It seems another key incredient of an OSS project's success is a single, concentrated development effort.

Intertwingle by kels · 1999-04-02 00:55 · Score: 1

Maybe now he'll really create Intertwingle. As much as I respect what he did at Mosaic/Netscape/Mozilla, my favorite JWZ creation has always been BBDB.

--
"I believe that the cult of the particular brings only death - for it bases order on likeness." St.-Exupery

American Pie by MaxwellsSilverHammer · 1999-04-02 04:25 · Score: 1

"I saw Satan laughing with delight
the day the music died."
-Don McLean

Bill Gates and His Minions must be loving all this. ("We will bury them with their own confusion.")

He's right on the big points by dveditz · 1999-04-02 11:39 · Score: 1

"Bugzilla" is not a snide name for Mozilla, it is the name of the but reporting tool created for the Mozilla project. Bugzilla is open source and RH happens to be using it.

Let's see it Rob! by dveditz · 1999-04-02 11:49 · Score: 1

Far more than 30 people outside Netscape have contributed small fixes and such. The 30 figure refers to major submissions and active on-going development.

Let's see it Rob! by dveditz · 1999-04-02 11:50 · Score: 1

(and 30 is probably someone's wild-assed guess at that).

Uhh... yes he did. by markhb · 1999-04-02 04:27 · Score: 1

I didn't mean he wouldn't leave Netscape, I meant he didn't say he wouldn't stop working on Mozilla as a non-employee hacker. Then, alas, I went back and reread, and found this:

The Mozilla project has become too depressing, and too painful, for me to continue working on. I wanted Mozilla to become something that it has not, and I am tired of fighting and waiting to make it so. I have felt very ineffectual, and that's just not a good feeling.

I misread that while I was still on only my second cup of coffee. Sorry. Even sorrier for Moz'.

--
Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.

One thing I didn't notice in his rants... by markhb · 1999-04-02 01:30 · Score: 1

He never said he wouldn't continue to work on Mozilla. It is, after all, an Open Source project badly in need of non-Netscape contributors!

--
Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.

The CVS download is a PAIN. by Byter · 1999-04-02 15:52 · Score: 1

I've attempted to contribute to this project, but it is hard to even get off the ground with the source code.

1) If I do a cvs update -Pd, I get ALL of the source code from the cvs server...ARRRGH.

2) The makefiles are misformed rather often, meaning that make clean does not work.

3) It keeps creating a new mozilla directory..why would I ever want to do the cvs update from outside the mozilla directory?

The viewer is nice and quick now, but I've stopped
doing daily builds of the code because I'm tired of all the update hassles.

Except, anything.0 from MS is beta. by IntlHarvester · 1999-04-02 07:05 · Score: 1

Seems more stable to me. "Active Desktop" hasn't crashed once on me since it's release, which was a daily problem on this hairball NT box here.
--

--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.

Is this for real? by IntlHarvester · 1999-04-02 04:18 · Score: 1

Throughout our industry, you'll find many, many examples of people who were "there in the beginning" who are unable to make the shift as a company becomes successful.

Except, that it's arguable whether Netscape has been successful, or if they have been riding the success of the early versions.

He points this out when he says that Netscape doesn't have the managerial or engineering talent to pull it off. And if you look at it, it seems reasonable - they've bombed in the server market (hope Sun can help there), and they turned their flagship product into such a POS that they've had to start over from scratch. Not even to mention all the crazy half-done products they started to only later drop.

I wish Netscape a lot of luck, because they're looking like they need it.

--

--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.

Death or Glue... by ultra1 · 1999-04-02 06:38 · Score: 1

Either way, the horse is dead and ends up as glue. I fail to see your point.

How about, "You favorite horse, one you raised from birth, is being sold by your father to be used as glue. Would you drive out to the badlands in the middle of the night and set it free to run with the wild horses, never to see it again, or would you let your father sell it?".

jwz raised the horse, put a bullet in it, then bitched that it was going to end up as glue. Whatever. The guy isn't into OS, he isn't into money, he's into jwz and jwz alone. So what if a few bridges get burnt on the way? We'll always have jwz.

--
-- ultra1

Mozilla and ESR by ultra1 · 1999-04-02 06:43 · Score: 1

I wonder how long ESR will keep pointing to the Mozilla effort as a big success; specifically, one he helped bring about.

From this angle, it looks like a big tits-up to me... maybe he should stop doing so many 'favors' for us :-P.

--
-- ultra1

open source failure by miscellaneous · 1999-04-02 01:33 · Score: 1

ummm....not to burst your bubble, but just because someone doesn't contribute to linux doesn't mean that they're a "glamour user". you seem to be assuming that everyone who uses linux is either a programmer or a posing leech.

this sort of misses the point: operating systems aren't written *for* programmers; they're written *by* programmers. they're used by programmers, sysadmins, and joe schmoes.

-k. ^-^

--
-k. ^-^ ^D

JWZ by miscellaneous · 1999-04-06 08:35 · Score: 1

Erica T. Cromwell.

*phhht*. Philistines.

--
-k. ^-^ ^D

correction... by miscellaneous · 1999-04-02 01:27 · Score: 1

jwz isn't exactly *my* age, he's actually prolly a good bit older than i am. as a matter of fact, he may not even be *that* much younger than the other guy, for all i know.

he sure *seems* a helluva lot younger, tho.

-k. ^-^

--
-k. ^-^ ^D

open source failure by Compuser · 1999-04-02 12:24 · Score: 1

Besides the flaws with Mozilla development
that other people have pointed out, the
slow going of the project may be the result
of NPL. While being a "open source" license
it gives Netscape a priviledged position,
hence people were and are cautious about
contributing to the project. One has to wonder
how much development their code would get if
it were released under pure BSD license.
But even with all of the above, the project
IS coming together and IS NOT dead. When the
going gets tough, the development goes slower,
that's all.

This proves that licenses do matter by Compuser · 1999-04-03 17:09 · Score: 1

Given Mozilla's choice of GTK for toolkit, it would be reasonable
to expect it's integration with Gnome, as a kind of KFM on steroids,
if it were released under GPL.
That would certainly boost outside (non-Netscape) efforts, perhaps
to a point where GNU would adopt it as one of its projects,
eliminating any perception of Netscape control, at which point
a lot more people would feel comfortable contributing to the project.
My guess is that people are comfortable with GPL or BSD licenses
but other licenses which do not have as much history or appear
slanted toward one company generate uncertainty and doubt
(usually not fear), no matter how open those other licenses are.

Zawinski views, Perseverance, and Evil Empires. by Roach · 1999-04-02 06:34 · Score: 1

It is practically impossible to make a web browser truly open source today. There are too many (arguably) necessary components to the browser that are proprietary, like the Java.

A agree with the Anonymous Coward that posted "Bob Lisbonne needs to go". That is so true. Netscape is down, but not necessarily out if they would get rid of that guy.

It is ironic that on mozilla.org there is a link to "The Cathedral & Bazaar" when the Mozilla project does not even fit the model. It is also ironic that Jamie Zawinski resigns on the date of the projects anniversary.

I wish this was another April fools day article.

Zawinski defiantly has valid reasons for his resignation, however I wish he had not thrown in the towel. It is only through perseverance that our dreams are achieved.

Mozilla would or will pick up momentum when the open source community that wishes to contribute to it has some source code that is both comprehensive and can be compiled. To gain momentum the project can not afford to lose valuable people and the intellectual fuel it needs to accelerate to a completed product.

There are some very insightful views by Zawinski on his web site www.jwz.org moreover the page censor.html is defiantly worth taking the time to read. Spend some time on this guys web site!

AOL is an evil empire, along with Micro$oft. Are they in bed together or competing against each other? I would say both. Their shared vision is the all mighty dollar and they play by the rules Zawinski describes in the page aol.html and censor.html

I foresee an Internet dominated by AOL and modeled on a Micro$oft architecture with AOL rules and censorship running all Micro$oft products as the future... This is not my vision, I hate this vision, maybe it is a nightmare I am having.

Will AOL use Netscape in version 5? I don't understand the relationship with MSIE bonded AOL version 4 and what the company plans on doing with Netscape.

Open source no panacea by kaisyain · 1999-04-02 05:36 · Score: 1

Did you just ignore the part where he wrote "a lot of open source software can only compete on price, not features"? He said "a lot". Not all.

How about reliability? I can think of a lot of drivers for Win that are more reliable than linux drivers. There are a lot of CD player programs for Windows that are more stable than their open source counterparts.

Performance? My proprietary compiler beats GCC hands down every day in speed of code produce and speed at which code is produced.

I think his point is valid. What features, reliability, or performance does gdb have over a commercial compiler? Your average open source project is nothing more than an attempt to clone and make free something that was innovated by your traditional proprietary company.

Besides, why are you comparing open source software to only MS alternatives? Do you actually think postgreSQL outperforms or is more reliable than my Oracle database?

Open Source and Jobs by kaisyain · 1999-04-02 05:17 · Score: 1

Has this guy ever had a real job?

I thought one of the points that the FSF often makes is that programmers love their jobs so much they don't need to be paid so much for them. If you don't love your job why should you stick with it? To prove to someone else that you can do it? Why let yourself be a slave to other people's opinions if you don't have to?

I think he's right. It's been a year and they don't have jack (= a shipping product) to show for it. I'm sure he has better things to do with his time.

The Big Reason: Excuse #2 by MikeDartt · 1999-04-02 05:22 · Score: 1

It's unfortunate that NS didn't learn all it could from CatB. ESR is rather frank about the fact that to successfully go open source, you have to have some working, usable, useful source to open first. I've seen a lot of new projects and single-person projects that I've heard one announcement from and then disappear. Granted, many of these are near-clones of other applications, but NS wasn't. But from what I've seen, people contribute most to something when they're using an app, see a feature missing or a bug, and do something about it b/c it will *add* to the pleasure/utility of using the program. (E.g. adding session logging to GAIM.) Asking people, "Hey, won't you write our program for us?" just isn't going to work very well.

I hope NS realizes this, and soon. It looks as though they're taking the "Mozilla is not Netscape" bromide in their own way: that they don't need to take it as seriously as a "real" product--the "magic pixie dust of open source" that JWZ mentioned. As it stands, Gecko is pretty much all they've shown to the public, and though it does the tests nicely, it's actually slower at web surfing (at least in my experience). Meanwhile, IE5 is getting good reviews, and all the press is noting the lack of significant progress with Mozilla.

Before anyone flames me, I want to thank everyone who has been hacking the browser. It sounds like you've gotten the short end of the stick in many ways. If NS goes down in flames (or quietly dies), then at least we'll have *something* to use.

It sounds like JWZ made the right decision. I hope Netscape listens to him and releases the Communicator code. It may be their only chance.

Er... that was an April fools joke :-) by robinjo · 1999-04-02 04:10 · Score: 1

Linus is really not going to Russia :-)

Bad Technique by mr2� · 1999-04-02 02:25 · Score: 1

It's a shame to see JWZ leaving Mozilla. I really admire what he's done over the past year (and before when he was preaching to the execs to make this happen). I wish him all the luck.

However, I think what he posted was unprofessional. It was incredibly negative, loaded with resignation. When you become a powerful influence over a body of people you need to be able to put personal feelings by the wayside instead of airing them out at inopportune times.

There are a lot of people that look to him for leadership, so what do you think their reaction is going to be to this? Do you think this boosts moral among the fantastic programmers working on next generation of Navigator? I mean if someone with all his ability is giving up, what the hell kind of message is that conveying to the other guys and gals in the trenches crunching out the code?

He should have been more consciencious with his departing explaination to try to not convey too much negativity. Wait until someone else has filled his shoes and garner the support of the Mozilla team before releasing something like this. If he really cared he would try to make the transition smoother for the next guy or gal taking his place. What he's done seems rather selfish. He expected too much, too soon, with market pressure bearing down and he got let down. So he's giving up.

God, I hate that phrase.

His leaving is the best for him and Mozilla. If he kept with the project, feeling like he does, he would probably be more of a hinderance than a help.

This doesn't only apply to JWZ, but to our other leaders (yeah, they don't like being called that but they are in a fashion) in the OSS community. They need to think first about what the impact will be when their negative writings wash over those of us who look to them for inspiration, knowing that we'll never be as great as they are. JWZ has more talent in his pinky-tip than I'll ever have.

This should also be a wake-up call! Those of us not doing their part should go over to Mozilla.org and lend a hand. If you can't code, run the builds and report bugs. I believe Netscape will overcome this hurdle, but they need support.

Anyway, again I wish nothing but good luck, and happiness to JWZ. Good luck to him!

Jwz... will be missed. by GP · 1999-04-02 02:08 · Score: 1

Even though I go between windows and linux on a daily basis, I still use Netscape.... I even install Win98 without IE4.. because I believe in the values Netscape had (has?). It's good vs. evil... netscape vs. microsoft.

What if there is no good? What if it's just evil vs. Evil?

The Audacity and the Idiocy by warwick · 1999-04-02 05:37 · Score: 1

Your favorite horse, one you raised from birth, is being sold by your father to be used as glue. Would you shoot it in the head or let your father sell it?

--
If your /. ID is below 25,000 you probably outgrew this and got a weblog

I feel for the guy by AlienJ · 1999-04-02 02:55 · Score: 1

I totally agree. Perhaps this is part of the reason that I do everything I can any more NOT to program.

I used to love it. I could whip out stuff sooo fast and squash bugs even faster.

But the higher ups just never got it where I work.

Some of my favorite stories about where I work:

1-I write this kickass GUI. I place all the controls about where they are, start hooking them up, and get the main functionality in there. I send it around to let folks see what a cool product it is going to be. I ask for responses to get some input on how it works and what needs to be changed. What does the BIG BOSS(TM) send back to me? "The labels on two controls do not line up." Pardon me? That is piddly ass shit. I wanna know what you think of how it is working!

B) We go to this meeting and have the BIG BOSS(TM) meet with us. We tell him about our thoughts on this program we are writing. We ask him "what do you want this to do?" He tells us that there are three things this program has to do: A) It has to be fast B) It has to be accurate C) It has to look good. What kind of help is that?!?!? Isn't that our goals 99% of the time? What was bad is everyone except me starts writing these idiotic comments down on their paper. I got fed up and said "No duh! We want to know what you want this to do! We don't want givens!"

I am still at the same shithole place. The attitude from the higher ups is still the same. I swear my life feels like a Dilbert comic strip 99% of the time. I have pretty much given up trying to change things for the better and having them shot down all the time. I have good ideas, but nobody will act on them. To be honest, I am about ready to grab ahold of the source code and flee this place and roll my own system.

*sigh*

I'm a little surprised by JWZ's conclusions by linuchristo · 1999-04-03 17:19 · Score: 1

Linux 2.2 is more than a million lines of source, too.

Its a cold day in hell by GuNgA-DiN · 1999-04-02 14:26 · Score: 1

I really liked what he said about AOHell:

"AOL is about centralization and control of content. Everything that is good about the Internet, everything that differentiates it from television, is about empowerment of the individual."

When people like Jamie no longer want to work there what's the point? You might as well be Microserfs. Big Business does nothing but KILL the creative spirit. Money and Creativity DON'T MIX !!

Thank you for all your years of effort Jamie. At least you tried to change the world. That's more than most of the morons online can ever say. You may not have won - but you showed it was possible!
---
The statement below is true.

rationalizations? by logycke · 1999-04-02 07:31 · Score: 1

however, maybe it's a good thing:

a) maybe jwz can get out there and do something he really enjoys now, which might be good for all of us :), and

b) maybe this will act as a wakeup call. with jwz gone, mozilla can go one of two ways: either somebody's gonna do *something*, or it's gonna die.

c) maybe all of us losers with delusions of grandeur will go download the tarball again...

so, i personally wanna wish jwz good luck.

These are the same types of things that initially went through my head, so I'll probably just end up repeating them.

I agree that if he feels miserable there, he should leave and find a project that will help him reclaim his happiness. However, to the company or project that loses him, yes, they may very well be able to recover and even to continue building on the work that has already been done and to make it a huge success - but his departure is still a big loss for them.

For Open Source, however, it may be a milestone of sorts; this seems to be the first case of a change in leadership occurring in a major Open Source project. Granted, it's a position that's funded by a large corporation, but as jwz pointed out when AOL bought Netscape, no matter what happens, the source is out there. As long as someone, somewhere, steps up, an Open Source project cannot die.

On a side note, I don't believe he listed negative sentiments towards AOL as one of his "reason/excuses." Despite his repeated assurances that Mozilla is not AOL, I think that the buyout hurt Mozilla tremendously.

dot party? by MindStalker · 1999-04-02 02:39 · Score: 1

does this mean that he won't be at the dot party?

The dot party was last night. That was when he announced his resignation. Bet that had to suck though. But why else don't you think we didn't see his reason for resignation till today (he announced it last night). He probably spent the rest of the night getting really plastered, I know I would have.

I Don't Miss Netscape by mlanett · 1999-04-02 09:34 · Score: 1

>What matters is that Netscape attempted to make
>the web proprietary with their Netscape only tags

Not entirely. Realize that the existing browser at the time was Mosaic, which was crap (we'd written it and were in a position to know). Marca saw the W3 as a very slow, worthless board, and we decided to "make" the standard. The reasons were mostly to improve the abilities of HTML to the point where it could compare to what AOL could do (ironic isn't it!). For instance before tables, we had "columns" which could automatically wrap text into tables! Great feature, although nixed before release. But all the new tags were there to create a browser which could be sold to ISPs who wanted to make an AOL-competitive content site. The plan really was to superdistribute the browser and make money off the server, so the browser needed to be the best (par none), and also have support for stuff in the server (cookies, SSL). Marca *did* want to dominate the world, and often commented that if we were under investigation by the DOJ then that'd be a sign of success :) But none of that early innovation(!) stuff was proprietary.

I don't really know about "smart browsing" but again I'd say it was an extension of searching-in-the-url-field, a friendly feature you might expect AOL to have, rather than a proprierty protocol push.

I found it amusing that MS was winning the browser war partly through it's bundling and all that, but partly by writing a better browser - NOT a typical MS approach. So Netscape acted somewhat Microsoftian and Microsoft acted, well, more normal. An IE3 download was better than an NS4 download. Of course when they started bundling with Windows w/ IE3&4 they went full tilt to monopoly abuse, but that's different.

My credentials, btw: employee #14 at Netscape, even before jamie. NCSA before that. And long since departed.

~mark

Losing leadership by Sentrik · 1999-04-02 04:51 · Score: 1

I think the passing of the "figureheads" would be a good thing. Maybe with the passing of media attention, the open source community could get back to programming functional tools for the fun of it and not worry about creating something pretty to attract windows/mac users and impress the press.

"Blue Sky" early on. by ciphersnow · 1999-04-02 03:11 · Score: 1

Very early on in mozilla.org, I read the Blue Sky page. There was veritable begging for crazy ideas about new features. The impression I got was that the code was hard to understand and not everyone could be expected to figure it out (or even all the cvs like tools required to get started.) So, if you didn't want to bughunt in a million lines of code, just give wacky ideas about what you'd love to see included.

there were dozens of web sites, hundreds of mailing lists, just devoated to the discussion of what should be in mozilla.

This seemed all according to plan. I'm not justifying the plan, I'm just saying that this seemed to be what mozilla.org was aiming for. It was practically a rally call: "More features. That's the way to win the browser war."

--

Peace.

Let's see it Rob! by Foamy · 1999-04-02 04:49 · Score: 1

Agreed. We _know _ only 30 people from the outside have contributed code. So let's see if the /.ers will put up or shut up. I think neither...they'll just flame on and microdissect various licenses, the projects of which they'll never write a line of code for.

Linux does need a good browser... doesn't it?

Yo!

I hope he doesn't just fade out... by jzawodn · 1999-04-02 00:45 · Score: 1

JWZ would be a big loss if he just faded out. Hopefully he'll get excited about something else interesting in a better environment.

--

Jeremy D. Zawodny /

Small vs Large by GenePrescott · 1999-04-02 07:10 · Score: 1

I thought it interesting that "success" was characterized as easy during the Mosaic to Netscape early transition (small) and difficult by the Netscape of recent years (large). To the extent that characterization is correct then the creativity of the individual is now more important than the brand names of corporate structures.

Perhaps one issue is that openness has to "start open" and evolve rather than start proprietary and get itself adopted. For instance, I doubt that releasing the source code to any proprietary web server software will receive contributed code like Apache has.

And perhaps this is just one result of the notion I make (attributed to Negroponte) at:

http://www.taxtechcpa.com/Perspectives/DigitalSe lf.html

Open Source: philosophy or religion? by the+ed+menace · 1999-04-02 04:50 · Score: 1

I have a lot of respect for jwz and what he has done for Open Source and Netscape. But Open Source is under a lot of scrutiny. It is very damaging to have people like Stallman and Jamie act with such personal self-interest. Yet it is important the the movement has visible leadership.

And here is the great challenge of the Open Source, pointed to by the Cathedral and Baazar manifesto: Open Source is driven by many egos. Can it ever be different? The power of the Baazar comes from the many egos. On the other paw, the corporate management structure that creates the Cathedral also creates an atmosphere of responsibility that allows the corporation to be a publically-scrutinized organization. It has clear responsibilities and roles for people. When a person from Sun talks, their role in the organization tells you a lot about how to interpret their statements. The Baazar does not have this structure. Under scrutiny, outsiders do not know how to interpret the statements of any individual in the Baazar. Do they represent Open Source? Do they dictate its goals? Are they random? Are they a "part of" it or not? Without a formal organization, many of these questions are senseless. But outsiders demand accountability even for philosophies.

I don't know if Open Source will end up like "Zen", a philosophy, or "Catholicism", an organized religion. The movement itself doesn't seem to know, but scrutiny, visible leadership, commercial success, and aggression (e.g. anti-MSFT) tend to push things in the latter direction.

Is Open Source Incompatible With Deadlines? by DonkPunch · 1999-04-02 05:26 · Score: 1

This might make a good article someday....

I've noticed that the most successful open source projects tend to have open-ended deadlines. How long were people expecting Linux kernel 2.2? How long did it take to get to GNOME 1.0?

The collaborative open source model seems to prevent hard delivery dates. This may not be a bad thing -- I think part of the reason bad code gets shipped is because companies INSIST on delivering by x date.

In the case of Mozilla, however, they have pressure to release because everyone knows that Mozilla will form the core of Navigator 5. The fact that Navigator 4.5 has problems doesn't help one bit.

If Mozilla had been started from scratch as a standard no-deadline, no-pressure open project, I suspect fewer people would be frustrated with it.

Just my $.02 (and I'll probably get back change)

--

Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.

What's next for JWZ? by AtariDatacenter · 1999-04-02 02:21 · Score: 1

I forgot where I first learned about JWZ, but I must say that I'll be watching http://www.jwz.org/card.html to see his next business card! (An even more clever person would invest in the company he throws his weight at.)

Of course, Mozilla isn't his only project. The xscreensaver open-source project has always been a favorite of mine, and various other UNIX types in the company. (Who can't help but to love those sproingies?)

This proves that licenses do matter by Znork · 1999-04-02 02:35 · Score: 1

I must wonder how you came to that conclusion... Had Mozilla been GPL it would likely have garnered more serious outside support from various groups like the desktop projects who could have integrated it as a primary browser, the GPL browser projects who could have done joint development, etc. As is, code migration is difficult.

Open source no panacea by rking · 1999-04-03 05:24 · Score: 1

"Did you just ignore the part where he wrote "a lot of open source software can only compete on price, not features"? He said "a lot". Not all."

Sure, but as far as I can see this was an attempt to describe a chracteristic of Open Source. If you emphasise that it's true of a lot of Open Source software rather than typical of them, then it becomes irrelevant, because you could equally say that a lot of proprietary software can compete on neither price nor features (the ones that survive generally have marketing / user ignorance going for them).

Yes, it's true : most software, regardless of development model, is unexciting. Adding that the Open Source will typically have a price advantage hardly denigrates Open Source.

"Your average open source project is nothing more than an attempt to clone and make free something that was innovated by your traditional proprietary company."

Again, you describe a characteristic of typical software, whether produced as proprietary or as Open Source, but by referencing it to Open Source specifically you make it sound as though this is a criticism of Open Source, and by including that "average" you reserve a get-out when people name Free Software products that are innovative.

Most Open Source software, and most proprietary sofware, is "cloned" from existing software, generally with some attempt to improve features or interface. You can hardly have failed to notice that. Do you feel that we should have stuck with Visicalc (or whatever spreadsheet came first)? Or do you think that "cloning" successive spreadsheet products has been helpful? If the latter, why distinguish Free Software cloning from proprietary cloning?

Is this for real? by eraserX · 1999-04-02 15:08 · Score: 1

Great perspective.

my married co-workers said to me, "When you have two major responsibilities, you feel like you aren't doing either well."

Your co-worker's statement is quite sober. Thanks for the post. I hope Mozzilla lives on(at least for Linux).

mozilla.org /.-ed? by VP · 1999-04-02 04:33 · Score: 1

I am getting a "server error" when I try to connect...

Or is the resignation an April's fool, meant to lead to the first beta release of Mozilla? ;-)

Where To? by grem · 1999-04-02 00:52 · Score: 1

Anyone know where JWZ is off to next?

And who will be replacing him at Mozilla?

Large corporations are usually faceless entities to consumers/individuals like myself. But Jamaie wasn't afraid to be a face with an opinion. (Amazing that Netscape's lawyers permitted it.) He provided an internal interpretation of events that we usually only see through the mainstream press.

Perhaps he'll be more free to assume another 1/10 of ESR's role. Would he be qualified and able? In one of the articles he mentions explaining OS to "rooms of Netscape employees," as I recall.

--
Murphy's law - "Anything that can go wrong, will." (Actually, this is Finagle's law, which in itself shows that Finagle

Actually Actually by ThunkMan · 1999-04-02 05:34 · Score: 1

I've done a major project using both browsers and IE4 was a much better platform for web application development. I'm not what you look at for completeness, but having scriptable events on *every* tag is a nice feature (IE), having the proper implementation of events is nice (IE), having the standard DIV tag instead of layer is nice (IE).

Check out IE4's window object methods, properties and events

Properties

NOTE: IE4 returns composite object type properties, such as the clientInformation property which includes many NS4 properties which are listed individually.

clientInformation, closed, defaultStatus, dialogArguments, dialogHeight, dialogLeft, dialogTop, dialogWidth, document, event, history, length*, location, name, navigator, offscreenBuffering, opener, parent*, returnValue, screen, self, status, top*

*An asterisk indicates properties not applicable to modal dialogs.

Collections

frames*

Methods

alert, blur, clearInterval, clearTimeout, close, confirm, execScript, focus, moveBy, moveTo, navigate, open*, prompt, resizeBy, resizeTo, scroll, scrollBy, scrollTo, setInterval, setTimeout, showHelp, showModalDialog*

*An asterisk indicates properties not applicable to modal dialogs.

Events

onbeforeunload, onblur, onerror, onfocus, onhelp, onload, onresize, onscroll, onunload

and now NN4's

Property Summary
NOTE: remember that a lot of these properties for chrome-type effects are parameterized in IE4's implementation.

closed
defaultStatus
document
frames
history
innerHeight
innerWidth
length
location
locationbar
menubar
name
opener
outerHeight
outerWidth
pageXOffset
pageYOffset
parent
personalbar
scrollbars
self
status
statusbar
toolbar
top
window

Method Summary
Note: Netscape's event handling "methods" are listed, and not comparable with IE4's event handling strategy.

alert
back
blur
captureEvents
clearInterval
clearTimeout
close
confirm
disableExternalCapture
enableExternalCapture
find
focus
forward
handleEvent
home
moveBy
moveTo
open
print
prompt
releaseEvents
resizeBy
resizeTo
routeEvent
scroll
scrollBy
scrollTo
setInterval
setTimeout
stop

So - to sum it up. I don't think NS4 wins hands down, and I believe I've proved it. A lot of the extra stuff NS4 apparently gives you (releaseEvents and enableExternalCapture come to mind) are in fact supported by IE4 in a more generic way.

cheers

Just twisted thoughts... by CroxWire · 1999-04-02 01:56 · Score: 1

I don't know how he stayed for so long; to see philosophies change, and to have to recode netscape all over. But in anycase, I went by to check on some of the ideas of what they had planned for the browser, I was kinda amazed with the configurability they are trying to give to the browser, and also the one look for all platform. I know kinda JAVA-ish, but I like it. I hope that all these great features don't add onto the size of the browser to the point it is bigger than it predecessor. But back to the business at hand, I would have wished that jwz stayed on with Mozilla, if not to be the leader, but to see it to the end, because I think that Mozilla will rule like no other browser before it. I wish that I could contribute, and I hope that I can, but my knowledge on GTK is limited, but as they say, "Every little helps." I encourage everyone to take up their keyboards and hack away at it. Your bugs will be inspiration for the others who come after us. Haha, not to mean you guys write buggy code hahaha. oh no, no flame.

--
I don't know what life is, but no one gets out alive...N

Jwz... will be missed. by nmarshall · 1999-04-02 09:34 · Score: 1

What if there is no good? What if it's just evil vs. Evil?
me thinks that a free browser that supports open standards could count as good...
can see it as evil, but as corp. vs corp. yea then maybe...

nmarshall
#include STD_DISCLAMER.H
R.U. SIRIUS: THE ONLY POSSIBLE RESPONSE

--
nmarshall

The law is that which it boldly asserted and plausibly maintained..
--Colonel Burr 1783

He's somewhat right by Abigail · 1999-04-02 04:31 · Score: 1

kju wrote:

In the good old days Netscape was the first to support new technologies

That is simply not true. Sure, the marketing team of Netscape has always wanted you to believe that. Netscape has always been good in marketing - how else can you get such a marketshare in such a short time? Netscape has always tried to have the image of them fighting the evil empire, Microsoft, but Netscape used many of Microsofts techniques.

Netscape usually wasn't the first the support new technologies, it was the first to ignore standards, and come with incompatible alternatives.

Tables are a good example. Tables in HTML were proposed long before even Mosaic Communications existed. Specs were formalized around the time the first Netscape betas became available. Half a year later, Netscape 1.1 was the first Netscape to have tables. Which were incompatible with the standards, and implementations of other browsers.

Just like Microsoft, from day 1, Netscape has had the "NIH" syndrome. (Not Invented Here). The only standards Netscape likes are the ones they set themselves.

The web has been ruined many years ago, and Netscape is one of the main culprits.

--- Abigail

No fooling... by Purple+Haze · 1999-04-02 07:23 · Score: 1

I was a little skeptical yesterday when I read about this here. But now, it appears to be true.

It is a shame that mozilla will lose jwz. I wish that he could still help efforts at mozilla.org, however, I doubt he will.

I fear that losing jwz may cause some of the Netscape employees that are working on the mozilla.org project to reassess their goals and maybe either persuade the Netscape branch of AOL to become more innovative.

My only hope is that the community can rally around this event and use it to make a better browser.

I Don't Miss Netscape by Aaron+M.+Renn · 1999-04-02 02:19 · Score: 2

While Mr. Zawinksi liked the early days of Netscape and the way they "changed the world", I find those early days among the most repugnant in the software industry. Netscape took a university developed browser - Mosaic - and applied a Microsoft embrace and extend philosophy to marketing it. I won't even go into the origins of Netscape. I've read a lot of stuff about how Marc Andreesen supposedly hijacked the Mosaic project and stuff. I don't know if it's true, and I don't care. What matters is that Netscape attempted to make the web proprietary with their Netscape only tags. In effect, they tried to do for browsers what Microsoft has done for so many other ways. And they succeeded at first, with 80+% of the browser market. Had they not underestimated Microsoft, I wonder what the web would be today? Might we all be paying the "Netscape toll" on the internet? Who knows. In a way, the relentless drive by Micrsoft to defeat Netscape brought about a lot of good things for net, most importantly open standards. (Where we go from here in a Microsoft dominated web is a different story).

While Netscape did do a good thing by releasing their browser source code as free software, I still don't think the company changed much. I do hear from people inside Netscape that they where genuinely exicited about the source code release and weren't just doing it as a cynical last desperate ploy to stave off extinction. I'll take them at their word. Nevertheless, at the same time Netscape was releasing its browser source code, it was also attempting to (in the opinion of many people) hijack the DNS standard with their "smart browsing" feature that redirected certain keywords to sites of Netscape's choice, not necessarily the DNS name holder. I guess not much has changed for them.

So I'm thankful that Netscape released their browser code as free software, I'm sufficiently unhappy with their behavior as a company that I am not sorry to see them pass into oblivion.

I Don't Miss Netscape by Analog · 1999-04-02 04:18 · Score: 2

Just wanted to comment on some of your comments. ;)

When Andreesen left to form (what became) Netscape, I believe he paid $100,000 for the code he took with him. So, who's more to blame, the school for selling the code, or him for buying it? I don't know. I suppose it depends on your personal viewpoint. Note that I"m not aware if he only licensed the code (leaving it still available for others to use) or bought it outright.

And while you are correct that about the Netscape only tags, there is another side to that story as well (one I have heard many times from my wife, who does web development). The tags they put in defined capabilities that at the time didn't exist. So a case could be made that Netscape didn't want to wait for the traditional standards process to define that functionality; they wanted to give it to their customers right away. Also, AFAIK, all of their tags were well documented and all other browser makers were free to implement them (as Microsoft did in IE). It wasn't quite 'embrace and extend' in the way that Microsoft practices it.

This isn't to say anything you said is wrong, but I do think that there is another side to the story and the reality of the situation was not quite as bleak as you made it out to be.

Feel free to correct any factual errors I may have made, though. ;)

Losing leadership by gavinhall · 1999-04-02 02:53 · Score: 2

Posted by Mike@ABC:

Jamie was great. Bright guy, very honest, very forthright. It was refreshing to have somebody like that to talk to about Mozilla.org and Netscape. It'll be a shame to see him go.

I've noticed a trend lately. Eric Raymond wants his life back. Jamie is leaving Mozilla. Linus will certainly be focusing more and more on Transmeta (read his Linux Magazine interview). That leaves Richard Stallman debating whether Linux needs a GNU tacked on in front of it.

It would be nice if somebody could step up and assume some of these leadership roles. ESR is right -- you need some advocacy. Somebody has to translate the Open Source ideals into English so that the masses can grok it and get on board. Hell, you might not even need a true code hacker for it -- someone like CmdrTaco is great at expressing the Open Source ideas to the public.

But more than that, every single person who believes in Open Source needs to stand up and support it in any way they can. Can you hack code? Then surf over to Mozilla, download some code, and contribute. Go to a Linux kernel ftp site and download that. Hell, start your own damn Open Source project! But get involved...that's the key.

And those of us who can't hack code (like myself), but still really like this whole crazy Open Source thing, can contribute by talking with others, evangelizing, and getting the rest of the world excited about it.

These defections aren't good. It's up to the community to make sure enough people can step up and carry on the good fight.

Again, this is just my opinion. I could be wrong.

Open source no panacea by Chris+Blaise · 1999-04-02 05:31 · Score: 2

Those are characteristics of server-side attributes, not the client-side which is what the whole Mozilla project is geared toward.

I think it's illustrative of the battle that projects based in Open Source need to fight in order to play ball in the client market. Here we have a perfect example of an end-user project that has accomplished nearly nothing since it's inception.

Server platforms and apps are run by technically competent people who can comprehend and perhaps even enjoy command-lines and no GUI (I'll certainly raise my hand). And hell, if leaving out the fluff results in a more robust product, that's what you want in a server anyay. However, you're not going to find that kind of attraction from the unwashed masses who want to read e-mail and browse the web and perhaps write the occasional letter. It's a ball-busting exercise to write those kind of applications and if it ain't "right" few will use it. And if nobody is going to use it, what's the point?

I don't think the problem is unsolvable but it will be difficult. I feel it's a point that most Open Source advocates seem to miss or choose to ignore when it comes to considering the client market.

I'm a little surprised by JWZ's conclusions by aheitner · 1999-04-02 01:20 · Score: 2

Granted I am not familiar with Mozilla, but the impression I had was it was going decently well. Certainly when you combine the state of the Gecko engine and the features (eg. "What's Related, etc) that NetscapeComm proper has been adding in the 4.5x navigator series, it's debatable whether IE is really ahead (they're on an unstable beta of ver5 as well). As b'sides which, IE always pisses the hell out of me -- never can tell what it's doing or what progress it's made.

But the issues Mozilla.org has had seem to be core ones to software projects, especially commercial ones, and issues i've thought about a bit. The mistake was releasing the previous Navigator4 codebase at all. It was too crufty. A million lines they tell me. Gee whiz, that's amazing. No wonder it sucks.

Let me tell you something -- Microsoft doesn't write bad software 'cos they don't have good programmers, or intentionally. They do it for beaurocratic reasons. It's pretty much impossible to manage something that big in that environment, where individual teams write small chunks without considering the rest of the project. The result is slow, impenetrable cruft.

Projects like GNOME and KDE avoid this -- people work on individual modules _based_ around a core design, and with that Invisible Hand of massive public testing and fixes that keeps things more-or-less in line.

Mozilla was reaching that point.

I think it's really a shame JWZ gave up.

It may be a lesson on the wisdom of releasing commercial products as OS projects: don't bother if they suck.

I work for a 6 person company on a 40-50k line project, which is rewritten piece by piece relatively frequently. I didn't realize how lucky I am.

Save the Pioneers by Stargazer · 1999-04-02 01:10 · Score: 2

These notices about JWZ's resignation come with too much of a note of sadness. Yes, it is a sad day for Netscape. But Netscape has had many sad days, long before AOL acquired it or Mozilla was released as an open source product.

This is, however, a decidedly Good Thing for JWZ himself. The two articles about his resignation are him at his best. JWZ is a person very in-touch with reality. He knows the company structure, but is still very much aware of human dignity and the Right Things (which tend to get lost in such a structure as a company).

This is an incredibly talented person. If his talents are wasted at Netscape (and there's no reason to believe they aren't), then we should be short of thrilled to see him leave. Goodness only knows what such a man could do for the Internet, computers, or the world.

The revolution never dies -- it lives in the hearts of those that seek greater.

-- Stargazer

Is this for real? by mahlen · 1999-04-02 05:25 · Score: 2

In the print version of _Triumph_of_The_Nerds_, Robert Cringely posits the following metaphor that often echoes my experience; a company's growth is like an invasion.

The first wave of people are commandoes, doing whatever they can to acquire a beach-head, with very little beaurocratic (sp?) overhead, running fast and loose to do whatever is needed to establish themselves.

In the next step, the workers are more like soldiers, still working to expand market share and maintain what they have, but less chaotically than before, and it's vital to maintain what territory you already have.

At some point (if the previous stages succeeded), the potential for growth is curtailed, so the company is more like a police force, just maintaining order and making sure that no problems develop.

Commandoes, soldiers, and cops are very different kinds of jobs, and almost no one doesn't have a preference as to the kind of work they prefer. I also expect that the preference changes over time. When you're young and don't have mortgage payments or a spouse who'd like you around, being a commando is very fun, very exciting. Get a family and other responsibilities, and the long work hours and worries about where the next sale will come from lose their charm.

It may seem sad to some (particularly when you're young) that both companies and people change their ways over time, but they're both really acting according to what's appropriate for them at that point in their lives. I'm recently married and working at a startup (http://www.perspecta.com/), and as one of my married co-workers said to me, "When you have two major responsibilities, you feel like you aren't doing either well." That's exactly how i feel some days, but i love what we're doing here too much to give it up just yet. But i'm also working hard not to blow my marriage; no amount of stock options or killer code would make up for doing that.

So it's not surprising that company founders leave when the company gets big; commandos aren't happy in a squad car, pulling people over for busted tailights. But it's also unrealistic to think that this is a failing of Netscape; it's VERY hard to maintain that startup fever (though sometimes possible, with skunkworks and small spun-off companies.)

mahlen

We don't need no indirection
We don't need no flow control
No data typing or declarations
Did you leave the lists alone?
Hey! Hacker! Leave those lists alone!
Chorus: All in all, it's just a pure-LISP function call. (Repeat)
--"Another Glitch in the Call" (to the tune of a Pink Floyd song)

Open source no panacea by elflord · 1999-04-02 07:38 · Score: 2

You raise some good points. The best open source apps are usually the servers. Rarely do the GUI end-user OSS products come close to commercial products. The only conspicuous exception I have seen is GIMP.

However, this does not mean that Open and closed source cannot co-exist. Software which everyone requires ( such as an operating system ) makes a very good candidate for an open source project. Software that is only used by a small niche market ( eg video editing software ) is a much less viable candidate for an OSS project.

In conclusion, I think that the core parts of the linux OS already prove that open source is very good for some things. In other areas ( eg desktop environments ) , the jury is still out ... And in some areas, such as those involving fairly specialised products, it seems less plausible that OSS will knock closed source from its position. Indeed, the only decent word processors today that run on linux are closed source.

If you read Cowpland's ( Corel's CEO's ) comments, he discusses these issues. And his arguments are pretty solid. A system based on open source, suplemented by closed source apps is viable. But I don't believe in this vision of an open source "utopia"

Hey, Mozilla, what you gonna do? by kzinti · 1999-04-02 02:08 · Score: 2

JWZ laid down a kind of challenge to you, didn't he, Mozilla? He said you had failed. Your own leader, and he said you failed. What are you gonna do now?

I see two choices.

One, you can ignore him. Maybe Jamie was impatient; maybe, as he said, his own goals were unrealistic. Do you believe in the course you're on? Are you mature enough, collectively, not to get impatient -- to stay the course and see your product through to the end? Do you have confidence in your vision, and in the plan you've chosen to realize that vision? If so, then you won't let Jamie's departure distract you too much from the task at hand.

Two, you can listen to Jamie. You can reexamine your goals and your plan. Was your vision the right one? Was Jamie's vision the right one? Or maybe the vision was right, but the plan has led you astray... or bogged you down. Perhaps you need to focus on different goals: more frequent smaller releases instead of less frequent larger ones. Maybe you need to look at what can be removed (for now) from the project rather than what can be added.

Either way, I urge you to make your choice, make it now, and get on with things. I for one believe in the Mozilla project and its vision; I'd be working on it myself if not for other commitments. I want you to succeed, and I hope you succeed soon before AOL pulls the plug.

Don't let the loss of your evangelist distract you unnecessarily. Get on without one if you can, or promote a new one if someone steps up. But above all, please focus like the proverbial laser beam on your goals. Mozilla still has a chance to Win Big, and many of us are counting on you. Go get 'em!

--JT

Except, IE5 is out. by IntlHarvester · 1999-04-02 04:12 · Score: 2

IE 5 has been released, and it's heckava lot faster and more stable than Netscape 4.5 on Windows32.

If you've got your nose in Linux or another Unix all day, you may well think "Oh, Netscape 4.5 isn't *that* bad", but it really is a big stinky dog compared to what you can get on Windows, esp. with IE.

As far as Netscape not being that far behind, maybe that's true for lowest-common-denominator Internet browsing, but for the really interactive CSS/DHTML stuff that you can get away with on an Intranet (where you can develop for one client), IE is way ahead.

Std Disclaimer: Sure IE has proprietary features, but so is any feature of Netscape/Moziila that no other browser has. At one time frames and tables were a proprietary Netscape feature.

--

--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.

Mozila violated a Prime Directive of Open Source by PedXing · 1999-04-02 02:36 · Score: 2

Jamie hit the nail on the head with his second
reason for Mozilla's problems: It violated one
of the most important requirements of Open-Source
projects by not releasing a usable product.

Remember how much Linux .98 sucked? I do. But
it was able to suck because it existed. Mozilla
didn't suck. It didn't even exist. It was
unusable from the start and the few pathetic
"releases" that did appear were hardly usable at
all.

Why are so many people willing to contribute to
open source projects? To get work done! They
need a certain tool, so they pick one. When they
find a problem or a missing feature, they correct
it. The important thing is to have Open-Source
projects be useful from the start.

Release early and often. This is what has made
Linux so successful. It may not have have been
great from the start, but the people using it
improved this or that and their improvements were
given back to the community regularly. This
created a truly superior product.

It is sad, too, for the Mozilla project that
Jamie has gone. However, as someone said, it is
better for all in the long term. Jamie can get
working on something better and Mozilla will
either get a shot in the arm or a kick in the
head (which it gets doesn't really matter at this
point). Mozilla probably triggered much of the
Open-Source publicity of the last year, but
without a usable product, it's worth nothing.

I applaud Jamie for all he's done in the past (I
still use that PostScript tape label thing), for
trying to make Mozilla what it could have been,
and wish him the best in the future. I hope he
doesn't wait long to give his next gift to our
community.

Mozilla is worth it by robinjo · 1999-04-02 04:44 · Score: 2

For as long as I remember, I have wanted a small, fast and reliable browser. No bloatware, e-mail, instant messenger or anything. Just a small browser that would get the work done and still leave plenty of free memory. I had and still have high hopes for Mozilla.

A web browser doesn't need an e-mail client. And it definitely doesn't need an operating system like Win98. It's just an application. So just focus on getting a stable browser the size of Opera done and everybody will be happy.

What is important in Mozilla is:
- small size
- fast
- standards compliant

Even if it takes two years to get there, it's something worth making. IE fails in each and every of those and won't ever make it.

What we have to remember is that Open Source should not compete against Microsoft. We are serving different customers. I'm using Linux because it's so stable, fast and runs on virtually anything. I also love the freedom and the values of Open Source.

What will happen during the next few years? Windows 2000 will ship requiring a horrible amount of memory and having way too many bugs. It's a huge code base and made in a lot of hurry. If you think that Netscape had problems, then consider the chore to port that stuff to Merced. Not to mention that they also have to port Win98.

OTOH Linux will get easier to use, more applications and Wine will be able to run Win32 apps. There will be a small and fast Mozilla, office apps from several vendors and great e-mail clients. Add to that speed and reliability.

What is the difference between Mozilla and IE? It's exactly the same as between Linux and Windows. One is made to be as good as possible and the other one is made to gain power and money. Making decisions based on money works only for a while but you mostly create problems. You never create anything that will last. Keep believing in good quality and you'll always beat the opponents.

JWZ and Mozilla by Mr+T · 1999-04-02 02:51 · Score: 2

It sounds like he was a little burned out, it happens to the best of us. A change of scenery is the best fix for him.

I'm also not so sure what all the depression is over with mozilla. I keep hearing that it is a failure and I don't think that is the case. When Netscape released the source code I know more than a few of us had these delusions about integrating a browser in to our various projects or changing a few lines of code to make mozilla better but they didn't give us a good workable code base and it wasn't modular in that way. Mozilla has come a long way since then. I still think that it is kind of difficult to work with mozilla right now, the nspr libs didn't install correctly on my machine and the configure script didn't work right... Just little things like that can be discouraging.

Now that mozilla is taking a more component oriented approach and we've got more wide usage of CORBA I think things are pretty exciting, as soon as mozilla can view and create HTML (xml) without crashing and can install easily I think interest will start to increase.

--
This is my signature. There are many signatures like it but this one is mine..

Hey, Mozilla, what you gonna do? by gavinhall · 1999-04-02 11:49 · Score: 3

Posted by shaver@netscape.com:

I guess I'm the person to respond to this, because reporters keep calling me to ask if I'm the Jamie replacement. I guess I am, as much as anyone is; I've been with mozilla.org since pretty much day one, and I was the ``virtual jwz'' when he was on sabbatical. So just pretend it's a really, really long sabbatical or something.

First, I'll do the eulogy thing: we will certainly miss Jamie -- I think any organization except the Vatican would mourn his departure from their ranks. He did some great work here at Netscape and mozilla.org, and he was (usually) a pleasure to work with. Thanks for all the fish.

As for the issues at hand, I think I agree mostly with Jamie on the facts of the case, but my conclusions sometimes differ meaningfully: I, too wish we'd shipped a browser already, and a great one at that. But I think that the switch to the NGLayout/Gecko engine is a great example of how the mozilla.org project is a success: it was the best way to get a browser that matched the demands of our users, and I'm not sure that Netscape would have done The Right Thing before the advent of mozilla.org. Also, as Jamie himself points out, it did help us recruit more developers, which is always a win.

The balance of Netscape vs. non-Netscape developers doesn't bother me as much as it seems to bother Jamie. When we started, there were zero external developers in any form, and there are now many (34 non-netscape.com people have commit privileges on the mozilla.org CVS tree, and many more contribute patches for others to commit), and I think that matters more than the comparison to the large number of developers that Netscape pays.

What does the future hold? Well, our work towards 5.0 continues apace, so we'll still be trying to help our existing developers and recruit new ones. We'll be finishing up our efforts to make some of the Mozilla code available under the GPL as well (the JavaScript engine, in this case), to broaden our ``technology reach''.

People have asked if we have a plan for attracting more developers, and I think that the best answer is ``ship a beta''. When we get onto hackers' desktops, we have a much better shot at getting into their hearts and minds, too. In the nearer term, we just need to weather the storm of reporters and pundits, and concentrate on getting our jobs done. We'll make Jamie proud yet.

Good Luck JWZ by doomy · 1999-04-02 01:31 · Score: 3

Since it's the 2nd of April, I'm assuming that this is not yet another april fool's day slashdot news item

I've participated in a few opensource projects and helped code a few functional utlities that still helps a lot of people all around the world. When Netscape announced the release of Mozilla code, I was one of many to logon to their site and download the tar ball, but alas, it was too hard to decypher. I went through the code for 1 week (a lot longer than most people did). I couldnt figure out 75% of the things in there. So I gave up. (And I guess that is what happend to all the others out there)

Initially when netscape announced the release of mozilla, there were dozens of web sites, hundreds of mailing lists, just devoated to the discussion of what should be in mozilla. Over the past year, these web sites and lists just died away one by one. I guess what most people did not release was, that what mozilla needed was not new functionally, but... stablility, at a good speed. It did not need be a front end to your kitchen skin (should see some of the suggestions made on wishlists) it just needed to fetch a web page and display complying with most statndard as possible.

Then there are those who bitched about mozilla, from the start to the end (i guess when jwz leaves, it might as well be the end). I don't think bitching about the code would have helped making it more stable and fast. Helping the coders, coding it your self and replacing those netscape coders should have been the first thing we should have done. As jwz stated, most people thought netscape still owned mozilla and had full control over mozilla (this was inforced by the inital netscape/mozilla licence,) on that.. i belive mozilla would have been better accepted if it was released as BSD or GPL/LGPL.. most coders were weary of this and stayed away from mozilla just cause of that fact alone... and then there were those who, like me, waited for others to go ahead and do something to the code, test it, pinch it.. see if it bites.. (would a dead beast bite?)

Best jwz quote : I must say, though, that it feels good to be resigning from AOL instead of resigning from Netscape

PS: oops posted it in the wrong place :)
--

--
...free your source and the rest would follow...

JWZ by miscellaneous · 1999-04-02 01:07 · Score: 3

jwz is one of the few latter-day saints to become known by their initials. i mean, you know GLS, RMS, ESR, ETC., but it's pretty kewl when someone your age is an undeniable net.god. (also, he's much less insane than the *other* TLA that worked on (l)emacs). so, it's undeniably sad to see him go.

it's also ironic to see this happen at a time when mozilla.org was finally producing a product that was starting to look like an early version of a real contender, rather than a cobbled-together POS.

however, maybe it's a good thing:

a) maybe jwz can get out there and do something he really enjoys now, which might be good for all of us :), and

b) maybe this will act as a wakeup call. with jwz gone, mozilla can go one of two ways: either somebody's gonna do *something*, or it's gonna die.

c) maybe all of us losers with delusions of grandeur will go download the tarball again...

so, i personally wanna wish jwz good luck.

-k. ^-^

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-k. ^-^ ^D

Reflections of a lurker. by irh · 1999-04-02 02:40 · Score: 4

This is indeed a tragedy, but frankly it does not surprise me.

I've been lurking around the mozilla mailing lists (mirrored in the mozilla newsgroups) and the mozilla.org website basically since they were created. Watching the dynamic of the mozilla communication mechanism over the period of a year, a number of things became unsettling. (I've only ever lurked, primarily because I'm not a sophisticated programmer, and I would have little to offer either the mozilla or linux kernel mailing lists. The development processes in both fascinate me, however.)

First, it amazes me that anyone in the Mozilla project was able to communicate with another at all. From the moment the mozilla mailing lists were created and mirrored, it was apparent that 80-90% of the mail/posts were, and would -always- be, irrelevant fluff. The primary reason for this is that while the Netscape 4.5 support newsgroups were not public - available only through nsnews.netscape.com, the mozilla newsgroups were public, and contained those compelling words "netscape", "misc" and "mail-news". From the perspective of a user with little knowledge of the significance of the word "mozilla", there was no reason to think that the most obvious place to ask Communicator questions.

The result was/is that despite the good efforts of Dan Mosedale and Jim Cape (each of whom made valiant strides to keep the mailing list topical), the vast majority of discussion was/is about 3.0, 4.0x and 4.5 problems. Combined with another 10% of posts of the "I want my 5.0 and I want it NOW!" variety, and a further 5% of the "Now that I can order you, I demand the following 50 stupid features that I have no idea how to program myself" variety, the mozilla mailing list, to the best of my observation, became a completely inhospitable place to have useful techinical discussions such as are seen almost exclusively - by contrast - in the Linux kernel mailing list. The latter, despite the fact that its content is usually way beyond this law student, is a pleasure to read. The Mozilla list is not.

I will leave remarks about the daunting complexity of the source as a major factor to jwz and other programmers/contributors. I'm simply not qualified. But another result is that because most of the contributors (as pointed out by jwz) were still Netscape employees, communication via the mailing list for the purposes of solving localized problems was (I assume) unnecessary.

I must, therefore, put a caveat on jwz's "fishbowl" analogy. These are two huge disincentives to communicating publicly about the source tree, and the lack of consistent communication on the nitty-gritty details of development may have played its part in the failure of the mozilla project to capture the imagination - and effort - of the programming community.

Aside from that caveat, though, jwz commented that such outside observation, combined with mozilla's independence, motivated the project to redesign the layout engine, and thus the UI, from scratch. It is unfortunate that the choice to rebuild a project thoughtfully and correctly, at the obvious cost of time, is considered a 'failure', or even a bad thing. Yes, some idiots have complained and threatened that if "Netscape doesn't come up with my browser now, I swear I'll move to IE5", not understanding that (a) the development regime has changed radically, (b) the project was rebuilt, (c) it's better to ship the right thing "late" - inasmuch as there is any such thing as 'late' in an open source project - than the wrong thing when users demand it.

For someone who has lurked and gained some familiarity with the dynamics of the project and the cast of characters, none of these conditions indicate 'failure' to me. It is unfortunate that jwz does, but he'd probably know better than I.

Before we go digging Mozilla's grave... by Frank+Hecker · 1999-04-02 09:07 · Score: 5

It might be a good idea to review things as they stand today, as well as a little bit of history. Some points to remember:

First, the Mozilla effort goes on: AOL is still funding development, non-AOL developers are active as well, the project is continuing to release "milestone" releases which you can try out, and this will culminate later this year in beta releases of Communicator 5.0 and then a final release, all based on the open Mozilla source code. This has been the case all along, and remains the case.

Next, in the Mozilla project there was a fundamental trade-off: build and release a product based on the existing in-progress 5.0 code base ("Mozilla Classic") or rearchitect the product to make it more standards compliant (i.e., use the new layout code being developed), more extensible, more open (e.g., use something other than Motif), and so on. In particular, many people complained vociferously that Mozilla/5.0 needed to have 100% standards compliance for HTML 4.0, CSS1, etc. Thus the decision was made (way back in October 1998) to rearchitect the product, use the new layout engine, use GTK+ instead of Motif, etc.

Most people on /. and elsewhere seemed to agree with that decision at the time, and would presumably still agree with it. However from Jamie's point of view it presumably would have been a better plan to go ahead and ship as early as possible even given the downsides. (Also, Jamie saw no reason to ditch Motif for GTK.) That's something about which reasonable people can disagree, but I don't buy the assertion that by taking the extra time to make a better product the Mozilla project has therefore "failed".

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